A couple of general questions

[suissebear]

Hi all,


I'm still in search of the "perfect" music archiving/ project software. Perhaps Songs-DB is the one - well, I'm very impressed by the first looks of the software anyway

However, I'd like to ask a few questions before committing to a change of my setup (this will take a lot of time I can just tell!) to make sure there aren't any hitches.

This is how I work (apoplogise in advance for being lengthy):

- My CD collection (ca. 200 titles) is my principal, original source of music

- Secondly, I have plenty of songs on Cassette and Vinyl recorded/ bought a long while ago.

- Thirdly, I have made a few recordings directly from the radio to the PC (not significant but may grow)

- My PC serves as online music archive for all purposes. I've been ripping those songs I like onto my PC (ca. 40GB of wave files and growing).

- I would now consider the orignal CDs/ Cassettes/ LPs as "offline archive" which I don't want to touch anymore. In fact, Cassette and record players are banned into the cellar already

- Further, my PC serves as the means to create "projects". I.e., a tool to select, mix, and match my music compilation in a way I can use them at events or locations. A "project" can be an online collection for a party (to be played with WinAmp or WMP), a mix to be burned to CD (mostly in MP3 format), or a mix to be transferred to one of those fancy small MP3 players .

- I'd consider re-ripping my CDs for the sake of improved music quality, improvement on the information gathered (year of creation, style etc), creation of an easy-to-access music database, and obtaining online "previews" of those songs I decide not to rip (here is where the gold version comes in right? ).


Okay, now that I probably bored you senseless , here are my questions:


1. Overall

From a high level it seems Songs-DB may support what I intend - any obstacles?


2. Quality.

I want the best that is feasible today:

- While MP3 is able to deliver high quality I prefer to keep my archive in wave format. Who knows, better encoders may come along in future which I'll be able to leverage only using the .wav files.

- In terms of ripping CDs to .wav, the best approach seems to be "Exact Audio Copy" which I understand takes pains (e.g. C2 error evaluation) to get maximum quality. However, using Songs-DB's internal function would be more convenient. How does Songs-DB's ripping quality stack up in comparison?

- Encoding. I understand Songs-DB uses Lame which is great. Which version is contained in the package?


3. Archival vs. Projects

A particular concern of mine is the ability to cleanly distinguish between my music archive on one hand, and the projects I chose to create from it on the other. My current software blows this one.

While I like a possibility to see which songs I may have mixed and matched for a particular MP3-CD, it is more important that the on- and offline archive can be separated. I.e., I want to be able to search for a particular song in my archive without that song coming up four times just because I happened to use it in three different projects. Does Songs-DB support this?



Any feedback appreciated!!

Thanks,

SB

[jiri]

1. I don't see any obstacles. Songs-DB currently doesn't support off-line music (like cassetes), but it will in the future and even now it is possible (with direct modification of Access database, some users have already done it). The best thing you can do is test it a little and see if it meets your requirements.

2. Ripping quality is no longer any problem with newer CD-ROMs, all programs should give exactly the same result. For some older models are better algorithms needed, but Songs-DB includes them too - jitter correction.

Songs-DB always includes the latest release version of Lame, with Songs-DB 1.3 it is Lame 3.93. However it isn't problem to use any other version, just replace lame_enc.dll.

3. Songs-DB has each song just once in the database, but there can be unlimited instances in playlists. That's how I would solve you project requirement - make a special playlist, possibly with some sub-playlists in the tree hierarchy.

Jiri

[suissebear]

Jiri,


many thanks for answers and pointers.


Sounds good!


Cheers
SB

[Lizy]

From a high level it seems Songs-DB may support what I intend - any obstacles?

Songs-Db database is an Access database. Therefore, you can use that database or export it if you want to because you found any obstacles (if any!)

wave format.

Wav is supported, as well as other formats

A particular concern of mine is the ability to cleanly distinguish between my music archive on one hand, and the projects I chose to create from it on the other.

Use playlists as Jiri suggested it if your project are "permanent", or use the cache feature if your projects are for one occasion only. That's the best feature of Songs-Db (only available in the Gold version). What the cache features does is to copy all tagged offline songs (on different archives CDs) to a temporary directory on the hard disk. This is great to create a selection of songs for tape recording or for a party. Have different installations of Songs-DB (sharing the same database) and you can have therefore different caches.