Music Library Guide. Part 1: Overall Explanation and Tools

First things first. Media formats are just like condoms. They come in every colour, price, texture and flavour there is out there. Formats are very varied, but they can be easily grouped in two main categories: Lossless and lossy formats.

Lossless. The packing monsters.

Lossless formats, are just as its name says: What you hear is what you get. These formats are powerful, crunch formats that provide 1:1 to sound ratio. Basically, they work grouping together media information, so the size is considerably compressed. The best definition I’ve heard for them, is that they are “packers”.

The algorithm works, groping similar sounds in a digital formats, so the sound given by the source format (i.e. a CD) is the same in both the digital file and the sound recorded into the CD. Examples of this are WMA and ACC in their lossless versions. Of course, there are also open formats, like FLAC and Monkey’s Audio (APE). Almost all files you’ll find in the net, encoded with lossless, will be either of this formats.

FLAC Logo

The first impression may seem all-glorious because of the fact of the 1:1 sound ratio (actually, it sounds glorious), but as everything else it has its downside. First of all, it’s compression ratio is somewhere around 40% and 50%, depending on the album. Although it’s not a halfway bad ratio, the space is an important factor to check.

Crossroads

Heaven knows why I published some of my last posts. I had a nice amount of pending draftts, so I kind of… just wrote and wrote without thinking much, to catch on again. Anyway, this post is only a brainstorm that i want to be in my frontpage, so I’ll know what (in reality) I have to do.

1. On a previous post, I already said that I’ll be posting a guide on making and tagging good MP3 files. This post will be published in parts in the next days.
2. I’m planning another how-to with Ubuntu. I don’t really know when will this be posted, as the new distro is bound to pop-up somewhere in April.
3. I love photography, and I have a huge amount of photographies from my last 5 years. I have almost the same amount of photos as music. I want to publish a way to organize them they it should be.
4. My personal tribute to a heroine, Gina Trapani, from Lifehacker. I remember that I enjoyed a long time ago reading her posts about productivity, and I actually did some of the small projects published there. I’ll say what, how and when too.
5. More hate and stupid posts are coming, of course…

I don’t know what else I’ll be posting, but one thing’s for sure. I’ll start with that little how-to on music soon.

Change to Ubuntu Intrepid. Again

The previous saturday, I decided it was about time to install Ubuntu again. Since the last problem with my computer, I hadn’t installed it back because I was very lazy and because I never found time to do it. So, the last week I finished my first term exams (Which went out very screwed by the way) and I decided to do it again. As a not-so-important fact, I helped a friend to install Ubuntu in his lap, so I decided I wanted it too.

I downloaded an .iso from the server at UNAM (Mexico city) It took ages to finish because my ISP is an absolute crap. Somehow, I got it, burned it with IMGBurn, and I set off to install it. When I formated my lap, I made enough space on the disk to fit XP, my data, Ubuntu and lastly the Swap area, so the installation went on on rails. Once again, I was amazed. It took less than 30 minutes to install completely on my ext3 area, so I was kind of happy when it finished.

On my first boot, the first surprises arose, as always. 1024 x 768, no wi-fi card. So, I connected the ethernet cable, opened Synaptic and installed EnvyNG. Again. It took roughly 5 minutes to install my card, compared to 15 minutes on Hardy. Looks like the guys working with Envy are doing a huge progress.

The next (again..) was my wi-fi card. I installed NDIS Wrapper and went on flawless. After installing my wi-fi driver (using the GTK version because I was lazy) I had full signal from my router. The rest, was just software. After several tweaking, it took me something around 3 hours to have Ubuntu completely operational. Not bad at all. It took me more than 6 hours to get XP working, counting the time it took to install private software (Macromedia Studio 8, Corel, Office 2007) and getting Vista out of it.

So as that, I haven’t booted to XP unless it is completely necessary. Looks like Amarok now supports music transfer with artwork and videos, so I’m seriously thinking on stopping to use iTunes once and for all.

As soon as I get Amarok working completely with the iPod, I’ll be posting the how-to. Or a post saying that I couldn’t get it done… Also, I have some pending post (From 4 months ago XD) mainly about the XGL server, and main programs. Once again, I don’t have time for anything. I hate pretty much studying large amounts of information that I won’t fuckin’ use in my life. I’m off, I have the Organizational Computing exam. I already fear the Math and the Physics exams, so I guess this afternoon will be kind of… Helish.

Media Freak

I absolutely love music. It’s one of the things I enjoy the most in life, but indeed, it’s not just like listening whatever gets to my hands. Music is not only a type of art, it’s also a way of life. A way of expression, a way of standing out from the crowds. It’s a part of me, as I could clearly point out a huge amount of tracks that describe a specific era or scene of my life. Memories are not just chunks stored as abstract images kept somewhere within the synapses of a brain. They are also feelings, that come out of the blue, when a specific action is triggered. Just what music makes me feel.

I’ve been listening to Industrial music since I was around 14. I had always made music a part of my life, but the first time I listened to that CD which was gifted to me, I loved the sounds captured within the Joliet structure of it. I had heard for the very first time some of the great bands of the genre, Apoptygma Berzerk, VNV Nation, Icon of Coil and Front 242, among others.

I lost that CD. It became scratched as I didn’t look after it, and it was rendered useless. It took me nearly 4 years of heavy listening to Industrial music, to find those glorious tracks again. To be able to hear them once more. From that time, I’ve listened to many other genres, sometimes hearing mainstream music, sometimes listening to the most underground part of it. My range on music has developed quite a bit, and I can surely say I’d recognize a good band from the genres I listen to the most.

Almost a year ago, I opened a new blog dedicated completely to music with a friend, named Somatoxin. We’ve had a very good time posting on it, as we both love music, and it has been interesting to watch the contrast between Industrial and Metal.

Anyway, studying Systems Engineering, and having an extreme love to both computers and music, I started to look for time-efficient tools that would help me to administer my music. In the time, I found a bunch of useful tools, like Last.fm, the Musicbrainz database, MP3Tag and the LAME codec. They all have been quite good guidelines and tools with my absolute love to music.

It’s been almost six months since I first said I was going to publish a full guide on how to administer efficiently and take the maximum out of a music library. I haven’t done anything to acomplish this since then. Thinking in a huge amount of things, today, I decided it’s about time to start finishing what I want to do. I’ve lived around a 25% of my life, and I feel I haven’t done anything productive. It’s time to get my hands dirty. It’s time to fight.

So, the first thing I’m accomplishing, is publishing a full detailed guide on how to (really) take the most possible out of a multimedia library. I was planning to publish only one post with the whole explanation, but just like a project, it will be fairly simple if I chop it down to small bits of information. In that way, I’ll have enough time to explain everything perfectly, without forcing anyone to read a lot of pages at once.

Be warned though. This will be for ‘media freaks’ only. Learning the process can take time, and each album that is added to a library will be time consuming. It may seem like a lot of work, but take my word. It will be worth it.

Stay on the watch. Soon, the first post, explaining the tools that will be used, will be published. Hang in there.

P.S: By the way, happy birthday to me!! I’ve rotated around the sun about 19 times. Just a curious fact.