Advice for identifying Decca Sound: The Analogue Years

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54 CD’s, were identified in a number of ways:

  1. Individual albums (original release mostly)
  2. Decca Sound: the individual releases as downloads
  3. Decca Sound: as components of the box set

I see my choices as:

  1. Just go with the individual albums as issued separately as the easiest choice.

  2. Working to identify the albums as a box set means I might have to move some songs 50 clicks for more to get them properly placed. This just seem reasonable.

Question: What have you done for this box set?

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I use individual albums wherever possible. Handling of box sets in Roon is kind of messy. It’s not much fun looking for a particular work in a 50-CD box. Plus you have the advantage of having individual cover art.

In the case of the Decca set, I’ve done the following:

  1. With mp3tag, I tagged the CDs with their proper CD number from the box set.
  2. I didn’t label the subfolders with “CD 1” or “Disc 1” but with “Decca 1” – something which Roon does not recognize as a hint for a box set. You have to do this before you move the box set folder to the folder watched by Roon. Once it’s grouped it remains grouped.
  3. What you get is 50 individual CDs with the name “Decca Sound – The Analogue Years” with all tracks properly identified. No manual moving around of tracks required. You have to rename the albums one by one with the edit feature.

decca.png992×313 254 KB

The handling of box sets is not a very glorious feature of Roon. The above is the best solution I could find.

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Greatly appreciate the advice. Agreed, box set are definitely a problem.

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This is a major problem for classical music. You shouldn’t have to go through all of these gyrations to identify individual albums, and use their cover art in box sets.

In Musichi Player, you can group a box set so that when you play it back, it displays the individual tracks and cover art in each album of the box set. And you can search so you can just play an individual album in a box set.

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There will be a better way soon.

Having started off trying to split such big boxes into the individual albums, this has proven so irritating that I’ve gone back to making them boxes. Irritating because it’s time-consuming and often inconsistent, as box sets come in many different sizes and forms, sometimes with multiple albums on a disc, or split between.

Just too much work.

So I use CD1-CD2 etc as folder names, rename the album/artist fields and then reidentify. Works better for me. I still keep individual album covers when I have them, in case Roon can display them at a later date.

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Yes, at this point I have a new project. Make a folder for the Box Set and enter each album as CD1, CD2. Just like you all have said. This will take some time, but it makes perfect sense. I didn’t do all the ripping, so I KNOW! some CD’s just got ripped as the original releases and are in individual folders.

I eagerly await a better solution.

Ah, curating a collection can be do hard! :slight_smile:

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You could tag them as a set. Then you have the best of both worlds.

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Yes, good idea. Half of the CD’s (the part I did) are tagged as such (belonging to a set). The other half the family ripped to help me? They didn’t get tagged so good. :wink:

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