mp3 naming format for distributed audio

[patwestlake]

OK, so i've searched the forums... here goes....

I'm going to set up a distributed audio system, and am some way on with sorting out the hardware. X-boxes figure large as the players via a home network.

The question is, for ease of indexing the tracks, what is the best format to log the data? I'm about to emabark on ripping 400+ audio CD's, and whilst I have found data for the best quality to use, no-one has suggestedd the best format for the file naming conventions to ease indexing....

should it be directory based - artist/album/track.mp3?
should it be literal my music/artist-album-track.mp3

or what?

Someone MUST have done this before!!

Pat

[dts_boy]

I currently have about 40gb of mp3 in my pc and have it sorted by the directory method. have not really tried what you are dioing but will be dosing so in the summer. i use the cddb lookup to find the cd track names and stuff, although with obscure stuff it can be a nightmare! will be interested to hear how you get on

[fastedd]

I've got a M-Station in the car with a 20 Gig drive and have stored in the directory based format - artist/album/track.mp3?

I used to have a higher level for genre but it was frustraiting haveing to navigate all the way up and back down to hear music from the same artist (esp whilst driveing )

If you give a folder for each album its then possible to repeat folder or add a whole folder (album) to a playlist. If you put all the tracks from one artist under one folder, then this becomes difficult or you end up using playlists to define albums.

Ed

[patwestlake]

Thanks all.

I chose to go with a combo-

Artist\album\album - track No. - title


See you in 400 albums time!

Thanks, Pat

I use the directory based structure, anything else looks messy. Also, the length of the filename is a problem on the XBox, im not sure what the limit is, but its less than the FAT32 filesystem. And about 1GB of mp3s wouldnt copy to my xbox because of the filename length (Thats out of a total of ~25Gb)