Tips for tagging classical rips?


I've already ripped my collection of blues/rock/alt CDs to a hard drive. I used EAC and ripped the early files into an artist/album/track.WAV format. Later, I shifted to artist/album/trkno_track.WAV format, and wished I had started that way.

I'm now about to embark on ripping my classical music and wondering if anyone can help me avoid any bonehead errors. How have you been tagging/organizing? Since you only get one Artist field, presumably that gets used for the composer... Or, are you using that for performer? Any hints from anyone who has gone this route? What worked, what didn't?
edesilva
When I add classical to iTunes I put the composer and performers in the artist field, the composer in the composer field and the album title in the album field. It allows for the widest variety of playlist sorting.
I put the artist in the Artist field and the composer in the Composer field. In the album field, I put both the composer and the name of the work. I use an abbreviated composer name if the name is long (since the full name already is in the Composer field). An example of an Album entry is "Rachmnv:Symphonic Dances op. 45." I do this because I really like iTunes' browser display, but the Browser only shows Genre, Artist, and Album, and I want the albums to be sorted by composer. (This also helps with the way I use my iPod.)

If a record or CD has more than one work on it, each work becomes a separate iTunes album. So, the Naxos CD, Chopin Piano Concertos, No. 1 & 2, becomes two separate albums. I put information identifying the actual record or CD in the Comments field.
Thanks for the comments. I guess I didn't even realize there is a separate "composer" field. Is that standard for tagged audio files, or is that an iTunes specific implementation? Anyone know?
I just read that Olive's new 'symphony' player is supposed to have software (called 'Playlist') geared toward cataloging classical. (www.olive.us)

It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has seen it in action . . .