Tagging

You can use the HF to edit your data. Nothing wrong with the interface but editing text with the scroll wheel is a rather time consuming process. If you integrated the HF into your home network you can use your PC to do the editing using the Leonore or the Veronica interface.

 

The Hifidelio is a computer running Linux. So it is supposed to be stable and suite for multitasking. In practice you better don't touch it when loading or converting CDs. Not only it is slow but loading CDs and editing at the same time might cause the system to hang. So you have to reboot is, lose your edits in the process and have a lot of stray files on your system (the maintenance option might solve this).

Content

When the CD hit the market in the 80’s it was considered a high tech media. But the information about the content was provided in the same way as with vinyl, on paper. There is no information about the content on the CD itself
A clever guy found out that the combination of the number of tracks and the duration of each track almost uniquely identifies a CD, kind of DNA. This makes it possible to lookup information about a CD in a database.
The HF derives it from http://www.FreeDB .org/.

Sometimes the lookup fails:

• Nobody entered information about this CD
• If you have a a copy of a CD, it might be just be a fraction longer or shorter than the original.
• The combination of tracks and duration is not unique

What’s in a name

A computer sees the composer: Ludwig van Beethoven and the composer: Beethoven, Ludwig van as 2 different entities.
Even Beethoven and beethoven  are 2 different entities because the database is case sensitive.
So what is the same should not only be spelled the same but also be written with the same case.
If you type Beethoven in one album and Beeethoven in an other album you end up with a list like this.

 

 

Use Information to change Beeethoven into Beethoven  and entries misspelled as Beeethoven are corrected.

Multiple CDs

If you have a box 2 CDs, in the album list you might get 2 entries:

 

You might decide to give both entries the same name e.g. Beethoven - The String Trios.
If you do, both CDs are combined so you have 1 entry in the list of albums.
Nice, until you open the album and see you get all the tracks 1, then all the tracks 2 of all the sonatas on this CD.

 

 

This might also happen when somebody entered the same description for different CDs in FreeDB .
Now this is of course totally useless.

To avoid this, label the first CD as Disk:1

 

Label the second CD as disk: 2

 

If you give both albums the same name now, the sequence will be correct because the tracks are sorted by Disk number and then by track number.

Unknown Album

It might happen that a CD is not recognized by the database.
In the display while loading the CD , you see unknown as the description.
Don't look for “unknown” in the list of albums because “unknown” albums are titled Audio CD + date.

 

Ok is not Ok

If you edit any part of the meta data Ok ends the editing of the item and you return to the Information screen with one exception:

 

If you edit an album and changed its name, pressing Ok means you return to the list of albums.
If you want to do more edits you have to find the album in list again because the HF looses its position after changing the title. An rather annoying trait especially if you have many albums.

Mark your words

The mark option is a rather powerful one. It allows you to change multiple items at the same time.
You might have a CD with the sonatas for piano and violoncello by Brahms and by Schuman.
So it is of no use to enter de name of the composer at album level.

Use the mark option to select all the movements of a sonata

 

Activate information and change the composer (in this case) into Brahms

 

You might also use this option to split a CD.
In the example above: select all the movements composed by Brahms and change the description of the album.

Warning: after chancing an item, the selection is lost, next edits will affect only the first track

Unfortunately you can only mark a block of consecutive lines. (De)selecting individual lines ( like the CRTL & SHIFT functionality in Windows) is not possible. Judging from the discussions in the forum, the users would highly appreciate this but the developers things this is not user friendly.

To Delete or not to Delete raises questions

When you delete an entry, e.g. an album, the HF prompts you “Do you really want to delete!!!!”.
Say yes and the album and all the associated songs are deleted. This is the behaviour you expect from a well designed interface, it protects you against an involuntary delete.
There is an exception to this rule. If there is 1 song on this album, the album and the song are deleted without warning. There has been some debate about this behaviour in the forum, the users think this is a design flaw, the developers thinks this is real user friendliness. What ever it is, it is certainly different from what you are used to on your PC.

If you delete an album, you delete all the songs on this album. Sound logical.
Now if you see a genre like “Transalvania boogies” and you think “Somebody at FreeDB must have been yoking, get rid of it” so you delete this genre then all songs associated with this genre are deleted to. So the system is consequent, deleting meta information deletes associated songs.
So if you want to get rid of a genre or any other meta data without losing the songs, rename it.

A song is a song is a song is a song is a song

You can edit artist, composer, album or a song but what ever you choose, the information is stored in songs and affect all selected songs. If you edit a composer e.g. Beethoven , the HF select all songs having Beethoven as a composer and all the edits you do in any editable field will affect all the selected songs.

If you edit a composer, e.g. Beethoven and change the name to Beethoven, Ludwig van (1780-1829), all songs with Beethoven as a composer will now display Beethoven, Ludwig van (1780-1829). Sounds logical. This is probably exactly what you intended.

If you edit the composer Beethoven and change the genre into Classical, all songs having Beethoven as a composer get Classical as its genre. Sounds logical but it means that all previous information about the genre (e.g. Sonata, Quartet) in individual songs is overwritten.

If you edit the composer Beethoven and change the artist into Pollini, all songs having Beethoven as a composer get Pollini as its performer. Sounds logical but it means that all previous information about all the different performing artist in individual songs is overwritten.

As you are editing songs, you will always see the same fields regardless of the item you choose to edit (artist, composer, album)

 

 

If you edit a composer and the artist is empty is means that you have more than 1 song by this composer and performed by different artist.
This applies to all the editable fields: if the information in this field in all songs affected is different, the field is empty. If the information in all songs affected is the same, the field is not empty