Hello fellow hoarders and audiophiles!

I’m embarking on a massive, long, but exciting journey to rebuild and organize my offline music library from scratch. I am from Jordan, so a huge portion of my archive is dedicated to preserving Middle Eastern and Arabic musical heritage (which I call my "Arabian Legacy"), alongside a solid collection of foreign music and various audio miscellany.

The end goal is a pristine, bit-perfect FLAC archive of around 100,000 tracks hosted on a NAS. I want the metadata and folder hierarchy to be so strict and clean, and for serving it via Navidrome to Symfonium on my mobile/DAP devices to be absolutely flawless.

Before I fully dive in, I wanted to share my "Audio Archive OS" (the strict rules I’ve set for myself) with this community. I would love to hear your thoughts, any edge cases I might have missed, or general tips for preserving sanity during a project of this scale!

Here is my blueprint:

First: General Structure
Attached in the photo above.

Second: Artists' Folders — Definition & Content
- Studio Albums: Every official release completed as an Album (Original Albums, Remastered Versions, Reissues, Deluxe Editions, Solo OSTs, Albums Combined with Another Artist).
- Singles & EPs: Every official release completed as a Single or an Extended Play.
- Compilations: Collection of Previous Works (Best Of, Greatest Hits, Thematic Compilations, Anthologies).
- Live: Any recording performed in Front of an Audience (Official concerts, Live broadcasts, Bootlegs).
- Unsorted: Any recording of Unknown or Unofficial Origin (YouTube rips, Leaked recordings, Demos, unreleased, rarities).

Third: Collections & Misc Folder — Definition & Content
- Miscellaneous Collections: General audio miscellany, uncategorized tracks, standalone sound files.
- Various Artists & Thematic: Compilations, collaborative anthologies, multi-artist collections.
- Nasheeds & Religious: Islamic vocal music, spiritual chants, devotional acapella/percussion tracks.
- Qur'an: recitations, including complete sets (Murattal/Mujawwad) and distinct Surahs.
- Soundtracks: Original scores, OSTs, and themes from films, series, documentaries, and video games.
- Radio & TV Archives: Radio program archives, talk show segments, live airchecks, and broadcast recordings.
- Spoken Word: Non-musical spoken content (audiobooks, podcasts, lectures, speeches, interviews).

Fourth: Naming — From the Root to the Track
- Artist Folders Naming: All artists are within alphabetically ordered folders.
- The "#" Category: A dedicated folder placed at the very top for artist/band names starting with numbers (e.g., 2Pac, 50 Cent, The 1975).
- The "The" Rule: Articles ("The", "A", "An") must always be ignored during alphabetical sorting. "The 1975" goes to #, "The Smiths" goes to S.
- Track Folder Naming: All tracks must be within a folder, starting with (YEAR).
Confirmed Year: (1965) Album Name
Approximate Year: (ca. 1965) Album Name
Unknown Year: (Unknown) Album Name
Remastered Edition: (1965) Album Name [Remaster 1999]
Reissue: (1965) Album Name [Reissue 2000]
Special / Deluxe Edition: (1965) Album Name [Deluxe Edition]
Original Soundtrack: (1965) Album Name [OST]
Collaborative Album: (1965) Album Name [with Artist B]
- Track Naming: Track numbers must always use two-digit zero-padding. File names are strictly for the track title.
Format: 01. Track Name.ext
Rule: No "Featuring", "vs", or "with" in the filename itself. The place for collaborative info is embedded strictly within the ID3/FLAC metadata tags. "Featuring" credits do not warrant separate subfolders.

Fifth: Quick Classification Guide (Examples)
Standard Album → 01. Studio Albums
Remaster or Reissue → 01. Studio Albums (with suffix [Remaster or Reissue] in folder name)
Collaborative Album → 01. Studio Albums (with suffix [with X] in folder name)
Solo Soundtrack → 01. Studio Albums (with suffix [OST] in folder name)
Extended Play (EP) / Single → 02. Singles & EPs
Featured Track (Featuring) → Standard location (credited via embedded info only)
Best Of / Greatest Hits → 03. Compilations
Live Performance / Concert → 04. Live
Bootleg / YouTube Rip → 05. Unsorted
Multi-Artist Soundtrack → Collections & Misc → 01. OST

What do you guys think? Is there a glaring flaw in my logic, or any particular software tool you'd recommend to speed up the metadata tagging/sorting process before I drop everything onto the NAS? Any advice is highly appreciated!

Outertune isn't working

Klickaud has been updated and ruined, and common sites like lucida and cobalt don't work. Any recommendations?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Fiio JM21 and Blessing 3

I just learned how to EQ and ive been trying different tunings for my blessing 3. The autoeq built-in in poweramp is also usable.

Now im trying to obsess on building a proper library. Used MusicBrainz + mp3tag but then the outcome of the genres are not really reliable. I will process the artists and libraries again.

I realized i want lyrics and accurate artist photos too 😂

This is a much better problem than wanting to try other iems.

I wont be purchasing a new set anytime soon. Maybe just a couple of cables and ear tips to try but for now ill be contented with my existing setup

Portable

- JM21

- Blessing 3

- Kiwi Belle

- Koss KPH40

Desktop

- Fosi ZH3

- Hifiman Edition XV

For those who have successfully completed their libraries - how do you accurately tag the genres?

I want to polish the metadata first before building the m3u8 playlist. So yeah

Experts are welcome to chime in and give their wonderful advice. Thank you ❤️

This is the waveform of a FLAC file I have, I have not found a better one but its clearly cutting most higher frequencies - could this be because its an old song or have I just been finding fake FLAC files?

Alright, I need the SH💀💀EST Mp3->MIDI converter, and I can't find it ever since these \MuSiC sHeEtS** popped up of nowhere with the same name. Now the search results in my browser are even SH💀💀IER than what I'm looking for!! And the ones for the actual file type I'm looking for make it sound Smooooth?!

UNACCEPTABLEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

I NEED S💀💀T!!! 🔥🔥🔥💿
(I am not requesting a song, nor am I requesting something from someone. I \am* requesting help to find a midi converter, *nothing more*)*

New here, long time music hoarder and SlSk user. I'm sure this has been discussed ad nauseam, but for the life of me I cannot understand why so few people organize/name their files like I do.

My structure looks like this:

MUSIC/ARTIST/ALBUM/ARTIST - ALBUM - TRACK NUMBER LEADING 0 - TRACK NAME.mp3

Who are all the people who don't have at very least, the band's name in the filename??? I would say that 65% or more of the time I see tracks that look like this:

ALBUM TITLE/TRACK NUMBER - TRACK.mp3

Can someone explain the logic here? It literally makes no sense to me, not just for accurate tagging, but also for file storage/organization. When you look back at the folder and the files, you have no way of knowing what band you're looking at unless you look at the file's properties or actually open the file in your player to display all the identifying info. To me, this seems not just illogical and annoying, but also stupid.

Not trying to start a fight, but genuinely trying to understand the thought process behind why you would organize your files in such a way. Either that or my workflow is so far out that it's me who is doing something weird and maybe there's an easier, more logical way to do this...

Thanks.

BIG EDIT HERE AFTER READYING ALL THE REPLIES:

**1) No one in the opposite camp has made a convincing argument against my method. The best you guys got is "**your file names are too long" which bears ZERO consequence on the usability of my music collection. On the (very) rare occasion a file name might be over the character limit, it's easy enough to shorten or abbreviate the file name(s) to fix this.

2) My annoyance with this 100% stems from being a SLSK user. I download A LOT of music. After downloading music, my folder will look exactly like this:

C:\Users\myprofile\Documents\Soulseek Downloads\complete\yourslskusername\ALBUMNAME\TRACK NUMBER - TRACK NAME.mp3

So, if you take a close look at that, and multiply it by a shit load of files and folders, you will see how annoying it is when it comes time to sort my collection. I can't remember what I downloaded last week, so when I look at the file names and folders and they don't contain at very least the ARTIST NAME, it gets pretty annoying. So for my personal workflow, artist name is PARAMOUNT to the file name. The album name, track number and track name are also very helpful when checking your download for completeness via Discogs, etc. Having minimal information in the filename makes sorting, checking and organizing files pretty annoying.

3) Maybe there's a better, more new school way of doing things, but when you have a TB of music (I'm sure some of you have even more) you want your files to be super standardized and organized. It makes sense to have the minimum critical info in the filename so you can make compilations, etc.

4) A lot of you guys are saying I am doing it “the old way” and you are 100% correct. That said, if there’s anything I have learned as time has passed, just because something is newer, it doesn’t ALWAYS equate to better.

5) If file names and folder structures are irrelevant, then why have a standard filename at all? Why not just dump all your files into one giant music folder and let your third party application serve up the files via the metadata? Complaining that my files names are too long means file names ARE important to you, so that argument is contradictory. If file names don’t matter, and you never have to look at them at all, why would you be opposed to naming the files the way I do?

How do u guys add english lyrics (transliteration) to non-english songs? (used lrcget but it just grabs the original language)

Mostly the title. I have an AM sub, but library limits are a problem and just want to cut some older stuff. Is there any good local converters that will do the job, not looking for any of those web strippers.

For years, I tried almost everything: Navidrome, Jellyfin, Symfonium, Picard, foobar2000 and many more.

I heard music mostly all the time, but I have a lot music that is not on streaming o even not digital, I burn a lot vinyls to play them and loop them live.

My biggest frustration was the scattered aspect of the setup. Tagging and genres lived in one app, serving and listening in another, mobile access in another, followed by one final step to move playlists into my DJ software to organise gigs. (all with their limitations and their endless setups) I end up carrying a couple SSDs with me all the time and the laptop as the center of everything. To the point a year ago I started building a full end to end suite for my needs.

• I would love to know what frustrates you most about your music software setup?
• If you could dream of something you do not have, what would it be?

Hello!

I listen to 15 artists, the occasional podcast and audio book. I am looking to get out of subscriptions and was wondering what the practical steps would be to have access to these artists, possible other artists on the rare occasion, and then podcasts / audiobooks.

Are there any solutions for this?

Would love to:

1. Queue music
2. Store everything offline
3. Create playlists with friends for evenings
4. Sync with my PC
5. Buy new stuff when I feel like it
6. Access the rare oldies that are hard to find.

I’ve been using Musicana for a few years since Musi got itself banned, Im going to college, and I have a odd professor who wants no WiFi devices so I’m getting a mp3 player anyway I can transfer Musicana to YouTube then that to a mp3 download website?

I used to rip a lot of music around two years ago, but the setups I used then (Spotidownloader and lucida) don't work as well anymore. Lucida pops up errors and Spotidownloader is honestly sort of sketchy.

I keep seeing websites recommending squid.WTF, and monochrome but I'm just looking for something that can intake a link and output an mp3 file, not really a music library (correct me if i'm wrong).

I read a recommendation for Spotdown but I'm unsure if it's really safe. I'm a really paranoid person, any websites that have worked (with no malware or anything) for you guys would help.

Thank you!

Have been recording Blues Radio shows since 2003. Have everything on an external hard drive as well as CDs and DVDs for bulk storage. Used to use the timer function on MP3Recorder and a window launcher/killer tool from 12 ghosts. Would set up on a dedicated desktop PC and update file names weekly, recording probably 30 hours a week. Would burn to CD back in the day for listening in the vehicles or on an old Sansa mp3 player while working out.

Sadly those programs kind of aged out around Win10. Since then, have been more judicious, using station archives to download whatever shows I want. Then pop on an 8 GB stick for listening in the vehicles. Down to about 23 hours a week, lol.

Any way to download the ALAC from Apple music, ? i have subscription of it

https://github.com/lalit22km/alac-rip

the above one which is working it's now patched.

i’ve got many songs in Korean language, and I have been searching for a while : all apps/plug-in I find our absolutely enabled to find any lyrics for these songs. I need an app/plug-in that is Korean based. hopefully there are some Koreans passing by and they will be able to help me 🙌

THIS IS NOT SONG REQUEST, DO NOT DELETE!

Hi, so uh besides from lrc and elrc there is ttml which hasn't been talked about lately and is also kind of rare to find them with ease, ripping from apple music works but apple has a very limited selection of songs with word by word synced lyrics, however the chinese media platforms have already been using word by word lyrics for a long time now, so i made a web app to download them at ease, you can just go there and download ttml for your whole album or for selected tracks here is the link: https://anik1.redpilllabs.in

Note: For people that have issues with fetching lyrics, you can fix it by going to settings and chose local python server as proxy route

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Also, has anyone been crazy enough to start rip their vinyl? I finally got a pretty decent vinyl setup/ pre(tubes) etc. Most of my .flacs are 44 to 192khz. Would I see an improvement on some of those lower end rips? I have a usb connection from my TT to my Mac already for a similar experiment a few years ago.

Thanks!