Multi-disc albums

[J. Allen Crider]

I have a lot of albums that I haven't been able to find using Internet 
Search in Tellico, so I load the disc in my computer and use Import 
Audio CD Data to load it in Tellico.  The only time I use merge is when 
I've loaded the discs individually in that manner.  The only time I ever 
enter all of the information for an album manually is if Tellico reports 
no records found when I do an import.

Another reason for doing it the way I do is that I am ripping all CDs as 
I enter them, so my actual normal process is 1) load the CD in an 
optical drive on the computer, 2) open the CD in K3b, 3) edit the album 
info and track info in K3b if I don't like what K3b retrieves from cddb, 
4) save the CD info locally from K3b, 5) start ripping the CD, 6) use 
Import Audio CD Data to add the CD to Tellico, 7) edit the entry in 
Tellico if I don't like what it gets.

One reason I don't rely as much on internet search in Tellico as I used 
to is that the last several times I've attempted to search on 
MusicBrainz is that I've gotten a timeout on the server, and Discogs 
won't return more than 20 results which is sometimes not enough when 
searching for an artist with lots of albums or a common name.  (When 
MusicBrainz was working for me, I would usually search for artist before 
starting the process above, especially if I was going to enter a number 
of albums by the same artist.)  Although I'm not really happy with cddb 
searches either.  K3b offers no choice when there are multiple matches, 
and it often chooses a match with poor or inconsistent capitalization or 
other problems I don't like even if it gets the right album, and it 
never uses the locally saved data if a CD is loaded a second time, 
although it doesn't always save the data right when it is saved locally. 
  I'm still trying to figure out what Tellico does. Sometimes it uses 
the same match that K3b chose, sometimes it uses the locally saved file, 
and sometimes if gives a list of choices, although it isn't possible to 
know which choice is more likely to be what I want, especially if the 
title, artist, and genre are the same for at least two choices.  The one 
thing I wish Tellico would do is use the locally saved file when cddb 
returns no matches.  I don't know if that is because K3b is doing 
something wrong when saving the file or if local files aren't checked 
when there is no match in cddb.  As a result, there have been a number 
of albums where I've had to manually enter the data in both K3b and Tellico.

Allen

On 10/11/21 5:43 PM, Jared wrote:
> Thanks for the reply!  I thought about creating them as separate entries 
> per disc, but I really don't like that approach - I'm cataloging my 
> music albums, not my individual CDs, so I'd rather keep them grouped as 
> one entry per album.
> 
> I'm similarly importing the data for the most part (easy to generate a 
> CSV file by listing all the album directories to a file and tacking on 
> stuff like medium), and use musicbrainz to populate the tracks and album 
> art.
> 
> I like the idea about noting multiple discs and adding comments for 
> which tracks belong to which discs.  Not ideal, but probably the best 
> way to work around that issue.  Very much appreciate the suggestion - 
> will likely start doing that myself.
> 
> I didn't follow your comment about merging discs, though.  If you have 
> to resort to manually creating the disc, which implies you're manually 
> filling out the track lists for both albums, why do that as two separate 
> albums and merge rather than just creating as a single album?  I tried 
> doing that myself to see if maybe that was some way to "trick" tellico 
> into maintaining two tracklists, but it just merges it into one long 
> tracklist, so I'm not seeing what the benefit.  I'm sure I'm just 
> missing something.  No big deal either way, just curious about your process.
> 
> -- 
> Jared
> 
> 
> On 10/9/21 9:58 AM, J. Allen Crider wrote:
>> I haven't found any way to do what I think you are suggesting, but I 
>> haven't looked.  If you wanted to list each disc as a separate album 
>> in Tellico, I can think of at least two options.
>> 1) You could duplicate the entry for however many disc are in the 
>> album.  Then change the title of each entry to add the disc number, 
>> and remove the tracks from the other disc(s).
>> 2) Rather than using Musicbrainz, you could use "Import Audio CD 
>> Data..." to import one disc at a time.  Then you would have a separate 
>> entry for each disc.
>>
>> I have a similar problem, but I've chosen a different approach. If I 
>> can find the album using "Internet Search...", I use that and simply 
>> add a comment that tells how many discs are in the set. But I have a 
>> lot of albums that I can't find using "Internet Search...", so I use 
>> "Import Audio CD Data..." most of the time. I then insert blank rows 
>> at the beginning of the track listing for the second disc (and any 
>> subsequent discs), and then merge the entries.  I can then add the 
>> comment about the number of discs in the merged entry.  If you wanted 
>> to add more information to the comment, you could include which tracks 
>> are on which disc (e.g. disc 1: tracks 1-12; disc 2: tracks 13-20, or 
>> something similar; that is probably something I should have done but I 
>> didn't think of it earlier).  One reason I've taken the approach I 
>> have is that I am also ripping most of my collection as I add them to 
>> Tellico (using K3b) and I rip all discs in a set to the same directory 
>> and then use Kid3 to change the track numbers and file names so that 
>> it will be easier to play the entire album in the correct order.
>>
>> Allen Crider
>>
>> On 10/8/21 9:37 PM, Jared Breland wrote:
>>> Hello.  I'm currently working on cataloging my music CDs, using 
>>> musicbrainz as the source.  I have a lot of multi-disc albums, which 
>>> musicbrainz seems to recognize and split out, but Tellico lists them 
>>> only as a single album.  Ie., a 2-disc album with 12 and 8 tracks 
>>> each is just listed as 20 tracks in Tellico.
>>>
>>> I'm guessing this is working as intended because I can see how 
>>> Tellico would be limited to a single Tracks table, but still wanted 
>>> to confirm before i get to far - is there any way to make Tellico 
>>> split out each disc into a separate track list?
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Jared
>