Thread: iTunes doesn't understand classical music

Originally Posted by Big Shed

Having recently installed a new radio receiver in my 4WD, which can play MP3 files from a USB stick or the microSD card in my Android phone, I needed to import and convert selected CDs from my collection.

No worries said son, just use iTunes. So I did, only problem is iTunes has a VERY peculiar way of importing and naming each CD wich basically makes it impossible to play a whole CD of, say, a Beethoven Piano Concerto. If there is more than one composer on a CD, it appears as 2 albums in iTunes, a CD with 6 composers appears as 6 albums.

Each album's file name for the tracks starts with 01, 02 etc.

As the radio receiver cannot recognise multiple folders on the USB stick I finish up with multiple 01xxxx tracks, then multiple 02xxxxx etc.

Totally brain dead IMHO.

Is there a way to make iTunes recognise a whole CD and keep it together? I have found one option that, sometimes, pre-fixes each track on a CD with a CD no, ie 1-01, 1-02 etc.

Trouble is, that starts with 1, but then the next CD in the list would be 11, then 111 etc.

Is there a more intelligent MP3 converter/importer around that works with classical music?

rename the files , a1beetho , a2beethov , b1bach , b2bach , b3bach,, c1beetho ,c2beetho ,c3beetho ,
so the first letter is album , second is track number , then name ,
it will work up to 9 tracks , of coarse a10 is after a1 and before a2 , you would have to type the number 01 , 02 , 03 , to get track 10 to play after track 9

Fred,

It is possible to tell ITunes that it is part of a compilation when importing.
Other options are to set the "album artist" to Beethoven if you want them all to be grouped by Beethoven.

You may need to play around a little until it does what you want as it can get a little confusing what options actually do what. I don't tend to use the compilation option as when it exports to the ipod or iphone it then groups all compilations together making it difficult to find an album with multiple artists. This is where the Album Artist comes in handy as you can use the name of the album.

All very confusing but if you have a play you will work out what suits your requirements. You will need to go to the track info ... command "I" on the mac.

I've had the same problem, and have not managed to make it behave consistently. I stupidly asked it to "Get Album Info", which has additionally meant that some of my Brahms chamber works are titled in Japanese!

I've now got around it in some cases by creating playlists for some CDs - particularly for things like Gilbert&Sullivan or for grouping together Mozart Piano Concertos.

Yes, I have renamed some albums, eg 001-01, 001-02 an so on. This does indeed work, BUT, life's too short for this sort of of cr*p.

Yes, if you use Compilations it will give the album a number, but it starts at 1, and then puts album 11 after 1 in the list. It also doesn't work on a single composer CD, eg a CD with 2 Chopin Piano Concertos.

Time to look for a more civilised (cultured?) program me thinks.

iTunes has a way of doing this, bear with me, as I am doing this on a mac, but I can reproduce on Windows if you want.

Select the tracks you want



Click 'Get Info', you will be asked whether you want to edit multiple multiple files, select 'Yes'



Set the Album name on the first tab



Go to the Options tab, find 'Part of a Compilation and select 'Yes.'

Don't use Itunes for a start.

Why not, there's nothing wrong with it

Originally Posted by codeMunk3y

Why not, there's nothing wrong with it

Its a dog of a product.

Originally Posted by codeMunk3y

iTunes has a way of doing this, bear with me, as I am doing this on a mac, but I can reproduce on Windows if you want.

Select the tracks you want



Click 'Get Info', you will be asked whether you want to edit multiple multiple files, select 'Yes'



Set the Album name on the first tab



Go to the Options tab, find 'Part of a Compilation and select 'Yes.'

Yes, that fixes the problem of keeping the Album together in iTunes, but it doesn't fix the Album-Track numbering problem when the tracks get copied to the USB stick, there are still multiple tracks with the same number without an Album number.

But it is certainly an improvement display wise within iTunes.

Originally Posted by codeMunk3y

Why not, there's nothing wrong with it

Well there is for what I want to do with it, it is certainly not very "classical" music friendly and a lot of the options are very obtuse, but perhaps I don't have an "Apple" brain.

I use a Mac, so use iTunes for the iPod and iPad. For a SanDisk Sansa Zip player I use an app called Max - this may now replace iTunes. This allows me to copy in FLAC. On Windows I have successfully used a program called CopyTrans to copy music from CDs to the iPod.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by _fly_

Don't use Itunes for a start.

Fair enough, but then the question is, what do I use?

OK,
I'm guessing you already have it on your PC in separate folders. There are plenty of MP3 renames. search google for tag and mp3 and id3 rename. Plenty of free ones about.

Some are even clever enough to look at the mp3 and it can work out on what album and track name and rename then to that (setable on how you want it).

Bit amazed that the player can't see folders. Can I suggest you try it with a 4gig usb or smaller. It may be that it can't see them on larger usb sticks. I think you also can get the problem of not having more than 99 files in root folder (depends on how the stereo is coded to look at it).

You can also rip your cd with windows media player to wmv. Its just as small and you would not notice the difference. It should play them as well.

I'll have a look for software for ya that recognizes the mp3 and will batch rename them.


Peter

Found one called "tagrunner" but its not free, will keep looking.

This one will search the web and do the id3 tags and rename http://www.mediamonkey.com/

OK, progress.

The tip from CodeMunky about Compilation-Yes has produced results. Not only has this resulted in a more logical display in iTunes, as previously reported, but it has also placed all the tracks on the CD in one folder, under a folder called Compilations (funny about that)

Copied those folders to my USB stick (4Gb capacity) and lo and behold the player now recognises and reads these folders.

I think I might be getting somewhere at last.