My head is swimming...

[DSperber]

Originally Posted by subseastu

I must admit when I first thought of getting rid of my stop gap ipod touch I knew I wanted the best pmp for audio out there and it was my intention to just go for lossless files to ensure I get the best possible experience and to make the best of my equipment. Everyone has made really good points here and I'm extremely grateful to all but I think I'm going to stick with ripping at lossless with FLAC. I'll know in my own mind then its the best I'm getting and I'll be happy (which means the wife will be hapy as I'll stop banging on about all of this!).

I'm in full agreement. The J3 will give you fantastic sound from FLAC files, especially when played through a high-quality headphone or home/car stereo system.

And having FLAC files is essentially having your own portable CD player (built into the J3) to listen to digital solid-state versions of your CD/WAV tracks, because that's what FLAC is... a true duplicate of your CD/WAV tracks. Yes, the output from the J3 is only analog via its headphone jack (since there's no digital output so it's not really like a CD transport), but it sounds like what your home/car CD player would produce to your home/car stereo system.

If file size is not a factor, you will not be making a mistake to go with FLAC.

I also like the amazon idea, I never realised that this exsited for down loading the album art. Assuming that amazon doesn't have my particular album cover art scanned in by someone such as yourself then I asume that I just scan my own copy and size it at 500 x 500 do I?

Yes.

All three of my above example album art images were my own (1) original high-quality scans at 800DPI to TIF, using Silverfast Ai as my scanning software and my Epson 4990 scanner with (a) "de-screening" specified to remove lines and ink dots and (b) auto-color correction, (2) crop and further brightness/contrast and possible color tweaks with Photoshop, (3) then still in Photoshop reducing the final image to (a) 96DPI resolution and then (b) 500 x nnn size, i.e. with "retain aspect ratio" checked but specifying W as 500 as the constraint, and (4) still in Photoshop saving the edited and resized image as JPG quality 10 out of 11 max. That's how I got the above three images.

[DSperber]

Originally Posted by mutescream

Mp3 tag can scan amazon for you, and find the album art itself... Which skips a step.

I never used MP3Tag for this, so I don't know if it presents all available covers found on Amazon for your selection, or if it just arbitrarily grabs one somehow.

But any "automated" album art image is a poor method to use I would say, if you want only the best high-quality album art for your PC/J3 music collection. You don't know what it's going to pick from whatever else was available and you might have preferred to use something else for that album.

You really do want to either browse all the available Amazon covers, or browse other album art source sites (possibly downloading and then doing your own further tweaks, etc.) manually. Then make your own decision... don't leave it to a program just because "it's easier".

At least that's my own preference. I want "best possible results" based on my own tastes, and that means I need to be in manual control. This really is a one-time exercise per CD. I can afford to spend another 5 minutes getting the right results.

[mutescream]

Originally Posted by DSperber

I never used MP3Tag for this, so I don't know if it presents all available covers found on Amazon for your selection, or if it just arbitrarily grabs one somehow.

It pulls them all up for a given album, and allows you to pick which one you want. Most of my music has been properly tagged for a long time, but I didn't bother with album art before. My Meizu was very hit or miss about using album art at all. Album art is mostly what I use mp3tag for these days.

You really do want to either browse all the available Amazon covers, or browse other album art source sites (possibly downloading and then doing your own further tweaks, etc.) manually. Then make your own decision... don't leave it to a program just because "it's easier".

All of the ones I pulled up from Amazon were satisfactory, and it also has an option for searching the German Amazon site (which came in handy for some of my more obscure albums).

Out of a few hundred albums, I think I had less than half a dozen that I had to look elsewhere (some were only available in png format, and some were so obscure that I had a hard time even looking through google images).

It's all a matter of scale. When you are retagging 300+ albums for cover art, speed becomes an issue. It took me hours, even with mp3tag automating much of the process.

At least that's my own preference. I want "best possible results" based on my own tastes, and that means I need to be in manual control. This really is a one-time exercise per CD. I can afford to spend another 5 minutes getting the right results.

Which is why it's great that mp3tag lets you decide which (or even if) you want to use any of the options it can locate for you.

[DSperber]

Originally Posted by mutescream

It pulls them all up for a given album, and allows you to pick which one you want.

Didn't know that.

But then I don't imbed album art in the tags of my files, so I don't use MP3Tag for that function. I go with the external "cover.jpg" method because my physical folders are album folders and there's no need to duplicate JPG's into each track for that one physical album.

The "cover.jpg" approach also works perfectly when I'm playing music on my PC using Winamp. That program understands "cover.jpg" in a physical folder the same way the J3 does, and presents that image while also playing music, in its separate "Album Art" window which I've got sized at 500 to match my album art. Very satisfying.

All of the ones I pulled up from Amazon were satisfactory, and it also has an option for searching the German Amazon site (which came in handy for some of my more obscure albums).

Well this does seem to be a convenience at least to looking through what is available, but again sometimes I have to do a bit of hunting on Amazon since there are occasions where multiple offerings of the same CD (or vinyl) might actually have different album art images associated with them.

As long as MP3Tag also allows you to save it externally (say as "cover.jpg") and not force you to put it into a tag, then I agree it sounds like a reasonable alternative to my straightforward Browser method described earlier.

It's all a matter of scale. When you are retagging 300+ albums for cover art, speed becomes an issue. It took me hours, even with mp3tag automating much of the process.

Actually, it's all a matter of time... and how much you care to invest.

I started producing my own MP3s from CDs back in 1998. I was using Win98 and also Fraunhofer's "professional" command-line MP3 encoder (which was actually a VERY VERY VERY VERY SLOW DOS PROGRAM). Took forever, but at the time this was theoretically the best sounding MP3 encoder.

When I went to Win7 in 2009 I could no longer use the Fraunhofer encoder, as its DOS program would not work under Win7's command prompt. That's when I found out about LAME. Not only would it work properly under Win7, but it was 1000 times faster than Fraunhofer's encoder, taking seconds instead of 15 minutes. And, it SOUNDED BETTER!

So I decided to use this opportunity to make a complete new pass of my 1100 CDs, re-selecting tracks to produce brand new MP3s from by listening to each one. Also, I would rebuild my CD database from scratch at the same time. Also, I would use the opportunity to get high-quality album art for each CD.

Well, as always happens in the real world, this project took a bit longer than I'd planned. It took me TWO YEARS!! But I was very happy with the result.

As I came down the home stretch I bought a J3 and also discovered FLAC and how to make FLAC files. That's when I decided to make another pass at my music collection when the MP3 pass was complete, this time selecting my "favorite favorites" from those tracks I'd already created MP3 for, and replace those MP3 files with FLAC files instead.

This gave me one more opportunity to review my album art, and CD database, to double-check what I'd done over the previous two years. And once again, this FLAC pass took me a bit longer than I'd planned. It took me ONE YEAR!! But I was thrilled with the results.

So, three years of my life invested into producing my 1050+ FLAC and 5600 MP3 files from my about 1100 CD's (for a total of about 14,000 available tracks to have selected from)... along with a "perfect CD database" and matching high-quality album art.

Now, I only invest 30 minutes or so when I buy a new CD, adding it to the collection. I've got the whole workflow down pat, including now pretty much always making my own album art from my own scan, and almost always then uploading it to Amazon to add to any existing collection of user-submitted images there.

[mutescream]

It's completely user configurable; mp3tag allows you to set it up to either just create the file or embed. I embed, b/c I like to use coverflow. I compensate for the space it takes, by using MP3 where I think the mastering quality and/or the type of music won't benefit enough from using FLAC to justify the file size difference.





As you can see, it's good that it allows for user choice, as sometimes it's search results are "close, but not quite".

I agree on the Fhg being inferior to LAME these days. When checking spectrals once, I noticed that an Fhg looked like a whole lot like a transcode. Ugh!

[DSperber]

Just in passing, I don't know if you knew that you can rearrange the order of the data columns shown in MP3Tag. You may have selected the order shown in that screenshot, but I myself prefer to have the more commonly wanted and "useful" columns on the left side, so that I can avoid horizontal scrolling unless I really need to see something that's off to the right. This also makes typing over cells to change tag field values much easier and faster.

Just right-click on the column title bar and select "customize columns". The rest is intuitive. You can select (a) what columns to show, and (b) the sequence of the columns.

Also, you don't need to have the "tag panel" shown. You can suppress that simply by "X" or un-check in View. Then you only have the spreadsheet-like presentation and you simply type over fields, pressing TAB to accomplish entry and immediate auto-save, and then move to the next field to its right on the same row. Use ESC to finish editing. Use ENTER to accomplish entry and immediate auto-save and then move down to next row in the same column.

The "tag panel" is really used for for mass changes, but you then need to push the "SAVE" icon to accomplish the save on the one or more files whose tags you updated. With the typeover approach in the spreadsheet area as your maintenance method, you don't have to push SAVE. Simply using TAB or ENTER causes both (a) entry, and (b) immediate auto-save of the updated tag.

[subseastu]

Going over my head again with all this technical speak, lol!!!! Anyway thanks again for all the explanations and your prefered methods of doing these things. I think I'll use a mix of amazon and my scanner for my album art and go down the route of using the cover.jpg method. I'm a complete duffer whe it comes to photoshop but I'll have a look at it using the suggested instructions.

Thanks again everyone, all of this really helps.

[Nerox]

Otherwise , there is an awesome HQ quality site i've found . Almost all covers are there (albumartexchange.com)...

[mutescream]

I recently discovered a pretty nice program that searches a good number of sites simultaneously for cover art..

http://sourceforge.net/projects/album-art/

[subseastu]

Thanks for the links, I'll have a good look through them properly when I get the chance. Just had a quick look at the Album art exchange site and the difference in quality between some of the covers is quite large.

[Enzyme]

i may have asked this before, Does anyone know of an album art tagger that can search by artist rather than album, it would save me a lot of googling around.
Even if its not strictly music based and can search for relevant sized images from a text list.

Mutescream: i think (i was reading up on the codecs a while ago, most likely ogg related) the embedded images are stored in a pre existing buffer space as part of the music file, it will not waste or increase the required space if you embed, but that space will go unused if you dont, so its double the wasted space if you dont embed and then use cover.jpegs alongside. that said i have files with maybe 5x 300-500px images attached, im not sure how those fit into that space or if it allocates more if required.

[mutescream]

Enzyme, check out the album art prog I linked to, two posts above yours, you can search by artist. There are also subscripts you can elect to install (during the program's install process), that add more sites to check. I added them all, and it checks about 50-60 different sites to pull the album art from.

It's the most robust album art prog I have seen yet.

[Enzyme]

Nice,tyvm.
Will check it out later n see what it comes up with.

[DSperber]

Originally Posted by Enzyme

Mutescream: i think (i was reading up on the codecs a while ago, most likely ogg related) the embedded images are stored in a pre existing buffer space as part of the music file, it will not waste or increase the required space if you embed, but that space will go unused if you dont, so its double the wasted space if you dont embed and then use cover.jpegs alongside. that said i have files with maybe 5x 300-500px images attached, im not sure how those fit into that space or if it allocates more if required.

I don't think this is correct. The album art tag field is optional and extra, and variable length.

Obviously there is no way to pre-allocate a fixed length area to potentially hold an album art JPG image whose size is clearly unknown and can be small or huge. ID3v2 tags are of variable size. They consist of a number of frames, each of which contains a piece of metadata.

Yes, tags may have some extra unused "filler" (usually expressed in your settings as "pad ID3v2 tag with ... bytes", maybe 100 or 2000). But this is not intended to hold an album art image.

[Kizune]

I agree with DSperber. When I replace low-res album covers with high-res ones in some of my MP3s, their size increases - and this clearly means that there isn't a reserved area of fixed size for album covers.