Recommended settings - dBpowerAMP for FLAC rip and MP3 convert?

[Empgamer]

Well, the morning has not gone well. I have spent ages ripping the same albums over and over in DBPA only to find that the result is a bit of a disaster when it comes to playback through Foobar. In short the playlist I get in Foobar looks like this:

01. Girls Aloud - [The Sound of Girls Aloud: The Greatest Hits [Bonus Tracks] #1/15] Sound of the Underground

As such the tracks aren't going in the right order as the next two in the list are 10/15 and 11/15!!! Now I'm not sure if this is either:

a) A problem with the tagging being applied by AMG

b) A problem with the tagging somewhere that I need to change in DBPA

c) A problem with the filenaming I am using in DBPA (which is putting the art on the folder but not achieving much else!!)

d) A problem with how I have Foobar reading track/album data.

All in all it's bloody frustrating and I've spent more time on this today than I did setting up EAC. In fact, if it wasn't for the AMG media art embedding I think I'd bin DBPA and go back to EAC. The lack of any guide or a useful help with DBPA makes matters worse. I'm going to try and install Media Monkey in a while to see if it can make any more sense of the format the albums are being copied in than Foobar is.

My filenaming set up in DBPA currently is:

[IFCOMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],Various Artists[]\[album][IFMULTI] Disc [disc][]\[track] [artist] - [title][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[artist] - [album][IFMULTI] Disc [disc][] - [track] - [title][]

Now, any help from DBPA users would be really appreciated. What I'm after is:

For FLAC: An indication of what settings I need to change to get a system which creates an artist folder, album folders within it (with the art embedded), and in such a way that when a player lists the tracks it caters for album; artist; year; track no (01, 02, 11 etc NOT 1/11, 10/11), and where necessary caters for multiple discs.

For MP3: What settings do I need to have such that when converting from FLAC to MP3 for an Ipod the tracks will be converted such that an Ipod can make sense of it (album, artist, track etc at least i suspect or whatever iTunes would give if more than that).

Sorry if all this sounds a bit basic but how to do this in DBPA or indeed where to look for a concise guide on how to do so is a complete mystery to me, despite spending hours scouring the DBPA forums. At the moment I have to say i ain't impressed with it at all.

 

[Autopilot]

Regarding the track order, your tags need to have leading zeros. i.e. 01, 02, 03...11, 12... or even 001, 002, 003... 010, 011... If you don't it can cause a lot of confusion due to the way software reads and orders. Plus using 1/11, 2/11 makes matters even worse.

Empgamer, don't take this personally, but you seem to be making a really meal of all this mate, getting into a pickle and really over complicating things. Forget album art for now, that can be done later. I seems to me you are trying to run before you can walk.

[IFCOMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],Various Artists[]\[album][IFMULTI] Disc [disc][]\[track] [artist] - [title][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[artist] - [album][IFMULTI] Disc [disc][] - [track] - [title][]

Blimey! you dont need all that, this is just for the file name anyway! Foobar does not realy give a monkeys what you file name is - it gets all it's information from the TAGS. i understand what the above script does, but i can see how many people would be confused by it.

I can't really help much with DBpowerAMP, but it would seem that the penny is starting to drop now - what i have been saying for ages in your threads, it's no more easier than EAC because at the end of the day, the real power to get you music ripped and organised in exactly the way you want is found in the scripts you use. I keep things as simple as possible, for example this is what i have in EAC for my file folder/name - "%A\%C\%N - %A - %T" (giving me C:\Coldplay\X&Y\01 - Coldplay - Square one.FLAC) - dead simple, why would i want to complicate things even more? It's only the file name, foobar and my SB3 dont care about file names - browsing the list of albums, searching by artist, etc etc is all done through the tags. You need to separate the tags and file names in your head i think.

 

[Empgamer]

No worries, no offence taken but believe me I am trying to do my best to keep this simple. All the settings etc are from the above are deafults from various programmes and the 1/19 and 1/20 numbering is also the dbPoweramp default. I have now found how to deal with those. In fairness while the dBpoweramp naming string above looks like it's over complicated it seems to deal with providing the naming for both compilations and single CDs in the same line. It looks like the tracks are being named as you suggest at the end of the day. That said, I do find the prospect of meddling with options with it a little more daunting that EAC. I do like the album art capability of dBPowerAMP though so I will try to persevere with it as it just saves me time in the log run.

Other issues I have found MAY arise from using two or three programmes trying to find which suits and in fairness I think it's better to try them rather than read about them. I'm tempted to rip the whole damn lot out and just install two, say EAC and Monkey or dbPoweramp and Monkey. As an example I notice that every track in the MyMusic folder now has a Media Monkey file name and I'm not sure if this is preventing other programmes such as itunes from recognising, even if they are straight MP3. If I drag and drop any MP3 from anywhere into iTunes it just doesn't see them.

In all honesty this conversion business is becoming a bit of a pain to such an extent that I'm tempted to delete all the folders/tracks in every format and rip the CDs once into FLAC and then do them again again into MP3 using iTunes. Long way round I know but what seems like it should be an easy process is becoming a pain in the a**. If I'd spent as much time doing that as I have piddling around with all this I could have finished it all by now. I wonder whether it HAS to be a two stage process (e.g. convert to a Temp Mp3 file in M4a and then import everything from there using iTunes)? Seems logwinded though.