For high quality album [and often Single/EP too]
artwork @ 1000PX I highly recommend
Fanart.Tv.
Unlike some other sites, no drama, no login or password required. The artwork also seems to be something of a showcase for Photoshoppers- old album artwork is enhanced, scanned fonts from artwork are replaced with digital ones, etc, [example for some of the
Ella Fitzgeralds ] seems consistently better than any other source I've found, with the caveat that perhaps unless you're a programmer, you've got to manually search & retrieve them.
Per my previous post ,
#469 , I'm a Mac user 99% of the time, but my
workflow for preparing any lossless music whether for USB or on my home PS Audio Streaming DAC I still do on Bootcamp/Windows.
I've researched/adopted [some friends might say prescriptively proselytize'd even !] these tools/order :
1:
RIP:
ExactAudioCopy - yep, the unapologetic CD-source dinosaur I am. EAC not only interrogates remote databases for correct [gives you fuzzy match options often if unsure] track & album information, more importantly [to me, since worst case I can CSV import track information to TagScanner ] it can do a checksum on your CD ripper for accuracy - decades ago I figured if I was going to archive my CD's, I may as well do at best accuracy possible.
2:
Convert to Metatag Lossless:
DBPoweramp. Still haven't found a better, more flexible or powerful alternative that's as easy to use, especially for batch jobs, for example, converting some 10,000 ALAC tracks from my iTunes into FLAC for Tesla USB literally in one go. [Took about 40 minutes to do 10,000 lossless tracks on a 6 core 2012 MacPro Tower] Sure I've used FooBar for stuff [extracting an entire single album file into multiple tracks especially useful if you have the .CUE file] but it seems clunky & the developers seem to care about interface/aesthetics about as much as those responsible for Gmail, - I can't comment on it's batch stuff, though it does have some powerful up/down-sampling features [that aren't useful in the Tesla USB context ]
3:
Organise: Per ,
#469, hands-down,
TagScanner & it's myriad-yet-accessible features for extracting filenames into meta-tag fields, copy/paste, and batch rename into folders/artists has been a godsend.
I still have zero confidence in Tesla USB consistency, but in lieu of any kind of playlist functionality, I both
renamed the FLAC files starting with track number , as well as
meta-tagged track numbers to match the desired playlist order.. so far, it seems to work as as folder=playlist workaround, & weirdly, if I didn't do both [prefix file name with track #, meta-tag track number as same] it doesn't work consistently.
4:
[Album-art Optimise] FanArt TV for source download @ 1000px, then I batch convert the 1000Px 's into 600px, using a humble
FastStone Image Viewer to do so.
I can clipboard copy/paste the 600px'ers into TagScanner for that. In Tagscanner I only store 1 single front CoverArt, ie not multiple images, and in TagScanner I can easily interrogate/purge any residual/wrong images from the file before overwriting with my desired image.
Is there a single-source solution that does all of this 1-4 ?
I would hope so by now [I started doing this in the early 2000's ], but my experience - and perhaps OCD tendencies for source accuracy, & clean album art, so far suggests not, though admittedly I long ago abandoned putting any effort into sourcing alternatives.
Hope my suggestions/experiences are helpful.
Can we please have basic playlist support Elon?
