Music - MyDigitalLife

Music Folder

All music is stored under what I refer to as the Music Folder. It’s under D:\Music.

I want easy access to all my music without using any application, so I use the following structure.

Music structure on disc (overview):

 
0-9, A, ..., Z						main index
	<artist-name>					All artists starting with a specific character
		<album-id>                      
			<2-digit-tracknr> - <track-title>.<extension>
        9999 - Compilation
            <year> - <Album title> - <2-digit-tracknr> - <track-title>.<extension>
 zSoundtracks

The main index consists of folders with the names ‘0-9’ and ‘A ‘through ‘Z’, being the first character of the names of the artists.
At the next level there are folders with the names of the artists.
Below each artist there is one folder per album of that artist.
An album folder contains the tracks of the album.

Naming conventions:

<artist-name>
Name of the artist. Each part of the name starts with a capital.
Example: Bruce Springsteen

There are different types of albums.

Own compilation
A collection of tracks of the same artist, which you created yourself.
These have a fixed <album-id>, being ‘9999 – Compilation’.

Normal Album
Any other album.
Here the <album-id> is: <year-plus-optional-index> – <artist-name> – <album-title> – <cd-nr>

where:
<year-plus-optional-index>
The four digit year that the album was released. If you have more than one album released in the same year, add a ‘-‘ and the two digit month number in which the album was released. The idea is that the albums are listed in chronological order. So if you don’t know the release month, but you do know the order in which they were release, just add some numbers to get the sorting right.

<album-title>
The title of the album. Each part of the title starts with a capital.

<cd-nr>
This is only used for multi disc albums. Each disc is stored as an album, with an extension for the disc number.
The format is ‘[cd n]’, where n is a one digit disc number.

Details:

Normal tracks
Normal track file names consist of the concatenation of:
- a two-digit track numer, e.g. ’02’.
- a separator, being ‘ – ‘.
- the track title, adapted for filename restrictions (see Adapting names for filename restrictions).
- the standard separator before the filename extension, being a ‘.’.
- the three-character filename extension. The following extensions are possible:
  - ‘flac’ for FLAC files
  - ‘mp3’ for MP3 files
  Note: WAV if of course also possible, but not allowed. WAV files should be converted to FLAC.
  By having the track filenames starting with the two-digit track number, normal sorting will show the tracks in the order that they appear on the album.
Own Compilation Album tracks
See ToDo for information about Own Compilation Albums.
Normal track file names consist of the concatenation of:
- a four-digit issue year, e.g. ‘1996’.
- An optional issue month specification
  It is the intention to have the tracks first sorted on issue date, therefore the issue month can be added in case that the artist issued more than
  one album in a specific year. This has the following format:
  - a separator, being ‘-‘.
  - a two-digit issue month, e.g. ’07’ (for july).
- a separator, being ‘ – ‘.
- the album title, of the related album, adapted for filename restrictions (see Adapting names for filename restrictions).
- a separator, being ‘ – ‘.
- a two-digit track numer, e.g. ’02’.
- a separator, being ‘ – ‘.
- the track title, adapted for filename restrictions (see Adapting names for filename restrictions).
- the standard separator before the filename extension, being a ‘.’.
- the three-character filename extension. The following extensions are possible:
  - ‘flac’ for FLAC files
  - ‘mp3’ for MP3 files
  Note: WAV if of course also possible, but not allowed. WAV files should be converted to FLAC.
  By having the track filenames starting with the two-digit track number, normal sorting will show the tracks in the order that they appear on the album.
<artist-name>
The name of the artist.
This name is also part of an album folder name, because it may differ from the artist folder name.
As an example:
Artist: Pete Yorn
Artist name for one album: Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson
<year-plus-optional-index>
Four digits for the year the album is issued. For ‘My compilations’ this value is set to 9999.
An optional index: ‘-x’. This index is just used to sort the entries in a directory correctly in case an artist issued
more than one album in a specific year.
<album-title>
The full title of the album.
<cd-nr>
An optional disc number, used for multi disc albums. E.g. [cd 1] TODO Change to Disc 1? To be more generic.
My compilations are recognized by fixed name (9999 – Compilation)

Adapting names for filename restrictions

As not all characters are allowed in file names, some rules are needed to translate an album or track title to a folder or file name.
These rules are:

Audio formats

Direct Stream Digital (DSD)

This is a one bit recording format.

Super Audio CD (SACD)

This is a higher quality compact disc.
The SACD utilizes DSD.

An ISO from a SACDs can have up to three “sections”, CD audio, SACD stereo, and SACD multichannel. However, there are plenty of stereo only SACDs and also plenty of SACDs with no Redbook CD layer.

DSF, DFF (file extension .dsf)

DSF and DFF are DSD audio files (e.g. extracted from as SACD).
DSF has the ability to hold metadata, while DFF doesn’t, however, some players only read DFF files. In the PCM world, DSF and DFF would be similar to having .wav and .aiff files which are both PCM based.

DST

A lossless compression format for DSD tracks.

Vorbis text comment header

A specification to add meta data to an audio file. The information is basically a list of key/value pairs. See https://xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html for the specification.
This type of header is a.o. used in FLAC files.

Playing audio

From your PC

Connect your PC with an HDMI cable to your receiver. This will give the quality of your audio installation and the flexibility or your PC.
Multi channel audio can also be played if you install DTS Sound Unbound (unfortunately on my PC this doesn’t work anymore).

Converting audi files

Acknowledgements

Some information on this page comes from hiresedition.com.