Copying albums from JB7 to B2

[Rob Harriman]

I would like to copy about half of my albums from my JB7 to my B2. This is nevertheless well in excess of 500 albums. 

Unfortunately the ‘Backup Music’ option on the JB7 doesn’t allow me to specify albums, as far as I can see.  

I don’t want to copy all the albums across. Some are already on the B2 from CD loading and others are less important to me.

Using the ‘Album to USB’ option on the JB7 copies the individual album to the USB stick in the correct track order. 

However when I use the ‘USB Import from C’ option to load the album to the B2 it loses the track order and displays the tracks alphabetically.  I am using the web interface to the B2 from my iMac.

This is a little weird as the tracks are uploaded from the USB stick in the correct order, according to the B2 display panel, as the reloading takes place.

I then have to manually rename the album and artist from unknown, and rename each track individually, prefaced by 01, 02 etc. from my iMac to get the track order to play correctly on my B2.

This is very labour intensive and at my speediest, is still about 15 minutes to complete each album copy.

It’s obvious that this was not designed to fulfil this particular function.

Does anyone know of a faster and much less labour intensive way to achieve my aim?

Many thanks in advance.

Rob

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

Hi Rob.

I am just thinking outside the box here (I DO NOT HAVE A SOLUTION OR OWN A JB7) to help the discussion.

As far as I understand there is no pre-built solution to your issue. The tools that are there would normally expect the user to backup ALL the content of the JB7 ("hardafi" mode) and then restore this onto the B2 (the B2 sorts out the "hardafi" structure

int B2 structure). 

The B2's "USB Import from C" expects B2 structure.

------------------------------------

However (as I say out of the box thinking) - what if you

1) make an "Export" backup of your B2 as it is.

2) make a full "backup" of your JB7

3) reformat the B2's HDD

4) "restore" the JB7's "backup" to the clean B2. (meaning everything on your JB7 is now properly on your B2.

5) "Import" your B2's backup onto your B2. 

I believe/think that the B2's "import" will overwrite files that are pre-existing so this operation should perform a "merge".

I COULD BE ALL WRONG with this approach - I put it out there for others to comment on ----- Please DO NOT do this until a consensus is reached regarding the soundness of what I have suggested.

Fred. 

[Rob Harriman]

Hi Fred.

Thanks for confirming that I wasn't missing the blindingly obvious.

Your idea sounds interesting, although I'll certainly hold off until a consensus has been reached.

Cheers

Rob

[JFBUK]

Hi Rob,

Like Fred I do not own a JB7 and I don't know how you ripped tracks initially.

As you suspect I think the tracks are being re-ordered because the filenames of the ripped tracks names do include a track number ?

when I rip I choose a filename of the format

01 Honky Tonk Women.flac

If your track filenames do not include track numbers then you might be able to add this with software on your iMac.

This will be easier if the tracks were ripped to include metadata tags , tag data typically includes track numbers , so the software can pick this up to format the filename.

I have done this with Musicbrainz Picard for example.

If there is no tag data it might still be possible to add a track number with a script in Picard but I have never done that.

I did find this but with no iMac I don't know of its practicality

https://www.imore.com/how-rename-multiple-files-once-mac

John

[Rob Harriman]

Hi John.

Thanks for your thoughts. 

I am not sure I fully understand your suggestion.  Perhaps I can clarify things though.

The albums were ripped to the JB7 using the JB7's cd drive and internal software. It then did its thing compressing the music to mp3 format so  that I can then access the music at an album level via 'Browse albums' for example.

I am then copying the album at the album level, not at an individual track level from the JB7 to the B2 via the process described above.

When I look at the copied album using the Brennan web interface on the B2 it has picked up the individual track names but displays them alphabetically,  having obviously not kept any of the associated album metadata from the JB7 version.  

It's not that the iMac is unable to select multiple files, it's the web interface for the B2 that doesn't allow me to select multiple tracks or albums together.  I have to work at the individual track level to set up the track running order.  Obviously doing it this way there is no associated metadata for the resulting album on the B2, so it's far from ideal.

Feel free to enlighten me if I've misunderstood something.

Rob

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Rob,

I do have a JB7, a B2 and a BB1, and have done much transferring and reloading of albums from one to the others in both directions.

In this situation, I would be inclined to run a full 'Backup music' to a suitable USB device.  Looking at the data that you have supplied (500 albums being about half of your collection) that would give a HDD volume of about 85GB for 1000 albums (you can check this on the JB7 'Disk stats' window 'xx.yy Gb used').  This will take about 60 hours to backup, as the JB7 backup runs at USB1.0 rate (approximately 1.5GB per hour).  So my approach would be as follows. 

1.  Run 'Backup music' to a USB device on the JB7.

2.  Then transfer the backup HDD to your PC/Mac and look into the 'hardfi' folder.  There you will find your entire JB7 music collection.

3.  Then bulk select the albums you don't want to transfer to the B2 and remove those.  (I would save those to your PC/Mac just in case you might want some of them later on).

4.  At this point, your backup HDD only contains the artists and albums that you do want to transfer.

5.  On the B2, plug the USB HDD backup device into the USB C port.

6.  Select 'USB Functions' --> 'JB7 Functions' --> 'Restore USB C'.

This will restore these artists and albums in the correct format and should complete in about 3 hours. The B2's transfer rate is about 27GB per hour, so is much faster than the JB7.

@Fred; what needs to be considered is that the music tracks on the JB7 are in 'mp3' format, whereas the tracks on Rob's B2 are likely to be in 'flac' format (the JB7 does not support 'flac' compression).

This means that the 'overwrite' mode of the 'Restore' will not overwrite an existing track of the same name because although the music track title is the same, the suffix is different.  So you would end up with two tracks of the same name in the album folder; for example, one being '01 xxxxxx.flac', the other being '01 xxxxxx.mp3'.

@Rob;

As you have found, there is no way to select albums from within the JB7.  So the easiest way (in my view) is to get all of the albums onto and external HDD, and then selectively reduce the external HDD music set down to to albums that you require to load onto the B2.

Regards,

Peter.

On Wednesday, 16 June 2021 at 12:20:22 UTC+1 JFBUK wrote:

[Rob Harriman]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for this procedure. It's going to be a great help.

I didn't realise that I could subsequently edit the JB7 backup file on my Mac. That's key.

Obviously the JB7 usb drive is chronically slow, but at least I can just leave it running.

Am off to get myself a spare hard drive.

Thanks,

Rob

[JFBUK]

Hi Rob,

apologies if I added confusion. 

I missed that you were copying from the JB7 on an album by album basis and that the JB7 only deals in MP3s.

Hopefully Peter's advice will work for you ( I am sure it will)

@peter

Does the JB7 automatically add numbering to the track names when it rips CDs like the B2 ?

[Peter Lowham]

Hi John,

No, the JB7 does not add track numbering when it rips a CD.  However you can add track numbering manually.  In the JB7, the album and track data are held in a database file called 'jb7 catalogue'. You can use 'USB' --> 'Export names' to write this file out to a USB stick.  Then, using a PC/Mac editor,  you can edit each line in this file to add in the track number and any other changes.  Once you have completed the changes, you transfer the USB stick back to the JB7 and use 'USB' --> 'Import names' and this copies the dtabase back into the JB7.

Just to add a clarification, the JB7 uses 'wav' and 'mp3', so if you have uncompressed tracks in the JB7 then these will also be in the backup.

Regards,

Peter.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Rob,

Yes, when you plug the JB7 Backup USB device into your Mac, you can use Finder to list and select folders and files very easily.  I use both a Mac and a PC and this should be straight-forward.

Regards,

Peter.

[Rob Harriman]

Hi Peter,

Can I just ask what program you use on your Mac to format the external HDD to FAT32 so that the JB7 recognises it please?

The Brennan recommended EASEUS program appears to be Windows only.

Have bought a Seagate One Touch 2TB, as I plan to use it to backup the B2 once the latter is populated.

Hope you can help.

Cheers,

Rob

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Rob,

I format my disks and devices on a PC (as I have both PC and Mac laptops), using IM-Magic Partition Maker.  Unfortunately this is a Windows only product.  I have been looking on the web for a free-to-use Mac disk formatter but haven't had much luck so far.

Mac does have a built-in utility called 'Disk Utility' in 'Launchpad' --> 'Other' folder, but I think that it can only do FAT32 format up to 32GB, but I have not had time to check that out yet.

If there are other Mac users out there who could advise further, that would be helpful.

Regards,

Peter.

[Rob Harriman]

Hi Peter,

Just to let you know, Disk Utility worked fine on my MAC.

I discounted it before because I couldn't see FAT32 under the new format options.

That was my mistake.  I found a youtube video that showed the formatting being done and if you select 'erase' and enter MS-DOS FAT for the new format  it happily goes away and creates a FAT32 disk readable on the JB7.

As I write the 'Backup Music' process is underway on the JB7.

Thanks for all your help. Much appreciated.

Rob  

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Rob,

That's great news.  Many articles referred to a 32GB limit on the Mac FAT32 format, so it looks like this is just another piece of fiction of the web!!

Regards,

Peter.

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

Thanks for the clarification Peter.

Fred

On Wednesday, 16 June 2021 at 13:00:42 UTC+1 peter....@gmail.com wrote:

[Jim Carroll]

Hi,

I'm new to this forum and I have a couple of JB7s- a JB7 320gb and a JB7i 500gb

I have a few problems with them, namely:

I can no longer load CDs to them and can't seem to update the database  either. I have not loaded any cds to either device since 2012 .

I had loaded a lot of the same CDs on each device but there are some albums that are not on the older JB7 that are on the new JB7i .

I have backed up the files on two separate external  hard drives.I want to copy as much as possible to the older 320gb and maybe get the JB7i repaired.

If I copy files (which are on the the JB7i) which are on an external hard drive to the older JB7 will it replace any existing files with the version on the hard drive?

I have uploaded CDs not loaded to the JB7s to Windows Media Player and saved them in MP3 format. If I wish to transfer these files to the JB7 do I have to number each track if I wish to play the CD/file in track order?

If I copy an album (from WMP to USB to JB7) that already exists on the JB7 will it replace the existing file on the JB7?

 I would be grateful for any clarification as I'm not completely sure about these issues.

Thanks

Jim

[Peter Lowham]

Hi All,

I received the PM below from Rob.

Hi Peter,

Just to let you know - my JB7 backup finished some time last night without incident and the hardfi folder is populated with my albums in alphabetical order which is great for my purposes. So far so good.

Re: the 32GB limit you've mentioned - It seems that FAT32 limits individual file sizes to 4GB and disk sizes to 2TB or (16TB for 4K sectors). I waited until now because I was wondering whether I'd hit the discussed 32GB limit in the middle of the backup. I was intrigued by this because Disk Utility only took a few seconds to pronounce it had converted my Seagate 2TB disk to FAT32, which obviously mean't that it did not go away and reformat the whole drive, merely some pointers somewhere. 

It's fortunate that none of my albums were more than 4GB in size, but then as mp3 files that was going to be extremely unlikely.

Nevertheless, whatever Disk Utlility did, it was enough for my purposes so I am a relieved and happier bunny.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Rob,

Good to know that all is now well with you and thanks for letting us know.

Just to clarify a couple of points that you have made.

1.  You are correct about the FAT32 limits.  However the 16TB for 4K sectors limit is not useable for most systems as Windows, Linux, MacOSX and most others cannot deal with 4K sectors.  The fixed size for these Operating Systems is 512 byte sectors.

2.  The maximum individual file size is 4GB, but this is a file size and not a folder size.  So unless you have a music track greater than 4GB you will never hit this limit.  The limit can be hit with video files however.

3.  The 32GB limit on the Mac came from a number of internet articles, but they appear to be incorrect, which is good!

Regards,

Peter.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Jim,

I've done some tests on my JB7 with regard to file transfers and was surprised at the result.  But the bottom line is that you should be able to achieve your aim here.

What I have found out is the JB7 'Restore music' function is incremental.  This surprised me because I thought that this function worked in 'overwrite' mode, mainly because the later B2 model's equivalent function (called 'Import from USB') works in 'overwrite' mode.  On both the JB7 and the B2 the 'Backup music' and the B2 equivalent 'Export to USB' are incremental.

So I ran some tests on the JB7 and have found that during a 'Restore music' run, if the album or track already exists in the JB7 then the 'Restore' skips over that track and moves on to the next track and so on.

Therefore, if you take your JB7i Backup, and plug this into your JB7 and run 'Restore music, then only the music that is not in the JB7 will be restored.

With regard to track numbering, the JB7 does not use this for playing music. Rather, it plays album tracks in the order in which the tracks were loaded into the JB7 at the time of the particular 'Restore' session.  So if you want to play albums in the correct track order, then it would be practical to use track numbering before transferring the album(s) to the USB device prior to 'Restore'.  That would ensure that the tracks are loaded into the JB7 in the correct order.  You can see your track ordering by using the 'USB Functions' --> 'Export names' function and loading the 'jb7 catalogue'  file into your PC/Mac.

On the query of copying from WMP to USB to JB7, if you copy an album that is already on the JB7 then the JB7 file will not be overwritten.

Just be aware that the 'Restore' function does EXACT name comparison between the source and the target.  So you might have duplicates if a source and target have only a very slight difference name.

Regards,

Peter.

On Friday, 18 June 2021 at 16:07:13 UTC+1 jimic...@gmail.com wrote:

[Rob Harriman]

Coming back to the original reason for this thread:

Unfortunately, in spite of the help of folks on here, I am still faced with the problem of the music from the JB7 losing the order of album tracks when it comes to putting them on the B2. Call me old-fashioned but  I like to listen to albums as the artist intended them to be heard, not in alphabetical track order. To explain:

The 'backup music' option on the JB7, in the same way as the 'Album to USB' option I used above , loses the track order of the CD that has been originally ripped to the JB7.  This is in spite of the album retaining and playing the music in the correct order on the JB7. The resultant hardfi folder on the backup disk contains the albums in alphabetical order, but each album also has its tracks in alphabetical order.  So, although the help has enabled me to select only those albums I want on the B2, I am still faced with manually renaming every single track on these 500 or so albums to preface them with 01, 02 etc to get them to play in the correct order. I haven't tried to load this file onto the B2, but I don't see how it will reorder the tracks correctly, as things stand. PITB with bells on!!

I don't know if I have  missed anything, never having actually restored my JB7 before, but it seems to me that unless the system finds the correct track order when restoring a JB7 in some mysterious fashion, it seems that such a system restore will mangle the original JB7 playing order.  Has this never been addressed before? Equally I find it extraordinary that considering these devices are designed to rip and play cds in the correct order that nobody has thought that people might actually want to transfer music between the JB7 and B2 in the proper track order.

Can anyone help me overcome this issue please?  What am I missing?

Thanks

Rob

[Daniel Taylor]

From what I've read in the forum lately (I don't know if it was this thread, or another), the JB7 keeps all the albums' track order stored in a separate file.  So it is my understanding that when you want to import your JB7 files onto a B2, you must first prepend each track's filename with the digits of the track number.  The B2 plays the tracks in alphabetical order, but having the numbers leading off the names accomplishes this, because their codes precede those for the letters.

[Peter Lowham]

 Hi Rob,

I'm sort of thinking aloud here, so bear with me!

The JB7 'Backup music' does preserve the order in which the tracks were loaded from the ripped CDs.  If the tracks are being re-ordered, I don't believe that the problem is with Brennan.

Two possibilities come to mind for me.

1.  The PC/Mac computer is changing the order during the copy process.  

2.  The tracks are being physically copied in the same order by the computer BUT the computer is sorting the tracks for the display window.  Often, in the computer environment, the computer wants to sort lists alphabetically, numerically, by time, by date, etc. so the tracks could be in the correct order on the USB device, but the computer is sorting them for presentation display on the screen.  So what you are seeing on the display may not be the true physical order on the disk.

The JB7 (and B2 and BB1) runs the backup starting with the first album that was ever ripped, from the first track of that first album, and just works its way through the music file album by album in that ripped order.

On the JB7, if you use the 'USB Functions' --> 'Export names' function, the 'jb7 catalogue' file is sent to the USB device.  If you use an editor on this file on your PC/Mac you will see the order of the albums and tracks as stored in the JB7 and this is also the order in which they are backed up to the USB device.

Regards,

Peter.

[Daniel Taylor]

Peter,

I'm getting the impression that I'm missing something.  When you do a Restore on the B2, does it add the track numbers for you, assuming that the order it encounters the tracks is the same order in which they were ripped on the JB7?

[Mark Fishman]

Different operating systems (MS-DOS, Linux, etc.), and different filesystems (FAT, NTFS, ext3, HFS+, etc.), store filenames and location information in different ways, and how they are displayed in the user interface often bears no immediately discernible relationship to how they are physically written on the disk. A FAT32 directory, for example, has finite-sized "slots" for filename entries, so when a file is written to disk, the operating system has to find a slot large enough to hold the filename. That's not necessarily the "last" slot, if something with a longer name has been deleted from that directory, nor it it necessarily the slot adjacent to a file that actually takes up adjacent allocation units on the disk.

MS-DOS -- and the command window in MS-Windows -- will display a directory on a FAT32 disk in the physical order of the entries. Windows Explorer always -- ALWAYS -- sorts them *for display*, however, so you NEVER see the entries in their physical order in the GUI.

On an NTFS drive, though, even the command window will always sort the entries when displaying them.

A Linux ext3 directory, like a FAT32 directory, has an internal physical order, but the shell (bash, etc.) and the graphical file managers always sort the displayed list. (Some Linux shells may have an optional switch to circumvent this. The B2 does NOT.) But a ReiserFS directory is actually a kind of database, so there's no real meaning to "physical order of entries" in that filesystem.

The B2 seems to write the b2db file by copying the physical order of directory entries. The Export is also written according to that sequence. But the web UI always sorts the tracks of an album (even if they're not in "correct" sequence in b2db), so if you want to play them in the right order you have to put numbers in the front of the names.

Peter has a JB7 as well as a B2; I hope he can suss out how the JB7 keeps track of things. I gather that a JB7 uses a proprietary OS and disk format.

On Sunday, June 20, 2021 at 4:03:27 PM UTC-4 peter....@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Rob,

I'm sort of thinking aloud here, so bear with me!

[Rob Harriman]

Hi All,

Sorry for  the delay in replying.  Thanks for your thoughts so far.

@Peter

I really don't believe that the MAC is changing the order of the files being displayed. It's not involved in the backup at all - that's the JB7 writing to the external USB HDD, and when I plug the latter into the MAC and open it, it shows the albums and their associated tracks in alphabetical order, not the order they were loaded onto the JB7.  If it is changing the display order it would be the first time I've ever come across this behaviour in decades of UNIX & MAC usage. I am sure that the order of files in the hardfi folder is what the JB7 'Backup Music' option produced.

As a test I have copied an individual album folder from the hardfi folder on the JB7 backup drive to a usb stick to load it onto the B2. Firstly, I tried to use the JB7 functions - Restore USB C command and the B2 didn't load it. It didn't recognise the individual folder as being from a JB7 backup, even though it was. However, I then used the Import from C, USB option and loaded the album onto the B2.  As before I then looked at the B2 web UI under 'Unknown". This time the artist name name isn't shown, but under the album name it shows the artist and album name (Miles Davis Sketches of Spain), with the tracks appearing in alphabetical order. I then played this album on the B2 without renaming the tracks to correct the displayed order, and as I experienced before, the B2 plays the whole album in alphabetical track order.  So I am convinced that this behaviour is real and nothing to do with the MAC reordering the display.

The only question remaining is whether the 'JB7 Functions - Restore from C' option on the B2 will recognise the hardfi folder on the external drive as being genuine and restore all the albums.  Obviously it should, but my strong impression is that it will still need me to manually rename all the tracks to get them to play correctly on the B2.  I am not going to consider doing this until I've exhausted all avenues 

I am afraid that its looking like my only option is either to manually rename somewhere between 5K and 10K of tracks, or abandon the whole idea. 

Perhaps Brennan support would like to comment on this?

[Rob Harriman]

Hi All,

An interesting and possibly critical addendum to my previous entry:

As Peter also suggested I  used the USB Function - 'Export names' to write out the JB7 catalogue to a usb stick. I watched the JB7 front panel run through all 500 or so albums and finish without error.  However the attached screenshot shows what the JB7 catalogue file displayed when opened in my MAC terminal editor:

The Sketches of Spain album by Miles Davis is the first album loaded to the JB7 and there appears to be some sort of corruption. 

Does this potential corruption explain things?

Nevertheless all the albums are playable on both the JB7 and B2, so I am none the wiser really.

Rob

[Mark Fishman]

In your screenshot, it looks as if you tried to *run*, not *edit*, the catalogue file. Your Mac's shell (running in the terminal window) tried to interpret the lines inside the catalogue file as if they were lines in a shell script, and of course (as there is white space in each line) tried to interpret the very first word "Miles" as a command, and subsequent words as arguments.

It failed, as one might expect.

Try opening the catalogue in a text editor, e.g., TextEdit, TextWrangler, vi, or even a word-processing program (BUT DO NOT SAVE IT from any of these programs when you are done looking, or you risk changing the file).

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Rob,

The 'jb7 catalogue' is a pure text file and should be opened with a text editor.  On the Mac this will be 'TextEdit'.  Open this application and then use this to open 'JB7 Catalogue'.

The Mac does not natively understand what format the 'JB7 Catalogue' file is, so the Mac is trying to run the file, hence the error.

Regards,

Peter.

[Peter Lowham]

Rob,

Attached here is the start of my 'JB7 Catalogue' file viewed through TextEdit.

[Rob Harriman]

Oh Dear, I had a brain once.

Apologies for being a numpty.

You're all quite right - My catalogue is not corrupted and looks fine in text edit.

Rob

[Rob Harriman]

Thanks for all your help. The mystery is solved:-)

Contrary to what I said earlier, it turns out the issue is with the Web UI displayed on my MAC all along.

As you'll see from my entry earlier this morning when I loaded the album onto the B2 I looked at the Web UI and saw the album in alphabetical track order. When I then played the album I did it via the Web UI play option.  However, I recently re-engaged my lost brain and decided to actually look at the album via the B2 front panel instead and lo and behold the album track order is correct and also plays the album in the correct order without me having manually renamed the tracks.

So it is the WEB UI that is giving me duff information.  If I don't rename the tracks to put 01,02 etc then I'll just have to remember to play these particular albums from the B2 itself, and I can save myself a shed-load of work.

Quite why the Web UI is misbehaving like this on the MAC remains a mystery to me.  Does this issue also occur on the Windows version?

Anybody know if this is a recognised issue  and if Brennan support plan to address it?

I might try and reload the Web UI, once the albums are on the B2 and see what things look like then.

However,  for now I can see my way forward to loading all the albums onto the B2, which is definitely progress.

Phew - It's been interesting.

Rob 

[Rob Harriman]

Mea Culpa.

Please ignore my last entry - It is totally wrong!! 

I'd forgotten that I had renamed the album after I wrote my earlier entry. 

I have just added another album from the hardfi folder to the B2 and unfortunately the problem still exists.

The WEB UI and the B2 itself are both showing and playing the tracks in alphabetical order.

The issue is not with the WEB UI.

I am going to have a lie down and see if I can find my temporarily absent brain. As Homer S. would say

DUH!!

[Daniel Taylor]

The WebUI, no matter on which type of device, will display the Artists, Albums, or tracks either in alphabetical order, or in the order they were loaded onto the B2.  When the track numbers are at the beginning of the track filenames, they will appear in numerical order because that is also alphabetical order.

It is still unclear to me how the B2 can know to play the songs in the correct order without the track number being at the beginning of the track filename.  I asked Peter a question yesterday that he seems to have missed.  Perhaps a better question to ask is simply this:  How does the B2 know to play the tracks in numerical order if the track number is not at the beginning of each track filename?

[Rik]

Daniel, When I toggle the the display from alphabetical the WebUI does not display albums (or artists) in the order the albums were loaded.

[JFBUK]



Rob,

If the JB7 backup and restore to B2 does not preserve the track sequencing of the original album as you desire then the only way I can see to restore that sequence is to number the tracks by adding a numeric prefix to each track name.

The way that I  think you can automate the numbering of your music by album is to use metadata tags to format the file name with the required numbering.

This means you would have to tag your exiting music because I do not think the JB7 writes any tags to the ripped track file.

The B2 has no interest in tags but they can help you manipulate things outside of the B2.

I am not familiar with the software available  to help you tag and rename files for the Mac but I know that Musicbrainz lists several

https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Products

I personally have used Musicbrainz Picard which runs on a Mac and is free to use.

Picard can recognise a track by matching what they call the Acoustid  of  the ripped track with what they have in their database of tracks.

This may help you get a better idea

https://picard.musicbrainz.org/quick-start/

By using Picard you can load and scan your tracks to find an Acoustid match in the Musicbrainz database and Picard can auto-populate track metadata tags.

Once your file has tags you can use a naming script to create a track file name of your choice including the track number and save the new file. Remember it will be a different filename so if you load it to the B2 without removing any previous load to the B2 you will have duplicates.

https://picard-docs.musicbrainz.org/en/tutorials/naming_script.html

I am away at the moment and do not have access to my PC so cannot give you a more detailed example that I have step tested on my PC.

This is still a time consuming process but should be quicker than renaming each file individually.

John

Sent from my iPad

[Mark Fishman]

mp3tag has been officially released as an app for Mac in the Mac appstore:

https://mp3tag.app/

Anyone here who has used mp3tag on Windows can help with how to use it. It can fetch tag info from online databases based on the artist and album names, and then let you rename the tracks by putting the track number in front of the filename.

[Daniel Taylor]

Rik,

I guess you're right.  I spoke too generally.  When not alphabetial, it lists things in the order they appear in the b2db file - that being the file that is built when the Scan Disk command is run.  When no deletions, changes (renaming), etc. have occurred, then the order is that in which the albums were loaded.  But for most of us, there will be changes that influence the order of files in the b2db file.

[Rob Harriman]

@John @Mark,

Thanks guys. I'd already looked at mp3tag and couldn't work out how to use it to do what I want and as it costs £19.99 for the MAC version I'd put it on the back burner for now. I may come back for help with it later.

Picard looks quite promising from the description, but my first attempt hasn't gone well.  I chose to do another Miles Davis album called Nefertiti, and following the quick-start link above, Picard couldn't find it using LOOKUP. When I used the SCAN option it only gave me the whole Columbia Miles Davis collection boxset, of which this is just one album, so the 10 tracks I wanted are part of a couple of hundred tracks, and it doesn't let me delete all these other tracks.  Hey ho..

I'm getting to the stage where I'm seriously thinking of giving up on this whole mess.

It's now pretty clear that Martin Brennan never expected anyone to want to move their albums from a JB7 to a B2 and play in the correct order.  Though why he didn't foresee that is beyond me.

I am seriously disappointed by the fact that no-one from Brennan support has contributed to this thread. I suppose they have their reasons.

I still like the B2 as a concept but penalising those of us who also previously bought a JB7 in this way is leaving a rather bitter taste chez moi.

Rob 

[Rik]

You must be right, Daniel, that it’s to do with editing, though looking at my list it’s difficult to quite reconcile the two different orders as just being to do  with renaming. It is of course no problem at all for me though. 

[Mark Fishman]

I believe kid3 is free on Mac, and it looks as if it can do the things you need:

https://kid3.kde.org/

[Rob Harriman]

Mark,

macOS wouldn't open kid3 first time as its digital security verification was missing.

2nd time it says it cannot verify the developer of kid3 but will allow me to open it if I wish to take the risk.

Are you familiar with this s/w and can you vouch for it's security?

Sorry to be a pain but I really don't want any further issues right now.

As I said above I'm inclined to abandon ship.

I have never had the need to use tag editors before and trying to learn how best to do what I need from web home pages, usually written in someone's second language is no joke. They all seem to have different concepts behind them and of course none relate to the B2's own foibles.
At least when I was doing them manually on the B2 WebUI it was conceptually easy, if very time consuming. 

Thanks for trying.

Rob 

[Mark Fishman]

I did several things before mentioning kid3:

 - a person I know and trust on another forum about different audio software had recommended it to me;

 - I downloaded the Windows version and ran it through an online site (virustotal.com) that tests software against more than 50 different malware scanners, major ones and minor ones I've not heard of; 

 - I tried out the software on my Windows system after looking through the PDF of the manual.

Virustotal says that the program is clean (one minor, unknown by me program, seems to have a false positive of a Trojan, but all the other 60+ scanners found nothing wrong, and individual scans of the libraries that are used came up completely clean).

Both Apple and Microsoft have "digital signature" or "security verification" systems that basically rely on the developer paying several thousand dollars (to Apple or Microsoft respectively) to get a security certificate -- small open-source developers can't really afford that for multiple platforms when they don't charge for the software. So the fact that kid3 doesn't have one doesn't surprise me. Or worry me, particularly.

You're right about the user interface being a little bit obscure. I copied a folder of MP3s I already had and stripped off the existing tags, renamed the files so they didn't have track numbers at the beginning, and loaded this "naked" folder into kid3. I clicked on the File menu, "import from gnudb.org.

gnudb took over the freedb database when it was closed down, and they maintain it. Since it's the same database (updated) that was used by the JB7, I figured it was a good test. I did have to type in the artist and album names to do the search. It came up with two possibilities, so I double-clicked one of them, in the next dialog box I said to populate both kinds of tags (belt and suspenders), and clicked OK.

Now that I had tags from the database, first I clieck the "save" button at the top, then I wanted to copy the track # and title from the tags to the filenames. There are buttons on the right hand side to do that, then I saved again, and my new directory has the tracks in the right order just like the original directory that I had copied to use for the test.

All of this takes much longer to explain than to try. Certainly I think it's safe for you to test. If you still want to give up I definitely understand.

[Rob Harriman]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for this very detailed response. Much appreciated. I've opened Kid3 - Thanks for the assurance.

I have been trying to follow your procedure and I am in need of a little further clarification please:

The attached screenshot shows where I've got to, which is after I've populated both kinds of tag (belt and suspenders) and clicked  ok and the save button.

I got to this point by loading the JB7 created album folder into kid3 by just drag and drop, and then selected import from gnudb. I hope this is what you meant.

I don't understand what I need to do on this screen to copy the track number and title to the filenames.  Can you provide more detail on what I should do here please?

Thanks

Rob

[Mark Fishman]

Since you want to copy the track and title to all of the mp3s, I would select (highlight) all the mp3 files in the left hand pane, then 

on the right hand side, click on one of those buttons (see picture), either Tag1 or Tag 2 next to the word "From". You can do it one at a time, but assuming you have the gnudb data for all the tracks, you might as well do them all at once.

That should rename all the tracks so they have the proper number in front of the name, according to the track numbers that were in the database.

[Mark Fishman]

apparently the picture doesn't want to appear, so I've attached it

[Rob Harriman]

Hi Mark,

It's worked

The fog of confusion has finally lifted - thanks to you.

I've now got my first album reordered in the hardfi folder on the JB7 backup.

As long as all my albums appear in the gnudb this process will save me a great deal of time.

But if the occasional one doesn't it's no big deal now.

Thanks again.

Rob

[Mark Fishman]

Well, kid3 does offer a couple of other databases to try, including MusicBrainz. But my understanding was that the JB7 used a copy of the freedb to identify discs when it ripped them. The gnudb is a copy of the most recent freedb (at the time the original was shut down), plus continuing updates that users might have submitted since that time, so if your discs were found by the JB7 when you ripped them they should be found again now.

Track order isn't usually a source of problems as long as the database finds your disc. If you had edited any tracknames because, for example, the database might have had typos or spelling errors, you'll probably have to edit them again. If you otice them while you're still in kid3, you can fix them right there.

A little quirky -- like a lot of software -- but it seems like a nice program. I'll probably go on using mp3tag most of the time, just because I'm used to it (and thought highly enough to make a donation to the author), but it's nice to have alternatives.

Cheers -- m.

[Rob Harriman]

I'm stunned and don't know whether to laugh or cry. 

I'm afraid that, after this whole sorry saga, it turns out that loading the JB7 music backup to the B2 KEEPS the original album track order, after all. To explain:

After struggling for a while with trying to edit the track orders using kid3, I decided to bite the bullet, and just went ahead and plugged my HDD into the B2 and ran the restore as per Peter's instructions above. Apart from a couple of glitches the albums are now all loaded onto the B2 with tracks numbered 01, 02 etc. in the correct order.  I've been cross-referencing them against the JB7 and although I've not yet checked all 500 the success rate appears to be at least 99%. I can live with the glitches, which are few and easily sorted.

I think the situation is that if you use 'Backup Music' on the JB7 and restore the resulting file to the B2, it will keep the track order, whereas if you use 'Album to USB'  on the JB7 and restore the resulting individual album file to the B2 it won't keep the track order, displaying them alphabetically instead. This latter mechanism is what sent me off down the rabbit hole in the first place. I hope this makes sense.  Let me know if you think I'm mistaken.

As the saying goes, you live and learn, - though sometimes a little more painfully than others.

Many thanks again to all who have helped me here.  Apologies for all the hassle.

Rob

[PMB]

Hi Rob,

Well done for getting to the root of this problem and very useful feedback! Time to enjoy the music.

Paul

Brennan Support.