First, before you do anything with your iTunes library and music, make sure that you back everything up first.

Once you have a backup, you can refresh like this:

1. Add the new files/folders to your main iTunes directory (for this example we’ll assume it’s /iTunes/music.

2. Now to refresh your iTunes library so that your newly added music is visible, go to “File -> Add Folder”.  Now select your main iTunes folder (here it’s the  iTunes/music folder).

This procedure will cause iTunes to “reimport” all of the music that’s in the iTunes music folder and refresh your library.

Note that with larger iTunes libraries this import procedure may take a few minutes.

A:  Sometimes I’m too quick in my selection, too.  Here’s what you do:

1) Select the track(s) in question and press the right-click button.

2)  You should get a context menu similar to this one:

Select “Get Track Names” and the tracks should update. If you are not happy with the change (you may not get the original popup box) then your other choice will be to delete the tracks and re-import the CD with the correct selection.  It’s annoying but it will work.

Another option would simply be to edit the information by hand for the multiple tracks (which is a heck of a lot faster — in many cases- than reimporting). I’ve got a video here that explains how to edit multiple iTunes tracks at once.

A:  Good question.  Before you do any editing,  it’s important to make the distinction between a file’s  (e.g. a music track’s)  filename as seen by Windows Explorer (or a USB key, or any drive, etc) and the tags that iTunes will see.  Windows Explorer treats a music file, say, C:\music\mozart41-1.mp3  as it would any other file.  You can copy, paste, rename, etc.   iTunes, however, looks at the tags (actually it looks at the filename too in order to know where the file is when you play it but you won’t see the disc location information in iTunes unless you specifically look for it).  Recall that the iTunes tags are the metdata information that you see in iTunes:  album, artist, track, etc.

So getting back to your question, if you want to simply change the filename from C:\music\mozart41-1.mp3 to C:\music\Mozart41-1.mp3 then Windows Explorer is an ok place to do that.  Know, however, that if you change the filemane, iTunes won’t know where to look for that file the next time you play it.  To fix this problem, you can drag the newly renamed file from WIndows Explorer directly into the iTunes library and manually delete the old file reference from iTunes…OR…when you play the track the next time and iTunes tells you it can’t find the file, you can tell iTunes where to find the new file (e.g. same location but with a different name).

But if you, on the other hand, want to change the tag info, that should be done within iTunes (e.g. to change the album or artist info).

A:  It’s my understanding that the other section in iTunes for your iPod or iPhone is where extra files are stored.  These extra files often include album cover images, playlists, and similar things.  The problem is usually when all of a sudden you see the size of your other jump from a small size to a tremendous size (e.g 50GB).  One explanation for a huge other section in iTunes is that there was data “confusion” when a sync was interrupted.  Generally speaking if you have an “other” section in iTunes that you believe to be way to large, go ahead and restore the iPod. (there’s no easy and reliable way to go in and just delete the “other” content). The restore should return the iPod to it’s initial settings and then it will re-add all of your content.  Note that you may also need to re-sync or restore a backup of separate settings depending upon your exact product (iPod vs iPhone).  But before you restore, always make sure you’ve created a backup — be sure you have a copy of your iTunes music, playlists, etc,  and if you have an iPhone, make sure you’ve created a backup of your contacts and other critical data so that you don’t have a problem if there is an issue with the restore process.

A:  You’ve discovered a frustrating situation, but fortunately the fix is easy.  When you burn a CD in windows (mp3, data or otherwise), Windows will automatically burn the tracks in alphabetical order and it will thus ingore any order you setup.

The way to do it so that the mp3 tracks stay in order is to use iTunes.  There are other programs that can handle this but iTunes is free and the process is easy.

For a FREE, comprehensive and fully illustrated white paper on how to create MP3 CDs in track order using iTunes, visit ClassicalWeekly.com and look for instructions in the right-column.

1. Make sure the MP3′s you  want to burn to the disc are already in your iTunes library.  If they are not, you can simply drag the files from the folder they are stored in directly into iTunes.

2. Create a playlist and add these mp3s to the playlist.  Here’s where you order the tracks.  Make sure in the playlist that the tracks are in the order you wish them to appear.

3. Burn the playlist to disc.

That’s it.

The program is free, loads quickly, and has an interface that puts all of the controls at your fingertips.  At first the program can be overwhelming because there are a myriad of options and ways you can manipulate your file names.  The program has a left side windows-explorer type tree-view, and a right side display of the files in the directory that’s selected in the left panel.  Below these two windows sits the configuration options.  You can use RegEx patterns, replacements, and case changes.  You can remove characters that are “n” places in, or add characters that are “n” places in (or both!).  In addition, you can also add numbering to the files and you can easily add prefixes and suffixes.

For a FREE, comprehensive and fully illustrated white paper on how to create MP3 CDs in track order using iTunes, visit ClassicalWeekly.com and look for instructions in the right-column.

One of the best features of the program (in addition to its intended purpose) is the ability for you to preview the changes you are planning to make to your file(s).  If you have the file selected and make a change to the name, you’ll see a preview of that change so you can check your work prior to changing all of your file names (though if you make a mistake you can just use the program to correct the names back to what they were).

In summary, Bulk Rename Utility is an integral part of my iTunes workflow and should be considered by anyone who needs to manipulate large numbers of file names.

(For an EXTREMELY detailed, step-by-step illustrated guide, head to my other site, www.classicalweekly.com and check out our eBook, “A Digital Workflow for Classical Music and Opera CDs: Creating High-Quality Archives of your CDs for iTunes, the iPod and other Management Software and Players.” It’s low-priced at only $9.95, comes with free support, and has a FREE excerpt available for download).

As an opera lover, details for me are key — especially since like many of you, I own multiple versions of multiple operas.  So the first thing I start with (as discussed in the link above) is the appropriate folder structure.  For this example, let’s take the 55 Reiner Meistersinger; it’s a 4-disc set.

For a FREE, comprehensive and fully illustrated white paper on how to create MP3 CDs in track order using iTunes, visit ClassicalWeekly.com and look for instructions in the right-column.

Here are the Steps for my iTunes Workflow

1.  Using the CD ripping process described in this post with EAC/LAME, I burn the first CD.  Once this CD is ripped, I create a folder with this title:

/Die Meistersinger-55-Reiner-CD1  (the “/” is just there to remind you that it’s a folder name)

(note that this folder is under the “Wagner, Richard” folder in my main music folder — I have a top level folder in my main music folder for each composer).

2.  Using Bulk Rename Utility I then rename the tracks so they follow the following naming convention:

01-D1-Mei55-vorspiel.mp3
02-D1-Mei55-dazudirderheilandkam.mp3
03-D1-Mei55-verwelt-einwort-einen.mp3

and so on.

3.  I then use MP3 Tag to fix all of the tags and make everything consistent.

* Remember — mp3 tags are NOT the same as filenames.  You could have the cleanest filenames on earth and iTunes will still butcher your operas.  Make sure your filenames are intact for when you want to browse your music without iTunes (e.g. when you are browsing folders as if you were navigating through MyDocuments, for example), but make sure your TAGS are set correctly for iTunes.  This is a critical difference to understand.

Note that this folder-file naming convention for operas, in my opinion, accomplishes a few things.

1. When browsing the Albums in iTunes, you will be able to see “Die Meistersinger-55-Reiner-CD1″, ”Die Meistersinger-55-Reiner-CD2″, etc. as the Album names so you can always find where you are in the opera (I hate when I can’t see on the album which disc of the opera I’m on).

2. When browsing the list of tracks in the opera, by having the “01″, “02″ sequence, it forces iTunes to preserve the original order of the CD.

3. By having the “D1″, “D2″, after the track number, it forces iTunes to preserve the disc order.  Think about what would happen if you didn’t have a disc number.  You’d have track 01 from the first disc, then track 01 from the second disc, and so on.

Obviously you will find whatever order and nomenclature works for you when it comes to your operas and classical music.  No one system is best and you will probably wind up tweaking a combination of systems to find what works and what’s tolerable for you.   In summary, using this system above for Operas and Classical music allows you to maximize the chance that you will keep your operas in the order they were originally intended to be — whether you want to listen to one disc at a time, or combine the discs into a long playlist.

This whole article reminds me of the time I tried to put the Bohm ring Rheingold and Valkure Acts I and II on a single .mp3 disc and forgot to put the tracks in the correct order. It was quite the “name that tune” trying to figure out what was what (though I did better than I thought).

I’m curious to see what you think about this system and how I could improve it even further.  Drop a comment and let me know.

A: Whatever you do, do NOT buy a Ring Cycle on iTunes. Here’s why:

1. When you make an investment in an opera series — especially one like the Ring Cycle, you want to make sure that you have the highest quality recording available (this also assumes it’s a clear, modern recording, too). The files you download from iTunes are NOT CD-quality.

From the iTunes website (look especially hard at where it says ‘rivals CD quality’):

Purchased songs are encoded using MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format, a high-quality format that rivals CD quality. Songs purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store are AAC Protected files and have a bitrate of 128 kilobits per second (kbit/s).

To give you a perspective, I encode my own classical and opera mp3′s at 320kbps as this bitrate APPROACHES CD quality. Many people will tell you that 128 is “pretty close” and they are correct. As I discuss in another post, most people, using standard equipment, really can’t tell the difference above 128kb. Which brings me to my next point:

2. If you have high-end stereo equipment (or if you ever plan to purchase high-end equipment), you are short-changing yourself by not having the original CDs. It may not be as apparent for a 90s Rheingold, but wait until you listen to a ’55 Meistersinger and you’ll see the difference.

3. Archiving. I encode all of my CDs to mp3s so I can take my music wherever I go. By having the original CDs, I know that I can always have the highest-possible quality recording to fall back on if I ever need to re-record, or if a better quality format comes out. I might purchase a modern single recording from iTunes, but never an opera.

4. Burning the CDs. One would be foolhardy not to backup their iTunes library by making the legal copies of the mp3s to audio cd format. Again recall that even though you are burning the mp3s (or AACs) to CD format, you do NOT have CD-quality A far better approach would be to purchase the CDs, and then encode them using EAC/LAME to iTunes at whatever quality you prefer (not to mention that the time to backup the CDs in a Ring Cycle and label the discs will probably take as long as just ripping the original CDs to mp3).

5. Personal preference. I keep all of my pop/rock CDs in folder books with the liner notes. I keep all of my operas and classical sets in the original boxes with the original librettos/liner notes on a shelf. There’s something about having the physical box and CDs for operas and classical that I treasure.

So in summary, I advise against purchasing operas (and any older recordings) on iTunes because you are not getting CD quality, and you are therefore really short-changing yourself when it comes to sound.

There are tons of reviews of good Ring Cycles on Amazon.com — personally I own the Levine, Boulez, and Bohm rings but I started with the Boulez.

(Note that the eBook, now in its 3rd Edition, includes a separate “iTunes-Only Workflow” for those of you who want to simplify the Classical CD -> MP3 conversion process and avoid the use of EAC/LAME).

Ok, on to encoding:

1. I realized over time while I’ve been converting my CDs to MP3s using iTunes, I haven’t been consistent on the bit rate. Sometimes I used a low rate, sometimes a high rate, and sometimes variable.  I always used MP3 vs ACC — even though ACC is lossless, I still wanted the ability to have the “platform independence” of MP3. I know there is a hit on quality, but portability was the critical factor in this decision.

2. Over the years I made the mistake of allowing iTunes to manage my music folder. This was a dreaded mistake because iTunes really does a number on classical music and operas especially — I talk about this problem and the solution in this itunes opera post.

3. My tags are all over the place. While I can easily browse iTunes and make my way around my iPod, my naming convention was inconsistent to say the least.

4. I wanted to get the highest practical quality out of my CDs while I still have the time and motivation to do so.

So the solution I used is EAC and LAME. EAC is an open-source cd ripping program, and LAME is an MP3 encoder that works to allow EAC to convert your CDs to MP3 (they really go to.wav first and then to MP3). I’m not going to get into the details of setting up EAC/LAME. It’s takes a little more time than iTunes, but it’s well worth it. If you do a google search for EAC/LAME you will get a ton of good listings for setup tutorials.

Once I got EAC/LAME setup, I needed to decide on a bit rate. I read and read what others had to say about bit rate and the consensus was that over 196kbps that — for practical purposes — the average person couldn’t hear the difference between 196 and CD-quality on average audio equipment. I then asked a friend of mine in the audio business who made a good point — with disk space is so cheap these days, there’s no reason to go with the highest quality. The ideas is that while you may not be able to tell the difference now between a 196 or a 320 encoded mp3, you may have better equipment in the future that can take advantage of this quality. My friend also added that for current classical music, the difference may not be so great, but for older recordings, you want the highest bitrate setting to try to compensate for the quality of older recordings. So for these three reasons, I decided to encode all of my MP3s at 320kbps.

On the subject of freedb. After using the iTunes/gracenote system, freedb is a wonder! I have some fairly obscure opera recordings and it hasn’t failed yet. (Actually it failed once — it doesn’t have the information for a recording of Hans Knappertsbuch/Wagner Overtures, but let’s be fair).

And to answer the argument the iTunes can do a good job, and that all EAC does is squeak out the extra quality for a potentially damaged disc, I think that the time investment with the EAC setup is worth it. I love my CDs, so much so that some of them are scratched beyond repair from me listening to them over and over again. Actually it’s from leaving them out and taking them with me so much over the years that really scratched them, not the re-use (though I have a friend of mine who in the early 90′s claimed at the time that his brother ruined a doors CD by playing it over an over again — a story that is now folklore). But in all seriousness, the idea behind encoding my CDs at the highest possible bitrate is so I don’t have to go back and encode them again later, and so that I spend most of my time listening to the MP3′s, and not the original CDs.

And finally on the subject of tags, I decided to wipe out my entire classical collection and re-tag the whole library. It’s a pain for sure, but I actually have found it much easier to encode with the correct tags (or close to it) than to go back and re-tag an already established library. In a future post I’ll go over the tools I use for tagging MP3′s and my naming conventions (for operas especially) — and don’t do it by hand — there’s software that will save you hours.

So that’s my protocol. What do you think?

(For an EXTREMELY detailed, step-by-step illustrated guide, head to my other site, www.classicalweekly.com and check out our eBook, “A Digital Workflow for Classical Music and Opera CDs: Creating High-Quality Archives of your CDs for iTunes, the iPod and other Management Software and Players.” It’s low-priced at only $9.95, comes with free support, and has a FREE excerpt available for download).

Ok. Back to business:

First lets clear up one thing – the organizational structure of your iTunes folder has no bearing on what you see in your iTunes libray. Let me repeat that,  iTunes doesn’t care if your iTunes folder is organized by composer, artist, or if every single individual classical music file is in the same directory.  When you open iTunes, iTunes looks at the ID3 tags in the files, not the file name or the organizational folder structure.  Thus, you can elect to keep your folder organized in any way you like.

With that out of the way I’ll tell you that I like to keep my classical music folder organized by composer.  Even though, as mentioned above, this structure has no bearing on the iTunes display of my music files (as that’s done by tag), I do like to keep my folder clean and not-repetitive.

Let’s look at an example. Take the Wagner Opera Siegfried. I have the Boulez/Bayreuth version.  In my folder system, where I organize the folders, I have a folder for the composer, Wagner, Richard, and in that folder I have a folder for each disc of the opera.  So the structure looks like this:

This is clean and well organized and works for me.   If you let iTunes organize the folder, however, iTunes usually uses the file’s tags to determine how it will create directories.   Let’s take a step back for a second to see why that’s a problem.

Why Gracenote (CDDB) is a Problem for Classical Music

When people import CDs into iTunes, they often use the GracenoteDB to get album information.  Gracenote was never designed for classical music, so when importing a single disc of a single opera, you may get different tags in different places.  That’s right…you could import Disc 1 of the Boulez Siegfried and get different tags for the different tracks.

Now let’s fast forward again to our previous discussion.  If Gracenote applies the wrong, inconsistent tags to the individual tracks of Disc 1 of Siegfried, when iTunes goes to organize your music folder, it will look at these tags and create the folders it thinks  are appropriate.  What you wind up with, in addition to the folders listed above, is a few extra folders that represent where the GracenoteDB got it wrong.  So allowing iTunes to manage the folder may make the folder look like this:

So you can see the extra folders that were created — because the Gracenote information wasn’t correct/accurate (pick your gripe), iTunes did the best it could. And if you were to look in these folders, you would find that the Boulez folder has a few files, the Bayreuth folder may have one or two…and so on.  So now instead of having an opera correctly spread across the four CDs it was produced on (and hence four folders in my system), you now have the same opera, divided into more than four folders and with the music spread across these multiple folders.  And while this may not be critical when you are browsing in iTunes or using your iPod (I did open this discussion by stating that your iTunes folder structure has no affect on your actual iTunes library structure), if you ever plan to use these mp3 files on a different player or system, you’d be missing parts of the opera.   Multiply this problem by 10 when you have multple copies of the opera or other operas in the same composer folder.  We all know that there’s plenty of crossover of  opera houses, conductors and singers, so what’s to say that the Solti folder that iTunes creates in your Wagner directory is for Gotterdammerung, or for Lohengrin.

Lastly, I’ll add that backups of your iTunes folder are faster and more efficient (and easier to navigate) if you don’t have so many extraneous folders.

So that’s why I like to manage my own folders in iTunes.   What do you think?

(For those who want to read about this entire ring cycle, I’ve pasted the Amazon link below):