An introduction to computer audio
Tagging
A LP contains tracks, you can see them but if you want to know what is playing you have to look it up on the sleeve.
A CD works the same, you see a track number on the display but again, what is playing can be found on the sleeve.
All this media has to be shelved in some way but no matter what way you choose, there is only one way.
Audio files on a computer must be ‘shelved’ to. There is a certain file structure (often Artist > album > tracks) and the files (the individual tracks) have a name.
If you want to play a song, you can browse the file structure until you have found it, start to play and probably the player displays the file name so you can see what is playing.
This is using computer audio in the same way as LP's or CDs, a fixed structure and no additional information about the song.
A song on a hard disk is a file. A file can be edited and that’s exactly what tagging does.
It add small pieces of information to the song like Album, Artist, Title, Genre, Year, Composer, etc.
Tags enable you to browse and sort your collection in more than one way.
If you move the song to a another device, the player reads the tags and knows at once what the content is.
You can include more information than a file name would allow for, like cover art.
Tagging your songs means you have the song and all the information about this song integrated in one file. This makes the song self documenting.
Tagging schema’s depend on the file format used. ID3 is the standard in case of MP3.
A typical audiophile worry is if tagging would have a negative impact on the sound quality or might corrupt the file.
Most tagging programs are mature and have a large user community. If tagging would overwrite the music, it will be detected soon.
Songs, tags and library
Before any player can play your collection, it must know where your audio is located. You tell it which directories should be used and it starts to scan.
It scans all the files and read all the tags.
This is a rather time consuming process.
To speed up the matter all the information is stored in a library, some kind of database.
Querying the database only is much faster than scanning gigabytes of data.
In principle there is a one to one correspondence between the content of the library and the songs on the HD. In practice they might run out of sync. So there are options to reread all the tags from the files and to write all the library information to the corresponding files.
Another practical problem are different audio formats. A player might play a song but this doesn't guaranteed that it also support tagging of this format.
WAV is a well-known example of a format with an almost universal playback support but support of tagging is a universal mess.
A lot of people don’t know this. The problem is, you won’t notice it because all your edits are stored in the library.
One day you move to another computer only to find out that you lost all of the meta information, meticulously compiled over the years, because tagging is not supported.
What you see, is not always what you get.
A simple check is to tag a song and move it to another computer or a portable.
If all your edits are in place, you are fine.
Try this with all the audio formats you are using
Albums don't exist
If you have used LPs, tapes, CDs for years it takes some time before you realise that there isn’t such thing as an album in computer audio. There are files (the songs) containing a piece of music and the tags.
So what is an album? A couple of songs with exactly the same description in the right tags.
The files might be in the same directory or not, or even on a different hard disk, there isn’t such a thing as an album in computer audio.
One day you buy a CD set with all the string quartets by Brahms and by Schumann. Where to store? Under Brahms or under Schumann?
In case of computer audio you don’t have that problem, just tag them different and there you are.
A song is a song is a song is a song.
Yes I know my Getrude Stein
Manipulating the content of a tag affects all the songs having this content. Sounds logical.
What happens if the interface allows you to edit an artist or a composer.
You change Beethoven in to Beethoven, Ludwig van (1780-1829) and all songs with Beethoven as a composer will now display Beethoven, Ludwig van (1780-1829).
Sounds logical as tags operate at song level. This is probably exactly what you intended.
This interface has a nice feature, you can rate artist and sort them by rating.
I love the Alban Berg Quartet, lets give them a five star rating.
What happens is that all songs played by the Alban Berg Quartet gets a five star rating and of course overwrite your existing rating.
Sounds logical as tags operate at song level but this is probably not what you intended.
You see a genre like crossover and decided you are not in need of it. Let’s clean up this list and delete all those genres with just a couple of songs. This genre is deleted but all the songs having this genre are deleted to!
Sounds logical as tags operate at song level but this is probably not what you intended at all.
Well WMP is so kind to prompt you but some media players delete your songs without warning.
Well, we think it is audio but our PC thinks it is a file.
Check the Recycle Bin!
Manipulating the content of a tag affects all the songs having this content because a song is a song is a song but it might have consequences you won’t appreciate.