Domini's Journal: Treatise on audio ripping standards

RFC: marius-audio-rip-rfc0001
Title: Treatise on audio ripping standards.
Version: 1.2

After much changing and experience I think I'm settling on the best way to
organise MP3/OGG files on my HD.

These are the conclusions:

1) There MUST always be ID3 tag information in all files.

    Many programs use these, when filenames just don't cut it.
    Make sure these fields contain the correct information before ripping the
    CD as, even though you may correct the filenames afterwards, the Tag info
    will still be wrong. (And one can always quickly re-create the filename
    from the tag info with handy utils)

    It is preferred to have ID3-V2 tag info, as opposed to ID3-V1.
    (Don't add any legacy ID3-V1 info unless ID3-V2 is not available)

2) Make 100% sure spelling is correct.

    I never knew someone could misspell "Alanis Morissette" in 5 different
    ways!

3) The directory hirarchy: /Artist/Album/...

    This is a good way of grouping files, and helps if you want to be able to
    manipulate by artist or album. Since Winamp can play entire directories
    when it is dragged and dropped on it, this actually has a purpose!
    It is important (more so with Artist names than Album names) to put all
    'The' and 'A' words at the back, eg: "Cure, The". There are usually many
    more Artists, than there are albums, and it helps with the searching.
    Another issue is using abbreviated forms; to keep consistency, all '&'
    should be 'and', as well as any other abbreviations should also be expanded.

4) The filename:
        SongName - Artist.mp3

    There are some variations on this, but they have proved to be inadequate.
    It is useless to encode track numbers into song names since eventually
    people split songs up, in which case the song track number has no
    purpose. There are anyway better ways to order songs. (see next point)
    The reason why SongName comes first, is because it is the most important
    part of the filename. It happens that filenames sometimes get mangled
    (and not just 8.3 file name mangling... 30 char max on iso9660),
    and it is always the last part that gets lost. Also when displaying
    filenames, most programs never have enough space to display the full
    name.

5) Playlist (per album)
              Album - Artist.m3u
      (or Album - Artist.pls, depending on taste - it's all the same)

    This is the best way to keep album order as it is seperate from the
    filename, which can get mangled etc etc.
    The order is important. (see reason in 4)

    The placement of the playlist should be either on the same direcory
    level as the album or the artist directory.
    It's more easily accessible that way.

6) Encoding.

    Encoding should always be at least 128kbps @ 44kHz. Variable bitrate
    encoding is encouraged, since you can effectively get 256 bitrate at
    very little extra size increase. Make sure files did not skip...
    there's nothing as irritating as having a perfect complete collection
    of an artist, except for that one song.... grrr.

    Joint stereo encoding is slower, but could make files much smaller at
    no extra loss.

    NOTE: MP3 files are surpassed by OGG (Ogg Vorbis) w.r.t. Quality,
                but at the moment it is not yet mature and encoding is still
                quite slow. It is, however, a better though-out standard, and
                has a better and cleaner future. AAC is also a better alternative.

Anyway, this is a RFC, so please C.
Domini