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[f1eng]

rjalder,

F1eng will clarify, but I believe his complaint is that the tagging and organization of classical music files is not well handled by most 'library' software, whether iTunes or others. It has to do with how the music files are organized and ordered. With classical music, there are more ways, or alternatives, in how to classify and identify music. Is it by composer, or conductor, or orchestra? As well, many classical discs have several soloists, and that can come across as multiple artists in the metadata. I don't think he is referring to sound quality; rather, just the organizational file structure as sorted by various music playback applications.

I do not have an extensive classical collection, but even so, having a disc of say, Corelli, with some tracks with one soloist, and then other tracks with another, or more soloists, can create real annoyances when trying to organize music. Or if a disc has a collection of works by two composers, with many performers the tagging can be very frustrating.

Thank you for clarifying this for me, you got it exactly.

The original iTunes nest of folders does not have a way to organise classical music adequately, and nothing else I have seen does either.
There have been some potential common practice recommendations for storing metadata, but the most frequently used one puts the name of the work followed by the movement in the "song" field, which means not being able to read which movement you are about to play on most displays.
Also many, maybe most, works are not ripped into a single folder without intervention and simple playing often does not play the tracks in the correct order. What eventually made me give up was when choosing Mahler's Das Liede von der Erde my player played the first movement of one recording, then the first movement from a different recording, then the first movement of yet another version (I have 5). To re-tag everything so this wouldn't happen would take me so long I deleted these rips and only now play classical rips I did before, no new ones.

Whilst I was travelling I just ripped my CDs and put each in a playlist with sensible name "Mahler 5 Solti" for example, which allowed me to a) find it quickly in my library and b) make sure it played the correct tracks in the correct order.
Now I have retired and don't frequently listen to a portable I have gone back to playing CDs and the odd LP for classical.
Ripping systems seem to sort pop music fine.