Track numbers appear in my encoded flac and mp3 files in two locations:
The filename e.g. Track# - Title
Embedded metadata
Sometimes, I copy specific tracks I want to a ‘favourites’ folder and play everything in there. Having the track number in the filename and metadata is a little annoying. The ordering of the tracks on an album is also recorded in a .m3u and/or .cue file. I’ve been wondering about removing them from the encoded flacs and mp3s and just relying on the .m3u file as the playlist for the album.
Anyone have experience of this and encountered any issues?
Thanks
Players usually use the track number to sort tracks of an album. If that is not important for you you could remove that tag. I don’t really see the point, though.
Good point, I mean whichever one @dpr wants to use (probably file naming script, if I understand correctly the annoyance is having everything in the favorites folder arranged by number?)
I understood it as removing from the tags Anyway, both is of course possible. If it causes some issue depends a lot on how the music is being used and listened to.
I personally like to have the numbers both in folders and tags. In tags because that’s what my music players use to sort album tracks. In files, because I can browse albums easily in my filesystem.
I don’t use playlists a lot as I often pick an album and listen to it in album order (hence the need for track numbers). If I use playlists they are usually a collection of tracks I listen in random order.
If @dpr is moving single tracks into a favourites folder, it makes the track numbers redundant for sorting, in that situation.
But I agree with you, I would never remove track numbers from my whole collection… they are integral for browsing in the file system and in the player.
Some players will also use a .m3u file if its in the folder. Many encoders such as cuetools will build a .m3u file with the tracks in order for albums. So it appears the track numbers aren’t necessary to play the tracks in an album in order.
The point is that when I copy the files for specific tracks to a ‘favourites’ folder, I end up with lots of files that begin with 01_, 02, 03 etc and have the corresponding track # tag in them. You are right, it is not a big deal, just irritates my idea of clean data
This is what I had assumed, but is it? I was asking for experience of anyone who has done it.
That’s all…
Thanks for the list, I hadn’t got to the implementation stage, just wondering if it’s worth it!
My music is on the server as albums, sorted into artists. When I use playlists, they are written using relative paths into those albums and not a separate batch of files.
One folder holds my playlists. And relative paths ( …/artist/album/03.track.flac ) then references the tracks to play.
This also then works when I transfer those albums to my phone, etc. as long as I keep that same folder layout.
For what you are doing with your Favourites folder, grab MP3TAG and just rename your tracks to fit. Set the album to the playlist name, and use the auto-number feature of MP3TAG to just renumber that set. With a bit of a tweak, you could even get MP3TAG to read that M3U file and use that to set the track numbers to match the playlist.
That way you end up with Playlist Albums with track numbers to fit.
(probably file naming script, if I understand correctly the annoyance is having everything in the favorites folder arranged by number?)
Anyway, both is of course possible. If it causes some issue depends a lot on how the music is being used and listened to.