The Music Files

All music in the system comes from the following sources:

  1. Physical CD
  2. Physical SACD
  3. Physical DVD-Audio (not covered here)
  4. Physical Bluray disks (not covered here)
  5. Purchased digital files
    1. MP3 (old eclassical.com)
    1. CD (16/44.1)
    1. DSD (multi channels and stereo)
    1. FLAC high resolutions (multi channels and stereo)
    1. DXD

Each of those “disk” is organized in a 1-to-1 relationship with a directory named as follows:

<disk id> - <hr qualifier> - arbitrary name

Examples:

A-001 - Bach, Conc. Brand. [vol 1] 1@4 (Fasolis)
E-002-S - 88.2 - Bustijn, 9 Suittes pour le clavessin op. 1 (Simonetto)

Physical organization

While there is a direct way to bind a “disk” to how the name of the directory containing the physical tracks grouped under it, not all devices and environment are born equal and many of those files need to have various conversions readily available. Also, just for the sake of management, it can be good to separate some of the disks by source. In the Little House of CEF, here are the following master directories and the reason for their existence. As the music tagging is done through a combination of iTunes and the Music Manager (through an iTunes SDK), everything also has a iTunes-compatible version that is managed independently and not available for streaming.

DirectoryDescription
music_cdPhysical CDs ripped as 16/44.1 flac files
music_mp3MP3 files
music_hrThe highest available version of all the high-resolution files, including multi-channel vs stereo files.
music_dmDownmixed version of high-resolution files when necessary (more details when we look at each source of music)
music_dm_dsdThe stereo side of a multichannel SACD. It does NOT contain purely stereo SACD (would be in music_hr)
music_webWeb-sourced 16/44.1 flac files (typically coming from prestomusic.com)
music_iTunesFiles for iTunes and managed automatically by iTunes
music_mch_flac_fallbackMultichannel flac versions of multichannel DSD files

Disk Sources and what happens to the music

Each music track as at some point gone through a series of steps.

Physical CD

Fairly straight forward.

  1. dPowerAmp to rip the CD to flac files.
  2. Allocating a disk ID (usually a letter, a dash and then a sequence number)
  3. Renaming the directory to follow the proper format.
  4. Change the “album name” to add “ {CD <disk ID>}” at the end of the default album name, which at this point would be the same for all tracks.
  5. Put that directory in music_cd.
  6. dPowerAmp to Create a .m4a version and import them into iTunes
  7. Check on the “Label” website if they allow downloading the booklet for that CD
  8. Using Music Manager and iTunes, properly complete music tagging (composers, codified lyrics if document was available on the Label’s website, tie the tracks with the Label’s catalog, add the performers tags and separate the works using “album” and harmonizing the movement numbers or other identifiers). Once the tagging is done, the Music Manager can then propagate all the tag changes to every single versions of the files.

Physical Multi-Channel SACD

The most complex one.

  1. You need a PS3 with a version under or equal to 3.55 and install SACD Ripper application and leave it running.
  2. You need to install SACD client on your computer. Use that application to extract the .ISO file from the physical SACD inserted in the PS3.
  3. With SACD client extract the multi channel channels in DSF format (as it supports IDv3 tags).
  4. With SACD client extract the stereo channels in DSF format (if it has both, usually yes)
  5. Allocate a disk ID, rename the directories to match pattern, potentially adding DSD-S as “qualifier” for the stereo. If the SACD is in fact 4.0, make sure the disk ID ends with -Q.
  6. Change the “album name” to add “ {SACD <disk ID>}” at the end of the default album name, which at this point would be the same for all tracks.
  7. Put the multi channel in music_hr.
  8. Put the stereo verions in music_dm_dsd
  9. Create a multi channel flac from the multi channel DSF and put it in music_mch_flac_fallback.
  10. Create a stereo flac from the stereo DSF and put it in music_dm. If there were no stereo file, create the stereo flac out of the multi channel DSF mapping the additional channels into their proper left/right.
  11. Using the flac stereo file, create the iTunes version and proceed like all others at this point.

Physical stereo-only SACD

  1. Like multi channel SACD, get the files to your PC and extract the stereo DSF files.
  2. Allocate a disk ID (which must end with -S to flag it as stereo), rename the directories to match pattern
  3. Change the “album name” to add “ {SACD <disk ID>}” at the end of the default album name, which at this point would be the same for all tracks.
  4. Put the new directory in music_hr.
  5. Create a stereo flac from the stereo DSF and put it in music_dm.
  6. Using the flac stereo file, create the iTunes version and proceed like all others at this point.

Files from the internet

Purchasing CDs and high-resolution files differs on the initial steps with some twists:

  1. Web CDs will be placed in music_web and usually use “W-####” as disk IDs.
  2. Web SACD ISO will follow the same steps as Physical SACD (MC or stereo) once the files are on the PC with the only twist being that typically the disk ID will be in the pattern of “H-###”
  3. Web Web DSD albums will follow the same steps as Web SACD ISO skipping the file extract and with the twist that disk ID will be in the pattern if “DSD-###”.
  4. Web multichannel high-resolution flac files will follow some of the steps of a SACD with the twists of having the MC flac put in music_hr and a the stereo create (acquired or created) in music_dm. The disk ID usually follows pattern “E-###”.
  5. Web stereo channel much like Web multichannel except that they only flac copy goes to music_hr and pattern becomes “E-###-S”.
  6. DXD are too high resolution for many devices. A source DXD download must therefore have a “downmixed” multichannel (if it is multichannel) to be placed in music_mch_flac_fallback and a stereo downmix (typically 96kz) to be place in the music_dm directory.
Source and FormatInputTransformationLanding
CDflac 16/44.1 music_cd
Web CDflac 16/44.1 music_web
MP3flac 16/44.1 music_mp3
SACD/DSD MCdsf mc   dsf stereodsf mc flac mc 24/96 dsf stereo flac 2.0 24/96music_hr music_mch_flac_fallback music_dm_dsd music_dm
SACD/DSD 2.0dsf stereodsf stereo flac 2.0 24/96music_hr music_dm
FLAC MCflac mc 24/? (flac 2.0 24/?)flac mc 24/? flac 2.0 24/?music_hr music_dm
FLAC 2.0flac 2.0 24/? music_hr
DXD 2.0flac 2.0 24/384flac 2.0 24/384 flac 2.0 24/96music_hr music_dm

Matching files with location and devices

Now that we have all of that tagging done and access to files through a DLNA server, we need to match room and devices. When the information is imported from the server, the files are organized into two worlds: multichannel vs stereo. Within each world, each disk id is used to create a list of resolution.

For example, SACD C-100 would cause the creation of the following entries:

MULTICHANNEL
             C-100
                           DSD64
                                        (all the tracks)
                           FLAC 5.0 24/96
                                        (all the tracks)
STEREO
             C-100
                           DSD-64
                                         (all the tracks)
                           FLAC 2.0 24/96
                                         (all the tracks)

Each DLNA device family is description in an initialization that describes some characteristics:

  1. Can it play multichannel music?
  2. Supported resolutions
  3. Gapless playback

Each device then specifies

  1. Name to identify when searching for device
  2. Family
  3. Connection method (HDMI, RCA, USB, SPDIF…)

Each “room” then further determines

  1. Is the room multichannel?
  2. Which devices are able to play music

So, based on the above, the server will pick the best possible version on the file based on device capabilities and playback environment.

The lookup in the MULTICHANNEL world would only happen if both the room and the device can play multichannel files. In which case, If the track is on a disk that is multichannel, then select the highest resolution/format supported by the device.

If the track has not been matched yet, we find the track’s disk in the STEREO world and we apply the same logic.

At this point, if we really cannot match (very rare), then the track will not be added to the playlist.