John
Metadata isn’t the most exciting topic in the world of digital audio but few can do without it being present and correct.
For as long as I’ve been writing about audio gear – six years – I’ve been using Dan Gravell’s Bliss software to automatically add cover art to each release in my music library.
Bliss also ensures basic tags are present and automatically applies a folder/file structure according to those tags and a user-specified rule. More on that shortly.
Each and every new album entering my collection gets processed by Bliss. Why bother when Roon adds cover art? Because Roon isn’t the only software I – and probably you – use to navigate and play music.
Part of Bliss’ brilliance is that it plugs the metadata holes in one’s library, thus ensuring that cover art, album title, artist name and release year show up correctly when an album is dragged out to FLACPlayer on an iPhone or onto a Pono Player or when it is pulled into Audirvana Plus’ self-contained library or into iTunes.
As a tagger, Bliss allows me to swiftly correct artist and album title add release year should it be missing. However, for adding missing track numbers I find Bliss’ web interface a little clunky. Here I defer to mp3tag.
Many years ago I was a staunch advocate for browsing via folder structure, specifically when using Logitech Media Server to control network streaming to a Squeezebox Touch. This was in spite of all metadata being present and correct. Don’t think for a moment that I renamed each and every folder manually. Bliss took care of that laborious job automatically by reading the metadata contained in each file and restructuring files/folders according this rule:
<artist> – <year> – <album title> / <track number> – <track title>
Those folder browsing days are long gone for this fella but the digital audio world at large is only about me (or you). There remain many digital audiophiles out there – Foobar users for example – who prefer to right click on a folder and hit play. For these guys, proper file folder organisation is 100% essential. Bliss reads the metadata contained in your FLACs and ALACs (and MP3s) to ensure that your folder structure remains a thing of beauty.
Bliss isn’t your traditional software application either. It runs as a server daemon on a host PC, Mac, NAS or Linux box, accessible via any network device with IP address and web browser.
As Graville mentioned with a chuckle when I caught up with him in a windy beer garden an Munich High-End 2016, a home router and port forwarding would allow you to groom your digital audio library’s metadata from work. Just sayin’:
Try Bliss out for yourself. Gravell loads each install with 100 free fixes after which a set of 500 fixes will run you £10. Those seeing as much value in Bliss as I do should bypass the piecemeal fix purchase and drop the £30 required for an unlimited number.
Further information: Bliss HQ
Advertisement
