Paul's Posts — 14 February 2012
By Paul McGowan
The sorting order of a major music library is critical as I have written about as of late – composers by their last name, artists, orchestras and bands by the first/last names.
Once you get the sorting order right, then you start to really enjoy the power of your library and you find and listen to music you haven’t in years. But then something else starts to happen – you want more – more music, more sorting abilities, more everything. It’s nuts because I am not sure I would listen to more – I just want more to feel good.
My library of lossless music is sitting at 1.7tB and that gives me about 6,000 albums and nearly 70,000 tracks. A quick calculation on this would suggest I could listen end-to-end for close to a year. Truth is, I will probably never listen to even a quarter of what’s in my library – yet I still want more.
I’ll admit I am a pack rat, but this goes deeper and is worth noting.
Tomorrow I will suggest what I think is going on.
Yes, tomorrow, there will be more!
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audiofilodigital.com
Yes, those symptoms are well known… a modern (digital) version of “Diogenes complex”. It is said of persons who use to collect and collect, in this case, “data” (movies, websites, songs, etc.). mostly for nothing. But you feel much more relaxed. Streaming is the antidote: let others store the info for you. But it takes time to accept that: we are used to store our own things in our own house
. Hope you have a good RAID configuration, obviously.
Ballisticman
OK the answer is simple, at least relatively able to be quantified as a starting point.
We create a database entry for one track for a single performer, say one Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or more contemporary a Jazz Ensemble; Flim & The BBs.
We place that entry into a bucket with multiple compartments and set it up using any one of those fine interactive databases provided to us by (shudder) the likes of Jobs, Gates or Ellison for a donation of yet a few more shekels into the gaping maws of their wallets and the humble users like us can configure the front end Image of our music inventory any way we want.
Moreover, by applying a standard database sorting technique, you and I could share our respective databases in a heartbeat purely for archival purpases you understand….
And the respective recording formats would be totally irrelevant as we could use any thing from the very meat right down to Jobs’ crappy MP3, not that I have an opinion here of course…
Hmmmmmmmmm……..
Paul McGowan
Ballisticman
One benefit I failed to add I’d that I could tell the computer to play Wolfgang and listen for hours…..
Asking for Elvis may confuse some listeners but Yankovic turns up an interestin duet with Wierd Al aNd Frank as well….
The overall discography gives me access to ever 45,000 tracks however without the laying of hands on anything other a keyboard and once we work oud the bugs on the voice recognition front end, so much the better…..
Soundminded
If the purpose of cataloging a library is to make it easy to find what you want quickly, it seems to me that programs like Excel and Access are perfect. As long as each track is assigned a unique file number and each disc has all of the pertinent information in the appropriate columns in Excel you can filter and sort any way you want to, to get to the list of files that meet a search criteria.
Can you simply click on a file number on an Excel spreadsheet to link wirelessly to get to a particular track to play immediately? Can you create a playlist to install a queue? Haven’t programs like Windows Media and countless others already done that too? Somehow I think this problem has already been solved.
I think you’re a little behind the times Paul. The thoery that the one who dies wit the most toys wins is very 1980s. Now isn’t the one who dies with the most unplayed recordings wins the same idea?
The beauty of the death of the cd is that there are a seemingly infinite number of them out there dirt cheap. Every garage sale seems to have a box somewhere with a pile of them to cherry pick. In NJ the Princeton Record Exchange is a dangerous place. Easy to drop a couple of hundred browsing their stacks. And I’m not even going to suggest that you pay your local public library a visit to “borrow” off their racks. I wouldn’t want to be accused of aiding and abetting.
Paul McGowan
I am with you and perhaps I am behind the times – but my desire for more isn’t to leave behind more but to have more now, here. I think the reason is a sense of fulfillment.
For example, if while playing something I get the spark to hear something else by that same artist or perhaps another one and then I go to look and lo and behold I don’t have it – I am bummed. I don’t want this to be the case. The wonder of a big library is having the ability to listen to just about anything and everything – having lots increases your chances of that coming true.
It’s kind of like saving hardware. Whenever I have an extra nut or screw or bolt I save it – why? Because I may need it. Chances are good I’ll never use it, but when you need it sure is nice it’s there.
LauraSkaer
This desire to have more is not limited to those with a digital library. My music collection consists of about 85% vinyl and 15% CD. My computer digital collection of about 120 GB consists of CDs imported to iTunes so I can listen to my iPod Classic while working out or traveling on an airplane. I have no desire to build a digital library beyond what my iPod Classic can hold. As a result of hanging out in the Vinyl Circle on AC, I have discovered music I missed the first time around like Throwing Muses, Renaissance, Barclay James Harvest, Camel, The Strawbs, and many others. Once I find a good M or NM copy of an album and like it, I want to acquire the group or artists’ entire catelog on vinyl. As a result, my collection has grown from about 1,000 records to about 2,000 records in 4 years as I fill in my collection and add to it. There is not only enjoyment from listening to “new” music, but also enjoyment in the search to find a M or NM copy. It is a hobby after all.