New member here, about to enter the BDP-1 world of digital music, but as I prepare to rip my largely classical CD collection, there are a couple of big questions regarding the best way to treat metadata tags (I will use FLAC) for classical music, keeping in mind the current state of user interfaces for the BDP. From what I have gleaned from this and other forums and web opinions, there are two main approaches to tagging classical:
A – keep everything in its proper metadata field (including composer, artist, album) and ensure the metadata is recorded as it was meant to. Main argument is that interfaces are gradually becoming more metadata aware and sophisticated, and you should aim for “truth” in your tags.
B – ignore the “proper” fields, and input metadata tags so that your preferred device and interface works smoothly. For classical this usually means inputting composer into the “artist” field so that the original ipod structure of artist/album works with classical (which most people search primarily on composer) on any device. Another hack I see mentioned is tricking “Album” to reference composer by starting each album tag with a composer name.
From what I can see of the BDP and its interfaces so far, it started (ie. the MAX interface) with a simple file browsing metaphor, using file location rather than metadata to organize your music (I’m not sure MAX can even do a search based on one of Marius’ questions?). MPaD seems a bit better but does not have a composer sort that I can see, though it looks like the Browse function does see the composer field. I hope to establish a digital music collection that does not need re-ripped or tagged in the future as new players, or more likely new interfaces, come along. With this in mind, I was curious as to how the BDP gang here have solved the organization and search issues, in particular for the always-problematic classical genres.
