Hallo Beo friends,

Over the past weeks, I have been building a Classical Music collection on the BS5. After experimenting with numerous (faulty) tagging options, I have found a satisfactory way to present my classical music on the BS5.

I wanted to share how I have tagged the files to show the library in the best possible way (for me, at least) on the BS5. Suggestions to further improve my method are very welcome!

The BS5 is very limited in display options compared to a PC-based Mediaplayer. That's why it is essential to populate the right Tags to make use of the BS5-s 4 'tabs' which are: Artists; Albums; Covers; and Titles. 

1. Artists

For classical music I wanted to have 'composer' as the primary sorting option. However, the 'composer' tag is ignored by the BS5. Therefore I use the 'Artist' tag and fill it as follows e.g. for a CD with music by Bach:

'Artist' = 'Bach, Johann Sebastian' (without the ' ' of course) 

This way the BS5 shows the Composers sorted alphabetically under Artists.

NB there are exceptions: for a compilation of music by different composers performed by one artist, I prefer to set the 'Artist" field to the performer. Example: the CD "Watercolours", music by different Nordic composers performed by the singer Anne Sophie von Otter, is tagged as: 'Artist' = 'Von Otter, Anne Sophie'. The names of the composers are listed in the 'Track title' field (see below).

2. Albums

Because I have already used Artist to display the composer, I need a different field for the performer(s) e.g. pianist, singer etc. I use the 'Album' tag to contain the name of the performer as well as the name of the album. Example: "Das Wohltemperierte Klavier" by Kenneth Gilbert is tagged under 'Album' as follows:

'Gilbert, K.: Das Wohltemperierte Klavier'

This way the BS5 shows the Performers sorted alphabetically under Albums.

What if there is more than 1 performer/album artist? My choice is as follows:

- two artists (Lieder, Sonata-s etc): put the artist that you consider as 'leading' in front like described above and then add the name of accompanying artist at the end of 'Album'. Example: 'Fischer-Dieskau, D.: Winterreise (+Moore, G.)'

- ensemble/chamber music: put the name of the ensemble in front e.g. 'Alban Berg Quartett: Schubert, String Quartet in C'

- for orchestral music, I put the name of the orchestra in front of 'Album' but another option is to give preference to the Conductor.

3. Covers 

Just some practical tips here:

- use Album Cover of sufficient quality: minimum 300*300. 500*500 is better and looks quite pretty on the BS5. NB there is a limit to the size of Album Art that can be displayed, I don't know what is the exact limit but files > 1 MB are not displayed by the BS5. 

- use 'embedded tagging' of album art, this is very convenient. NB: the BS5 shows only 1 album cover per Album, so tagging tracks of the same album with different covers is useless for the BS5 (however, it can be useful for Mediaplayers).

4. Titles

The BS5 also displays 'Track title'. I wanted to be able to meaningfully scroll through titles on the BS5, which requires specific sorting and therefore a significant amount of time-consuming tag editing of 'track title'. If you don't think this is important, you may just as well skip this point.  

What I do here is best illustrated with examples for the different sorts of music.

- Lieder/songs: make sure the song titles are placed in front of the 'Track title'. So for example 'Track Title'= 'Im Abendrot ('O, wie schön ist deine Welt'), song for voice & piano, D. 799'. It was very nice to discover this way that I have 4 different versions of Schubert's 'Im Abendrot' in the Collection!

- Instrumental music: start with the type of music e.g. 'Track title' = 'Cello sonata No. 1 G-dur BWV 1028 - 1. Adagio' . 

- 'cycles': keep titles together e.g. 'Das Wohltemperierte Klavier book 1, Praeludium & Fuga BWV 846', where the cycle 'Das Wohltemperierte Klavier' is clustered together under Titles on the BS5.

- option: add the name of the composer in the track title. This is useful when the album consists of music of several composers.  

NB: keep the track titles concise, if they are too long the extra information is not shown anyway on the BS5 (3 lines max) and you will get problems with Windows file management (file length including folder tree structure is max 256 characters).

Hope this helps! 

FYI Here's a list of Tools that I use to rip/tag/test:

Format: FLAC (lossless)

Ripping tool: Exact Audio Copy (EAC): http://www.exactaudiocopy.org/

Tagger & Mediaplayer: MediaMonkey: http://www.mediamonkey.com/

FLAC tester: Audio Tester, http://www.vuplayer.com/other.php

I'm using a slightly different approach to get a similar result:

Before/while preparing ripping I rename the the album,
edit, if necessary, arist, genre, year, composer (though currently not shown on BS5)
and after ripping I rename folder of the Album to the same name, eg.

Bach J.S. - Goldberg Variations - Glenn Gould 1981

or

Schubert Franz - String Quartet in C - Alban Berg Quartett

Thank you for taking the time and effort to share this approach with us !

Thank you so much for sharing this with us!

I've been thinking a bit about this myself, as I've just started to digitize my own CD collection. I don't have a BS5 yet, but I decided to rip and tag everything into both Apple Lossless (for the BeoPort) and WMA Lossless for a future BeoSound 5. I've got both classical and album-oriented music (mostly jazz, singer/songwriters and rock), so I'd like to come up with a tagging system that is somewhat consistent.

I'm inclined to view classical music more from the work perspective than as CD albums. When there are two or more different works on an album, perhaps with different composers, I'd probably prefer to break them up into one virtual "album" for each.

I agree that the name of the composer should be in the "artist" tag for classical music. I'm not sure, however, whether I want Johann Sebastian Bach to be displayed as "Bach, Johann Sebastian". I'd certainly find it a bit odd to see a song by "Spektor, Regina" announced on a BS5 display.

Does the BS5/BM5 combination honor sort order tags? Even if it doesn't display them, perhaps artists, albums and tracks are sorted according to such tags if present in the files?

Regarding album cover art, I have the impression that an embedded 512x512 JPEG is the sweet spot for a BS5 display. Most cover art that can be scraped from the net is 500x500 or less. Ripping into Apple Lossless can be a convenient way of getting album art in better quality if you set iTunes to fetch covers automatically from the iTunes Store. These covers – typically 600x600 PNG – can be cut and pasted into an image editor, resized to 512x512 and saved in the JPEG format.

I forgot to add a few interesting links I've come across while ripping my CD collection lately:

MusicBrainz Classical Style Guide, http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Classical_Style_Guide

Taming iTunes for Classical Music, http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/itunes.htm

On Classical Music Tagging (ID3 tags) for iTunes and iPod, 
http://www.tunequest.org/on-classical-music-tagging-for-itunes-and-ipod/20060530/

Thank you Psand and others for your kind words!

Some notes to your thoughts:

=> My naming convention is designed specifically for the BS5 (Encore). The tagging/naming scheme is probably suboptimal for use on a Mediaplayer like iTunes or Mediamonkey but the BS5 sets severe restrictions as to the display possibilities. However, "In der Beschränkung zeigt sich der Meister" - the straight jacket imposed by the BS5 also cuts down one's options which is sometimes a blessing ;)

=> I agree that the naming convention 'Bach, Johann Sebastian' is maybe a bit formal/ugly, but I wanted the BS5 to sort by Composer which is quite convenient when there are 100-s of them.

=> I have also considered 'breaking up' in works rather than keep the original CD-s but decided to keep it as is for the following reasons:

1)  The ability to Burn the CD later if I wanted

2) Store the original Album Art with the music

3) Because I know my CDs so well (nostalgia...).

But 'breaking up' has definitely potential as well, if only the possibility to Tag each Work independent of cover art. You could for example add the original score from http://imslp.org/.

best

Ron