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Thought I would simply share this.

My better half & I were discussing a room redesign and the following observation was made

“You have a lot of records that are taking up space that we could use, I don’t want you to get rid of them but maybe some of them could go elsewhere and you get them out when you want to listen to them. And, lets be honest, you don’t sit down and listen to them very often and even then it is probably only a small subset as you spend most of your time with the Sonos on”

This was fair comment and it got me thinking. These LPs were bought to be listened to and that wasn’t happening, yes of course I could listen via Deezer or other streaming services but somehow that didn’t happen very often and I had to remember that I had the specific LP, and of course never when I was out and about. They were all bought for a reason and in most cases they are still good albums (although one or two make me question my teenager taste).

Over the years I have ripped a few of them to FLAC (and MP3 for the phone) but it is a time consuming slog, set up the technical bits, play the record and rip a side then go through the exercise of splitting into the individual tracks and provide all the meta data. I have therefore never got very far. The inspiration was - why not just rip them a side at a time.

So that is what I have been slowly doing. If I listen to a LP I would sit down and play one side all the way through and probably leave the sleeve next to the turntable, similarly a large chunk of our Sonos listening is background so I don’t need the individual tracks then either. 

Ok there is still some work involved but it is a lot less and I am getting to listen my old music as well as the more modern stuff and I am listening to the tracks as the composer/ artist / band expected me to.

My local Library is getting bigger so more choice for both home and out and about listening  (which BTW where are the Sonos Headpohones?) 

So If you have got old LPs lying around why not get ripping and remind yourself of your youth.

 

Last time I used it, Apple Music had a function while ripping that would allow you to ‘group’ several tracks as a single track. I found it quite useful, as I didn’t always agree with the predefined separation by others (music companies, mostly, especially on CDs)

While you have the LPs out take photos or scan the covers and liner notes to add to your NAS. Storage is cheap and digging in the storage closet is a pain.

You can also use the album covers (at reduced sizes) for artwork in the Sonos Music Library.

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/missing-music-library-album-art-in-the-sonos-app

 

I organized my ripped music using the tags but I also made a storage directory structure of A, B, C... and so forth. Under each letter I put a sub-directory for each album that contains the tracks. Your tagging software should have options for track labels that let you pick how they are formatted. Maybe in your LP case just Side 1 and Side 2 or more if a multi LP set. Once done you can use the “Folder View” to access just what you want rather quickly or use the Sonos Search if you want to browse by tagged data.

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