Most of my CD collection is classical music. Back in 2016, I undertook an effort to rip those CDs into iTunes in lossless format (ALAC) and put them on an iPod Classic. I created a dedicated “classical” iTunes library on my PC, so that the iPod would be reserved just for my classical collection. I kept my much smaller non-classical music in lossy formats on my iPhone.
Of course, in those days, iTunes was not appropriate for cataloging classical music, so, for better or worse, I followed the scheme outlined here to manually massage the metadata … use the album field for the work title, use the artist field for the composer and use the composer field for the artist.
It was excruciatingly tedious work, as I had to manually edit every track of every CD, but the end result on the iPod was functional: I could spin the wheel to choose a composer, and each symphony or concerto or whatever for that composer appeared as its own “album” that I could play on demand.
My collection is not vast; maybe 250-300 classical discs. I got through about half of them (picking my favorites first) before I had enough on the iPod to meet my day-to-day listening needs. I got busy and the rest of the collection never got ripped.
Now it’s 2023, and I have discovered Roon, which so far, is like a dream come true. When I pointed the app on my PC to a copy of my classical iTunes library, it immediately presented my collection in a whole new light. Just being liberated from the tiny iPod screen/wheel interface was amazing.
But – the way I had to mutilate my metadata to make the old iPod workable has marred my music in Roon. I have tons of music by an “artist” named “Beethoven, Ludwig van” but only a handful of albums whose “composer” was “Ludwig van Beethoven.” The albums I had to split (for things like two symphonies on a disc) appear awkward as two albums in Roon, and I’d rather have them appear as they were originally recorded.
So my question is: would I be better off just starting over – re-rip all my existing iTunes classical music from the original CDs using dBpoweramp, and let it and Roon recreate my metadata and reorganize my collection, or should I attempt to manually “undo” all the metadata manipulation I did seven years ago by editing Roon’s data by hand? Glue split albums back together, etc?
I know the classical metadata problem has been a thorny one for many for a long time. It may be that even re-ripping might require some manual touchups as I go. There are probably even different dBpoweramp strategies to consider. But it seems that the iTunes starting point will require a lot of work to undo for every single disc.
I am hoping someone in the community has been through a similar transition and might be able to share their advice.
