Best Filing Structure to Use?

Legacy versions Library Management
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I’ve searched for a user manual for Audirvana and can’t seem to find it.
What is the definitive, best way to file my music for Audirvana?
I’m re-ripping my huge music library (from CD mostly) and I want to know the best possible and least troublesome filing protocol for the file management of my music files. Do it once, right (if at all possible).

My instinct is to create an Artist folder place the CD for that artist in a folder named the CD title name inside the Artist folder. Like this: Library > Artist > CD
Example: Music Library > The Beatles > Abby Road
Does this make sense? Or, is there a better way to do this.
Lastly, how does Audirvana handle “The” as in The Rolling Stones VS Rolling Stones.

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Hi.
Filing structure for Audirvana is largely irrelevant. Personally I file based on format type (FLAC DSF etc) and have multiple folders of each to keep the folder size to, say, below 5000 (it can become quite slow to navigate large folders).
However, for other players there may be advantage to having the structure you suggest. Some players for example like artwork file folder.jpg. Synology Audiostation for example needs this to display artwork for DSF. So for DSF files I have one folder per album
Some players allow navigation via folder structure - mediamonkey for example in my experience. So a good file structure can be an advantage. That said, good consistent tagging should obviate the need for file structure navigation.
I have seen people put the album year before the album name in the folder structure. Might be worth considering.
Audirvana files ‘The’ alphabetically under ‘T’. The main thing is to be consistent otherwise you end up with albums split between two artists who are the same.

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i go with 26 letters A to Z in my music hard drive, then first name artist (like A / Adrian Belew / Lone Rhino (1981) then all his CDs with separated flac tracks (no .cue in it), only a cover.jpg with the flacs or also a folder with the scans of booklet. I also put the released date in ( ) after the title and if a different released i put it in [2018, remastered, 24-96]. Have fun :grinning:

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The Beatles goes in T for me. Only Zappa goes Zappa Frank (i want him last since having like 200 albums). Not a big fan if Classic, but those i classified also by family name like i talk in usual, I say Vivaldi or Mozart so i wrote in V / Vivaldi Antonio…

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If I have it right, there is no “optimum” filing structure for Audirvana. I’ll go with Artists folders in alpha sequence and CDs in their own folder within the Artist folder. That’s not too many levels and hopefully will work fine.

I’ll likely rip both FLAC and ALAC and feed the ALAC files to iTunes and keep the FLAC files on a separate hard drive dedicated to Audirvana. I’m not planning to use iTunes for much other than my portable devices. I still take my iPod with me when I travel.

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Rip in FLAC and convert the files you want to load on the iPod to AAC. For casual listening AAC at 256kbps is plenty enough.

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Even though the folder structure doesn’t matter much for Audirvana, it’s a good practice to have files neatly organised.

Generally excepted norm is Artist -> Album -> Volume. Exceptions to this are compilations and classical music.

For compilations I use the folder called “Compilations” -> Compilation name -> Volume.

For classical music there are currents of thought. Some prefer to group by composer, others prefer to organise by performer.

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8

I use an app called Bliss to fix tags and album art as well as optionally reorganize the folder structure according to the rules I setup.
Hopefully that helps.

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Although having an organized music file system is nice to have (I still use iTunes to organize mine), it is not the essential issue in music storage for playback performance. File format and physical storage on the disk are more important.

I have found in my system that FLAC files sound different to AIFF formatted files. I am assuming that what processing is necessary to unpack and uncompress the music data is responsible for the differences. I can only assume that this processing, although representing a limited amount of CPU resource comes at a critical point in the playback chain.

More important is if a music file is stored contiguously on a hard disk. If a hard drive is fragmented, various parts of a file will be distributed across single or multiple platters on a drive. The more fragmented a drive the slower data reads, more drive read heads are engaged and the noisier the drive system becomes. It seems to me that fairly regular defragmentation of disk would be useful. I use a Drobo direct attach disk array that periodically starts to churn away in what I assume is a defragmentation and reorganization effort.
I hope I am on topic with this and some what helpful.
Steve
Steve

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