A lot of my music library was ripped from my CDs more than 20 years ago. At the time I used 128 kbps, but now I would like to re-rip those CDs with the maximum 320 kbps. Is there a way I can swap these files into my Plex library without losing metadata, song ratings, playlists, etc? Part of the complication is that I would like to keep the same file naming structure. If I just overwrite the files will Plex recognize them as the same file and song and everything will stay the same? Or will that wipe out my library?
I don’t know the answer, and I’m curious too. But you can try it with say one album, and see what happens.
Yes, as long as they’re named the same it will work fine. I do this all the time. Analyze should pick up the change or it’ll update automatically after a while.
If you do need to change the file/directory names, there’s a trick to keep the album date-added and plays: When the new album is added, before you empty trash, open the new album and select all the tracks. Click the track edit button (not the album edit button) and click the album name. It should list a second album, which is the original. Click the other album name then save the changes. This will move all the tracks to the original album container and delete the “new” album. When you empty the trash things should be correct.
1 Like
Ok I’ve done a test with a single album with good results:
- Songs ratings intact
- Song play history intact
- Album rating intact
- Custom playlists (not smart playlists) retained the songs from this album. (Obviously smart playlists still had the songs since they are based on the metadata)
- One of the songs actually had a slightly different filename upon rip (due to special characters). “Analyzing” the album didn’t seem to do anything but after scanning for the files Plex updated the file it was looking for to the new filename but the metadata (song ratings, etc.) remained intact!
I will report back again after I have more experience
1 Like
I’ve been doing the same for some time now. I have music in my OneDrive in FLAC but when I added music to Plex I added m4a, mp3, and wma because I didn’t think Plex could handle FLAC. I had seen a dashboard with FLAC being converted to OPUS but now I realize that it was due to bitrate issues or something.
So now I’ve been taking my favorite albums and putting them in Plex. The first time I did it I thought it would behave the same way it does with movies and TV shows in that it would show one entry but I would see both. What I’m doing now is deleting the lower quality one. Then adding the FLAC (my music is not autoscanned) then I scan for changes in the music library. At that point, it does the Sonic Analysis and the album and its history remain. Different filenames in this case because I’m going from MP3 (or something similar) to FLAC and it just picks it up.
1 Like
By the way, while I’m at it, does anyone know of a better, free MP3 ripper besides good old Windows Media Player?
https://exactaudiocopy.de/ is still going strong.
Combine it with mp3tag or https://picard.musicbrainz.org/ for optimizing meta tags.
1 Like
I’d just invest in dBpoweramp. It’s likely the most useful piece of software I’ve bought, other than PlexPass for Plexamp . 
1 Like
Exact Audio Copy (EAC) with the LAME plugin.
It takes a bit of work to set up to your liking.
Alright, I’m just reporting back with the results from my project. The project was a success. I used EAC to rip the CDs. I used MP3Tag to make any adjustments I needed. Then I deleted one album from the files of my old music and immediately replaced it with the new album files. Plex almost always recognized the new files as the same album and preserved the song ratings, but in some cases it did not. Thanks for the help!
A couple more tips:
- I made a backup of the Plex database before starting, just in case.
- Before I deleted the files for a single album I would take a screenshot of the album in Plex with all of my song ratings. This was useful for the few albums Plex lost the ratings for.
- EAC was nice, but for some reason it would only rip one CD at a time at full speed. After each CD I had to close down the app and re-open for the next disc. If I did not do that the EAC would still work, but it would rip the second CD at a very slow speed.
- In many cases Plex would split an album into two with some tracks being in one and some being in another of the same name. To fix this, simply tell Plex to “fix match” for one of the albums and usually this would combine them into one album.
Just popped back into this thread to read the replies and wanted to share some more info for those (like me) who are absolute fussbudgets about their collection.
In many cases Plex would split an album into two with some tracks being in one and some being in another of the same name. To fix this, simply tell Plex to “fix match” for one of the albums and usually this would combine them into one album.
This results in “Split Item” showing in the album menu, since it’s really two album container IDs merged into one record. It doesn’t affect end-users at all, but it does contribute to database bloat. If you use the trick of editing the tracks of one album and moving them to the other album container, you don’t see split item and Plex cleans up that abandoned album container ID.
Also, my vote in the tagging/converting topic is for MusicBee. It’s a great collection manager and metadata editor, and does good conversions with LAME and any custom settings. Also does tagging from Discogs, album art search, genre search, etc.
I do not see “split item” in any of the albums that I recall doing this to. By “album menu” I assume you mean the 3 dots next to the Edit button when viewing an album. But I don’t see it there.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
