[Dixielandjazz] cd cataloging database

[David Palmquist]

I'm not sure I'd use a CD player, no matter what its capacity, as a 
database.  At best it will give title, album name, and principal 
performer.  If the CD was coded correctly by the manufacturer.  I find that 
isn't always the case - an Armstrong CD may generate something completely 
different in the CDDB database, maybe Miller or Goodman.

I've found it very convenient to burn my CD's to my hard drive as MP3 
files.  That allows me to listen to them quickly when somebody refers to a 
particular recordings.  It takes maybe 10 minutes to rip each one, but I'm 
usually multitasking anyway, so it's not a problem.  I have them stored in 
a few folders, by category, and each CD track is in a folder named for that 
CD.

There's a freeware utility called filegrabber, which allows me to copy all 
the folders or files listed in a Windows Explorer window into the 
filegrabber interface, then copy it as text from there into any other 
application - I paste it into Excel, and presto, I have the beginning of my 
database.  I use separate worksheets for each of my major groupings - 
i.e.,- all my Ellingtons are on one page.

This gives me a list of the songs on my CD's by album name.  What I haven't 
yet done is create the discographical information, I used to have that 
before my system crashed a couple of years ago.   My old Excel sheet had 
song, album, principal musician or group, date recorded, location, and 
personnel (including instrument).  The sort feature allowed me to pull up a 
list of all my Goodman CD's, for instance, or to search for anything with 
Vito Musso playing.  That's gone now (how does one spell "backup?" - grin)

Printing is a problem - I have thousands of tracks listed, 1,600 for Duke 
alone.  Discographical info must be entered manually, unfortunately, but 
you can cheat a bit by copying the personnel from the page for the 
particular CD from Towerrecords.com or Amazon.ca, where they include the 
info on their webpages.

David in Delta






At 13:59 17-08-03, PLadd36932 at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 15/08/03 16:03:07 GMT Daylight Time,
>rcrockett1 at houston.rr.com writes:
>
> > I'm fixin' to get ready to begin to list my cd's somewhere.
>
>Hi, you may be able to kill two, or several, birds with stone here.
>
>Bang and Ollafson have produced a CD player with a hard drive on which you
>can store 250 CDs. Each of which can be filed under a wide range of criteria.
>This will give you the list you want and also enable you to make up your own
>playlist etc.,Price around  £1300
>Yamaha have a digital audio recorder which stores in searchable order in 999
>`albums` each holding 99 tunes. 80 GB hard disk holds 120 hours of
>uncompressed music.Editing etc., is easy    CDs can be burned of your own 
>selections..
>Title input. Price aroun £600.
>Sony have a similar machine 40GB of compressed music which they equate to 500
>CD`s.
>They also state that CD`s are saved at 2x speed and Auto Library
>automatically stores tracks and gives `extremely convenient access` plus 
>with the supplied
>PC link you can replace,shuffle,and rename with M-Crew Software. Price around
>£600
>
>The main problem I see is deciding into which category you will file each
>track and the time it will take to play all your CD`s into the hard drive.
>
>Does anyone have any experience of these or similar systems? I would love
>some feedback.
>
>Cheers
>
>
>Pat
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