Streamer/NAS editing meta data on SSD drive question

DomT

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Hello everyone.

After my initial loading of a huge amount of ripped CDs to my Auralic internal SSD and Innuos internal I have now ripped a lot more CDs and want to add them. I can find info on manually selecting a folder at a time and manually copying to the SSD and I have done this with one album on the Auralic and Innuos over the network and it works fine. But I can't find a bulk update method and was wondering if this was possible for Auralic and for Innuos?

Also I am editing some of the meta data for existing ripped CDs on the master external SSD. How do I add this new meta data for ripped CDs that are already on the internal SSD on the Auralic and Innuos. Sorry I am not an IT person and have no idea.

Thanks in advance
 

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.Dom not sure about the meta data someone clever will be along in a minute to advise.
If you have the ripper CArd on your PC then open file explorer and you should see were your CD tips are stored . Then in the left hand column your streamers should show up .If you click once on them then the drive and your music files should show up. Cluick on file explorer once and a small panel will open choose open explorer an open a second box keep these both small . Find your CD tips on the second panel click the first then hold down shift and go to the last file and click that .This should have highlighted all your CD tips so then just drag and drop into your streamer music folder and they will all copy across . Sadly you will have to do this for both streamers one at a time but while it is a bit slow it will queue all the tips and transfer them and you can do something else .
 

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.Dom not sure about the meta data someone clever will be along in a minute to advise.
If you have the ripper CArd on your PC then open file explorer and you should see were your CD tips are stored . Then in the left hand column your streamers should show up .If you click once on them then the drive and your music files should show up. Cluick on file explorer once and a small panel will open choose open explorer an open a second box keep these both small . Find your CD tips on the second panel click the first then hold down shift and go to the last file and click that .This should have highlighted all your CD tips so then just drag and drop into your streamer music folder and they will all copy across . Sadly you will have to do this for both streamers one at a time but while it is a bit slow it will queue all the tips and transfer them and you can do something else .
Thanks Andrew yes I can see all contents of all three drives from my Mac. If I transfer all existing CDs does that mean that a I will have two copies of any duplicate CDs? Or will the transfer process ask me in each case if I want to add the second version or not? I have 800 ripped CDs and am now adding just another 50.
 

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.com apologies never used a Mac but when I do this on my PC yes it tells me if the file already exists and asks if I want to replace or cancel the transfer.
 
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.com apologies never used a Mac but when I do this on my PC yes it tells me if the file already exists and asks if I want to replace or cancel the transfer.
Yeah works the same on the Innuos so that’s nice and easy. The Auralic is only on wifi so I will go and find a long Ethernet cable as it’s 1 minute per CD over wifi and a few seconds on Ethernet. Many thanks
 

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Also I am editing some of the meta data for existing ripped CDs on the master external SSD. How do I add this new meta data for ripped CDs that are already on the internal SSD on the Auralic and Innuos. Sorry I am not an IT person and have no idea.
When I ripped my CDs many years ago, modifying meta tags was a difficult and time-consuming task that I had no inclination to undertake. Classical in particular is poorly or inconsistently tagged so a search for Beethoven under Artists or Composers was unable to find music tagged as Ludvig van … and a CD featuring a conductor or soloist as the Artist may not find anything by Beethoven even though it’s on the CD. Non-Classical is generally less of a problem as the “artist” is generally what you are looking for.

It seemed to me that getting a good Folder structure was the answer if the streamer could access my music via a Folders option. Luckily Sonos offered this, so I made 4 main folders - Classical, Non-Classical, World and Weird and Not my Cup of Tea - I had acquired CD collections from friends!

Using standard Windows procedures it’s easy to move whole CDs around to get them into the correct main Folder and re-naming CD folders such that all Beethoven is gathered together into one Beethoven folder is easy. So now a search using Classical > Beethoven would find all my Beethoven recordings. Some CDs are recitals with a number of composers’ works and I put these into a sub-folder named Collections. Occasionally (often with piano concertos) 2 pieces by different composers are featured. Here I split the CD and put the Schumann concerto tracks (with artwork) into Schumann and the Grieg ones (with the same artwork) into the Grieg folder. This effectively mimics how Tower Records (remember them?) or HMV filed their CDs, so finding what I want is as easy using Folders as it is if browsing the shelves in a record store.

So don’t bother with re-tagging – just do the easier task of moving folders around so they appear where you want them to appear. Or have I misunderstood your question? :)
 
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DomT

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When I ripped my CDs many years ago, modifying meta tags was a difficult and time-consuming task that I had no inclination to undertake. Classical in particular is poorly or inconsistently tagged so a search for Beethoven under Artists or Composers was unable to find music tagged as Ludvig van … and a CD featuring a conductor or soloist as the Artist may not find anything by Beethoven even though it’s on the CD. Non-Classical is generally less of a problem as the “artist” is generally what you are looking for.

It seemed to me that getting a good Folder structure was the answer if the streamer could access my music via a Folders option. Luckily Sonos offered this, so I made 4 main folders - Classical, Non-Classical, World and Weird and Not my Cup of Tea - I had acquired CD collections from friends!

Using standard Windows procedures it’s easy to move whole CDs around to get them into the correct main Folder and re-naming CD folders such that all Beethoven is gathered together into one Beethoven folder is easy. So now a search using Classical > Beethoven would find all my Beethoven recordings. Some CDs are recitals with a number of composers’ works and I put these into a sub-folder named Collections. Occasionally (often with piano concertos) 2 pieces by different composers are featured. Here I split the CD and put the Schumann concerto tracks (with artwork) into Schumann and the Grieg ones (with the same artwork) into the Grieg folder. This effectively mimics how Tower Records (remember them?) or HMV filed their CDs, so finding what I want is as easy using Folders as it is if browsing the shelves in a record store.

So don’t bother with re-tagging – just do the easier task of moving folders around so they appear where you want them to appear. Or have I misunderstood your question? :)
Thanks for that. I already have my classical stuff well sorted. My problem is that when I was creating tags I made many spelling mistakes. And so an album labelled as fimk instead of funk will not be found and so I do need to edit a lot of bits of meta data. I have a master disk and two different systems.

I can edit the meta data on the master disk no problem using DBPoweramp. What I don’t know how to do is to then update the other two SSD drives - one in the Auralic and the other in the Innuos. I have read a number of articles about hard drives etc but cannot seem to find the answer.

Hopefully someone will know how to do this ie Master Disk SSD with new Meta data needs to update two other SSDs on same network.
 

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You'll need to replace the files on the streamers with the ones with the correct metadata on the "master disk". You should be able to drag them across in Finder and replace the existing files.

Metadatics is a good app for editing metadata if you don't already have it.
 
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DomT

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You'll need to replace the files on the streamers with the ones with the correct metadata on the "master disk". You should be able to drag them across in Finder and replace the existing files.

Metadatics is a good app for editing metadata if you don't already have it.
I use DBPoweramp and it seems fine. Is there any benefit to using Metadatics over DBPoweramp?

If I am ‘dragging items’ that sounds like it’s a one at a time manual process. I was hoping that there was an automated process ie press button to update file by replacing any old data with new data. Manually finding each file that I have edited, then deleting the old file on the other drive and dragging and dropping a new file seems prehistoric.
 

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Just a suggestion if you do not find a simple solution is concentrate your time and editing on the Master Drive and getting that right and as you want it .

Then drastic I know but at least it will be automatic and can be done over night . Delete all the files on your streamers and do a full copy from the fully corrected Master Drive to beach one in turn . Once they are all up to date then I would copy each new ripper file to all drives as you get new music as it will only be a small number of files each time rather than accumulating files and bit then becomes a big job .
 
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rdale

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I use DBPoweramp and it seems fine. Is there any benefit to using Metadatics over DBPoweramp?

If I am ‘dragging items’ that sounds like it’s a one at a time manual process. I was hoping that there was an automated process ie press button to update file by replacing any old data with new data. Manually finding each file that I have edited, then deleting the old file on the other drive and dragging and dropping a new file seems prehistoric.
There is a command line program called ‘rsync’ which is available under macOS. It copies a set of files from one place to another, but only sends what has actually changed. Maybe there is a visual interface to that to enable a non-technical person to use it.
 
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Just a suggestion if you do not find a simple solution is concentrate your time and editing on the Master Drive and getting that right and as you want it .

Then drastic I know but at least it will be automatic and can be done over night . Delete all the files on your streamers and do a full copy from the fully corrected Master Drive to beach one in turn . Once they are all up to date then I would copy each new ripper file to all drives as you get new music as it will only be a small number of files each time rather than accumulating files and bit then becomes a big job .
I was thinking that I might need to do this :cry: But when I delete files on a hard drive I am sure that I read years ago that they are not actually deleted and whatever space that the files occupied is 'lost' as the files are actually still there.
 

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There is a command line program called ‘rsync’ which is available under macOS. It copies a set of files from one place to another, but only sends what has actually changed. Maybe there is a visual interface to that to enable a non-technical person to use it.
Thanks for that but I don't really understand what that means. The master SSD is an external drive connected via USB to my MacBook. The target drives are SSDs and one is in an Auralic Streamer and the other in an Innuos streamer. Both streamers SSDs are visible on my network and I have been manually adding new CDs today without an issue. Will that work in your rsync scenario? If so what are the steps please?

Just found this https://blog.duklabs.com/using-rsync-on-mac-to-copy-files/ but it's like me reading a load of German words I have no idea what each word means. So when doing something like this I would like to be sure that a) I am doing the right process and b) I know its the right process because the process has been given to me by a trusted source. I have no idea who duklabs is and maybe this is correct or not?

But this is the sort of stuff that is way out of my comfort zone.
 

rdale

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Thanks for that but I don't really understand what that means. The master SSD is an external drive connected via USB to my MacBook. The target drives are SSDs and one is in an Auralic Streamer and the other in an Innuos streamer. Both streamers SSDs are visible on my network and I have been manually adding new CDs today without an issue. Will that work in your rsync scenario? If so what are the steps please?
I can give you instructions about how to run rsync from the terminal app, but I’m not sure if you would be able to follow them as you really need an app with a friendly front end.

The Terminal app is under /Applications/Utilities on macOS. An rsync command to copy a directory from one machine to another looks like this:

$ rsync -va —delete <directory path of macOS folder> admin@auralic.local:<directory path of folder on auralic streamer>

The above is assuming there is a user called ‘admin’ on the auralic, and the network address of the auralic is ‘auralic.local’.
 
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I can give you instructions about how to run rsync from the terminal app, but I’m not sure if you would be able to follow them as you really need an app with a friendly front end.

The Terminal app is under /Applications/Utilities on macOS. An rsync command to copy a directory from one machine to another looks like this:

$ rsync -va —delete <directory path of macOS folder> admin@auralic.local:<directory path of folder on auralic streamer>

The above is assuming there is a user called ‘admin’ on the auralic, and the network address of the auralic is ‘auralic.local’.
Thanks for that but already I can see that this is going to be outside of my comfort zone and competence; I don't even know what a network address is. It's why I bought streamers with built in drives to hopefully avoid this sort of stuff.

Maybe I will just delete and load again. Do you happen to know if I 'delete' the existing 10,000 files (songs) will they actually be deleted? I will need to update my SSDs twice a year after CD buying sprees and I don't want to loose valuable disk space. Thanks
 

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Thanks for that but already I can see that this is going to be outside of my comfort zone and competence; I don't even know what a network address is. It's why I bought streamers with built in drives to hopefully avoid this sort of stuff.

Maybe I will just delete and load again. Do you happen to know if I 'delete' the existing 10,000 files (songs) will they actually be deleted? I will need to update my SSDs twice a year after CD buying sprees and I don't want to loose valuable disk space. Thanks
If you can copy the the files across with the Mac Finder, I would do that. Then ensure that you delete any files in the destination folders which no longer exist in the corresponding master folder because you’ve changed their names.
 
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If you can copy the the files across with the Mac Finder, I would do that. Then ensure that you delete any files in the destination folders which no longer exist in the corresponding master folder because you’ve changed their names.
Do you know if deleting files will actually delete the files on the SSD? I know that I will not be able to see the files but will the data still be there?
 

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Do you know if deleting files will actually delete the files on the SSD? I know that I will not be able to see the files but will the data still be there?
No the data will be gone. So as long as you are certain you are only deleting stuff on the auralic that you have a copy of on the Mac, it will be fine. I thought copying might be less error prone, but it doesn’t handle files which have been renamed. So delete the lot on the auralic, followed by copying the lot from Mac to auralic might be the best thing to do.
 
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No the data will be gone. So as long as you are certain you are only deleting stuff on the auralic that you have a copy of on the Mac, it will be fine. I thought copying might be less error prone, but it doesn’t handle files which have been renamed. So delete the lot on the auralic, followed by copying the lot from Mac to auralic might be the best thing to do.
I keep a master SSD and three other drives that I copy to from that master drive so everything is controlled. Thanks for the help.
 

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