PL-How_to: Using dBpoweramp to generate ‘mirror’ files automatically

This document sets out how to generate ‘mirror’ mp3 sub-folders which emulates the Brennan ‘flac+mp3’ compression option. This is very useful in that you can use the B2 front panel ‘Export mp3’ menu function to create ‘mp3’ music artist, album and track lists which can be created easily and quickly on a USB stick for use in a mp3 player or car player than does not support ‘.flac’ files.

The other advantage in using ‘dBpoweramp’ in this way is that it is many times faster in creating the mp3 files than the B2’s ‘flac+mp3’ option. In my case, the ‘flac+mp3’ option ran for about 25 days, whereas the ‘dBpoweramp’ ran in about 18 hours on the same collection.

This set up works by creating the ‘.mirror’ folders as sub-folders in the existing ‘albums’ folders in the same way that the Brennan ‘flac+mp3’ works.

NOTE: Please read the ‘Additional Notes #1’ section at the end of this document in regard to NAS connection types as this has a direct bearing on the time that ‘dBpoweramp’ will take to run.

You will need to download the ‘dBpoweramp’ application from the web and install this on your PC. You will also require a ‘NAS’ connection between the PC and the B2, with a drive letter mapped from the PC to the B2.

When the installation is complete, start up ‘dBpoweramp’.

Click on the ‘Batch Converter’ icon.

Select the ‘music’ folder that contains the B2’s music collection; shown below. In my example the label ‘1’ points to my B2’s ‘music’ directory. The NAS connection shows the B2’s music collectionmapped as drive ‘U:’ but you can choose any suitable drive mapping.

In the screenshot below, label ‘2’ shows that the ‘U:’ drive (this is the NAS access to the B2’s ‘music’ folder’) is now highlighted, indicating that all of the B2’s music files have been selected forthe ‘.mirror’ conversion.

If your collection is a mix of ‘flac’ and ‘mp3’ you should use the ‘Filter’ icon as shown in the screenshot below at label ‘3’.

The easiest way to set this is to first click on ‘Exclude All’ as shown at label ‘4’ below.

Then click on the ‘Flac’ encoder to select that as shown in the screenshot below at label ‘5’.

Click on ‘OK’ to return to the main window.

Then click on the ‘Convert’ button as shown at label ‘6’ in the screenshot below. You will then see the ‘Indexing files …..’ message.

The indexing will take a few minutes to complete then you will see the screen shown below appear.

In the window shown above you will need to select:

Encoding; set this to ‘mp3’ (label ‘7’)

Mode: I set this to ‘Constant Bit Rate’ (label ‘8’) and set the bit rate at 256Kbits/sec (label ‘9’).You can set this to alternative rates; the choice is yours.

The next section is the important one. The ‘Output To’ field is where you set the location of the ‘mirror’ Files. This should be set to the string shown in label ‘10’. To achieve this, click on the ‘dropdown arrow’ at label ‘11’

In the dropdown options (click on label 4) you will find an ‘Edit Dynamic Naming’ option; select this to go into the window shown below.

Set the ‘Base Location’ and ‘Dynamic Naming’ fields to the values shown in the screenshot above and click on ‘OK’ to confirm and return to the ‘Music Converter’ screen.

A description of the ‘Output To’ string is:

Source Drive: --- This sets the destination drive to be the same as the source drive.Source Path: --- This sets the destination path to be the same as the source path.Source Filename - This sets the destination filename to be the same as the source filename.\mirror --- This creates the destination filename ‘mirror’ in the source album directory.\TrackNum – Title --- This sets the ‘mirror’ mp3 track name to be in the format of: ‘03 – Yesterday’ for example (without the quotes).

Now you are ready to begin the ‘mirror’ file creation. In the screenshot below, click on the ‘Convert’ button as shown at label ‘12’.

The ‘Converting’ screen will open up as shown below. In the ‘Examining Source & Overwrite Check’ field you will see a ‘+’ character as shown below.

The ‘+’ character will move slowly across the window as it performs some preliminary checks on the selected music tracks. Note that it processes at about 7,000 tracks per hour, so this activity can take some time.

When the ‘+’ character reaches the right hand side of its window as shown above, then ‘dbPoweramp’ moves into the ‘mirror’ file generating stage and you will see the creation of the ‘mp3’ music files taking place. This is shown in the screenshot below.

This process will take some time; in this case just under 7,000 ‘flac’ files is estimated to take approximately 18 hours, but this does depend on a number of factors such as this network connection type, speed of the PC being used, etc..

This process will create a ‘mirror’ sub-folder in each music folder that contains ‘flac’ files. When the stage is complete, then run ‘Scan Disk’ to complete the process. This is necessary to deal with aquirk where two issues are dealt with which are:

(a) The mirror folders were originally named ‘mirror’ but this was later changed to ‘.mirror’.(b) dBpoweramp cannot use the full stop ‘.’character in the string name.

Running ‘Scan Disk’ conveniently renames all ‘mirror’ folders to ‘.mirror’.

The mirror mp3 files creation is now complete.

Additional Notes

#1. ‘dBpoweramp is a heavy load on the network, so it is recommended that a wired connection is used between the B2, the router and the PC/server on which the ‘dBpoweramp’ software is running.A wireless connection will much slower; by a factor of 4 times slower or more.

#2. ‘dBpoweramp’ is a free download from the web and has a 21 day full functionality period. After the 21 day period, you will be required to purchase a licence for continued use (approximately£30 for a permanent licence for 1 PC).

#3. If you start the ‘mirror’ process and subsequently cancel it, and then restart the process, ‘dBpoweramp’ will start from the beginning again unless you instruct it to ignore the already created ‘mirror’ folders.