Many thanks to castala, garym and reinholdk (for the broken-down
answers).  Apologies for my absence.

Firstly, castala you’re right.  My excuse, I was trying to get
everything there (and off my chest) instead of going back over it later,
but on re-reading – far too much!  I’m sorry you gave up though, there
are some other solid questions there.
I don’t really want to make ‘try and see’ changes, experimenting with
zero knowledge, I don’t know where I am now.  Isn’t the last thing I
should be doing is meddling?
As regards File organization and tagging, I mainly use the screens on
the SBs (my music players) to view the music listings.   Logitech Media
Server is my other method but that’s only been while I’m trying to find
my way around.  I don’t use anything else and so far I have used only
VortexBox for ripping.

Other than unknown artists & albums and Various Artists, I’m happy with
the way VB & the SBs are organising my albums, I can get to what I want
quite easily.  I don’t want to make unnecessary changes and had no
intention of turning this into some sort of Rain Man exercise!  And all
I want to do is replicate at least what you’d have with a shelf-full of
CDs and cassettes.  But I think I’m going to have problems with ‘Various
Artists’.  I used ‘Hits of the 60s’ as an example but I have far too
many like this plus samplers, newspaper freebies, even personal birthday
CDs.  As I said, random-non-album music, quite a few pre-album singles
and a few recordings that never made it to a pressing.
I think these should be available to be viewed in alphabetical order by
artist, then song title (also ideally by song title, then artist/s). 
Working on an alphabetical list would also make it easy for me to
identify the many duplications and delete them.  I don’t think I can go
the album route, for example, I’ve got 2 or 3  compilations that differ
from each other by only 1 or 2 tracks.  This, “duplications and how to
identify and delete them” issue is a big worry.  I had thought it’s
going to be quicker to let the VB rip everything then delete the
duplications afterward.  Do you think this is so?
In spite of ‘pre-checking’, the VB ripped 3 CDs as Unknown Artist &
Albums, 1 needs deleting, 2 need renaming etc. and I know the albums! 
OK I think, I’ll alter the VB flac files.  Before getting in too deep I
do a test (see the bold As in the title? -
UnknownA_Artist_-_Unknown_AAlbum) but these don’t show up on the SB
screen.  So, if it’s not here that I manage alterations and deletions,
where?

Ok, so I’ve bought the VB and for straightforward ripping maybe that’s
OK but for anything iffy (say 25% of my stuff) and my classical,
notwithstanding what you all said about mp3tag, should I use the highly
rated dBpoweramp to rip this 30% (and then transfer to the VortexBox)?

garym, thanks for the ‘beginners guide’ links etc. and the explanation
about syncing, brilliant but it might help you guys understand just how
difficult even a simple sentence is for me, the most modern bit of
technology we had before this was a CD/cassette player!  That’s why my
posts are so wordy, it’s all new to me.  Anyway, thanks, I will read
them.
Your point 3. As I said,  I’ve only been using the Win 7 laptop to see
LMS (trying to find my way around).  I don’t know if VB runs LMS, I
doubt it.  The VBA was purchased in the UK and I think it only has VB
and a Wake up on LAN app on it.  As instructed, I registered an account
at SqueezeBox.com then downloaded LMS to the laptop.

Whilst in LMS context I will cover some of reinholdk’s queries here too.
I did check the VB files for cover-art (only 38% success but that’s a
VB problem I think – I’m going to use Bliss) but now, following a LMS
rescan, the covers are now viewable!  I’d like to understand these
“configure LMS/Control Panel/Library tab and re-mapping” issues better
but at least the cover-art query is solved, errors and omissions
included.

The VB GUI 'System Configuration' shows Logitech Media Server ‘Active’
but see above about where it is.
I can confirm that the SBs are listed in LMS Settings/Player
Information, together with “Players 1 and 2” (do I just ignore these?). 
For convenience, I switch on an SB to wake up the VB.

About modifying file names, as you can see above, I need to modify
‘Unknown Artist’ etc.(let alone deal with the duplications).  Like fool
I used a bit of jargon, ‘Tag’, which showed I don’t know what it really
is.  You say, “…modify some of the tags that are stored inside the file”
– uhh?  What files?  I have tried sorting some of this out myself and
you can see where I got to.  I don’t know what I’m doing, isn’t there
any point-and-shoot software that does all this?  You make the comment,
“Tag editors like mp3tag (and Bliss?) know how to access these tags
inside a file...”  You can see what I’ll need to do.  Is that my
point-and-shoot software?

As for everything being set up correctly, I think that is the big
question, adding to the high number of ‘unknowns’.  No permanent IP
addresses yet set, the whole network not showing up as mapped and
relatively poor listing/cover-art results from the VBA.  I guess I’ll
get there in the end.

Thanks for telling me I can forget about Samba - I can’t even foxtrot!


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