How the 10,000 CD limit makes an impact?

[Andy Snapper]

Hello again.

I was just idly reading parts of the website and noted that there is a 10,000 CD software limit for my 2Tb B2. This has set me wondering how I might be affected by this because of the manner in which I have been recording my classical music. I would be grateful if someone could tell me.

Just to recap on how I am transferring my music. You will be aware that a classical CD will have all manner of combinations of separate pieces of music e.g. one CD may have two different symphonies and another CD may have 4 differing concertos. I have not loaded 2 CDs with the filing 'mess' that might create. I will have loaded the symphonies as two separate items and from the other CD the concertos as four separate items. So with these examples have I in effect made 6 entries when only 2 CDs have been processed.

So by breaking all these CDs into their component musical pieces, will I be shooting myself in the foot and not filling the 2Tb before I have reached my 10,000 album limit? I have attached a screen shot on the album toggle to perhaps assist with my question.

Thanks for reading.

Andy 

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

How many actual CDs do you have? 

I believe the 10K limit is one set in the software

If you turn 2 actual CDs into 6 then on average Each CD = 3  - 10000/3 = 3,333 CDs (that is quite a lot)!

Fred

[Daniel Taylor]

I like your method of handling classical pieces by giving them each their own Album folder.

I think that, theoretically, it's possible that you could hit the limit, although I don't know what would happen in that case.  But in practical terms, I wouldn't worry about it.

How big is your CD collection?  Multiply the number of discs by either the worst case most works per disc, or average case, and get an approximation of the number of Album folders you'd need.

If you did actually hit that limit, you could ask Brennan to increase it.  Up til now, I don't think anybody has hit that limit yet, so I doubt if anyone knows what the effects would be.  You would become the Guinea pig (aka lab rat) ;o)

[Daniel Taylor]

So I'm in the middle of composing my epistle and in walks my wife - and all thoughts of a prompt reply fly out the window.  And now I see that Fred has beat me to the punch and hit the nail squarely on the head.  Well done.

[Andy Snapper]

I may be worrying unnecessarily but it struck me about saying 10,000 CDs, should I be thinking off it as 10,000 entries, because I wasn't doing straight CDs so what was the limiting factor going to become? There are swings and roundabouts that could work to my advantage. E.g. an Opera set of two CDs will just be one entry as the track numbers will be continued on rather than doing disc 1 and then disc 2. 

But to answer your question I have in excess of 6,000 CDs. Since retiring I have been on a bit of a binge  and I know I may never even hear some of these CDs once, if at all. But I suddenly wondered that if I was, in many instances, just putting pieces of music on separately, then conceivably where I was reliant on the advertised disc capacity then I was going to come a cropper. 

As I am loading FLAC files too then that hard disc capacity number would be reduced accordingly as well, but not the software limit. But on some compilations, for example, there may be 10 tracks by different composers and if I make separate entries for each of them....? I suspect I will be fed up of the loading up before I reach the software limit and will actually want to listen to some music rather than keep feeding the B2.

I did just need to clarify what I should be looking out for, will it be separate entries rather than CDs? I may have to add some rock.

Andy

[Andy Snapper]

And thank you to Daniel too for chipping in. I must discourage myself from trying to find out what will happen because it will take time. 

Friends of mine have been thinking about the Brennan B2 and so are watching my experience. But they are more 'rock' orientated but I'm also thinking of putting some rock in but was loathe to break the listings of classical music! How OCD is that becoming? But could I then secrete 'rock' music out of the main list by putting it into a rainbow colour?

Cheers

Andy

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi Andy,

Before you make any course corrections to what you are doing, wait for PMB - (Paul form Brennan) to get back to you on this.

As I recall the "limits" to collection size were a software parameter that Martin Brennan set - "believing" no one would ever have that many CDs. 

assuming you were to listen for 8 hours a day and each CD is 75 mins of music. You could listen to 6.4 CDs a day

6000/ 6.4= 938 days of solid listening 2.5 Years to hear all you CDs - just once :))

Fred

On Monday, 29 March 2021 at 18:02:59 UTC+1 Andy Snapper wrote:

[Daniel Taylor]

Happy listening!  We wish you luck. ;o)

[Andy Snapper]

Hello Fred

Whilst we had lock down that was an idea, but now that spring is here and the sun is out, finally, then 'solid' listening is not an option. My good lady does occasionally remind me that that the spree must end as there are boxes and boxes of this stuff to load on. We move into the realms of philosophy and how we want to spend our time. Should I be listening to 'new to me music' or the music I know I enjoy? And there is life beyond music too! 

Andy

[Rik]

..or preface ‘Rock’ with a Z and have it at the end , Andy. 

[Andy Snapper]

Actually Fred I realise that I significantly under estimate the problem. 6000 is the number of entries on my database but since discovering a pile of Complete Mozart Edition boxes in a local charity shop I had to find ways to make up the complete set and rediscoverd Ebay after a 15 year absence. As a result some of those entries are box sets with anything between 10 and 70 discs!!!! 

I have my answer....

A box set of seventy discs on one entry will rebalance the disadvantage. ;-)

Andy

On Monday, 29 March 2021 at 18:20:32 UTC+1 fred.w....@gmail.com wrote:

[Andy Snapper]

Oh Rik,

That is such a cool and simple answer to pander to my compulsions!!!

Cheers. I see it now Z1 Z2 Z3 .....

[Rik]

Oh good. I thought it might be a silly suggestion but I have mainly classical music and my other categories, pop, jazz,  Christmas, etc are at the end under Z01, Z02 etc. You need the 0.

[Iain Bell]

I think I might be about to run into problems soon too if there is a 10,000 album limit - I'm currently up to ca. 8,500, but estimate I will need up to 15,000-16,000. Like Andy , my collection is mostly classical and so lots of shorter piano pieces, songs etc have been put into separate folders (albums) for ease of searching - I guess some consolidation could be done to reduce the no. of albums I have, but that would seem to be a step backwards when trying to locate pieces quickly. Hope there is a solution ;-)

[PMB]

Hi All,

I found this on the Latest Software page - November 2018

The limits are now 11,000 albums, 6,000 artists, 170,000 tracks

and I do not think it has been changed since then.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[john.h...@gmail.com]

Paul I also spotted the below 

John 

https://www.brennan.co.uk/itemcontent.php/content/Miscellaneous

[PMB]

Hi John,

I would say the Latest Software page is more current.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Iain Bell]

Hi all,

 

I spent a few minutes googling and came across this thread on the forum: “2 TB Brennan says "Memory Full" only used under 300 GB of space” – on 10 Jul 2020, 12:24:46 Paul wrote:

 

Hi Scott,

 

Martin has just sent me this -

 

In fact the latest limits are

15,000 albums

6,000 artists

170,000 tracks

But it is possible to fill memory before those limits are reached – if track names are long for example.

It will scan up to the album limit so deleting albums wont show until you get under that limit

NB Backup will backup everything on the disk – even if you cant see it

Martin

 

Paul

Brennan Support.

 

Is the limit 11000 or 15000 and is it valid for flac as well as mp3 files?

 

Thanks,

 

Iain

[Peter Lowham]

Hi All,

There is another limit, a hard one, that should be added to this list and that is the maximum 'music' partition size which s 2000GB (2TB).  This is not a Brennan limitation; it is a hard disk FAT32 partition size limit.

What this means is that if you are using '.flac' files, you will hit this limit at about 100,000 tracks (in an average collection).  That will reduce to about 53,000 tracks if you are storing in '.wav' format.

Regards,

Peter.

[PMB]

Hi Iain,

I checked back and found that email - well spotted - and it appears the limits is 15,000 albums, bearing in mind Peter's comments.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Iain Bell]

Hi Paul, 
Thanks, that a big relief - I think I should now be OK and maybe only need to consolidate a limited number of albums going forward to be able to stay under the 15,000 limit - I'm still probably a few months away from getting that far, but with the extra 4,000 or 5,000 at least I don't need to revisit what I've done so far, which would have been a major headache ;-)

So, just to recap and to make sure I've undertsood correctly (bearing in mind Peter's comments), am I right in thinking that I can have 15,000 albums on a 2TB B2 with up to ca. 100,000 ".flac" files?

Thanks in advance,

Iain

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi Iain

I could be reading this wrong,  BUT I think Peter is saying this.

2TB is the MAXIMUM size that any FAT32 Partition can be. Thus as the B2 uses FAT32, the maximum disk space that can be address by a B2  is 2TB.

I think Peter is also saying that from his database of backup volumes/times which gives him an estimate of the average size for an album and track in the B2 environment,

If your music collection has 100,000 "flac" files, these will FILL a 2TB disk,

or,

looking at it another way 15,000 albums usually uses 2TB of disk space.

Of cause if you went to MP3 you could fit more music tracks on, as this compression reduces the files size still further.

Fred

[Iain Bell]

Hi Fred,

I've interpreted it that way as well, so I think I should be OK with what I have left to import on to the B2. The current status of my B2 is:

Software Version B2B Mar 22 2021 09:07:23

54726 tracks in 8735 albums 1509 artists

0 WAV 54726 FLAC 0 MP3 0 AAC

Capacity 2000.00G Used 1134.34Gb

I've been going through my CDs in alphabetical order and am towards the end of the Ms so am assuming that I'm over half way (based on how much space the CDs used to take up on the shelves - now they're in paper envelope sleeves ready for filing after being ripped ;-))

Based on the info I got from Peter and Paul, I'm going to carry on ripping until I get to ca. 14,000 albums while keeping an eye on the no. of tracks and if it looks like there'll be a problem running up against a limit then I'll have to think about switching to mp3 or consolidating some albums to keep under the limit - worst case, I'll delete some albums that won't get listened to so often.

Thanks for your help,

Iain

[Andy Snapper]

Gosh Iain,

Halfway there I guess! Doing it alphabetically too. That is organised, disciplined, and systematic. I think I must have a different compulsion ;-).

Thank you again for your ideas about labelling classical music and using dbpoweramp. I am sure that is saving a lot of time. 

Back to the coal face - 1.94Tb to go.

Andy

[Iain Bell]

Hi Andy, 

Yes, it's been a long journey so far and still some months to go ;-) I had my CDs lined up alphabetically, as with a few thousand of them I could never have found what I was looking for otherwise - the real problem came when the record companies started reissuing artist box sets (25-100 CDs per box) with various composers' works inside - now listening via the B2 that problem has been solved, so I don't have to rely on an increasingly dodgy memory to see what I've actually got :-)

Good luck with your ripping!

Best regards,

Iain

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Iain,

I've plugged your figures into my 'Brennan Estimator Spreadsheet' and I reckon that your collection will 'fit' into the 2TB.  On my collection when I got to the end of the 'M' series, I had used 54% of the disk space, so if your collection is anything like that (statistically) then you should be OK'

The 'Estimator' also give a figure of about 41 hours for a full Export.

Regards,

Peter.

[Iain Bell]

Hi Peter,

Thanks, that's very reassuring ;-) Didn't relish the thought of having either to merge previous rips or to weigh up which future ones should be done as one album instead of as individual works.

Best regards,

Iain

[PMB]

Hi Iain,

The 'collective' is hoping you are doing regular backups as you work your way through your music collection.....!

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Iain Bell]

Hi Paul, 

For sure 😉 - and multiple copies, some offsite, just to be safe! I've enjoyed ripping the CDs for the most part - but it is possible to have too much of a good thing!

Best regards,

Iain