Azul Music Organizer

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Azul FAQ

What is Azul?

Azul is your all-in-one music handling program.

Okay, so what does Azul do?

Currently Azul:

  • Extracts archives. (Currently supports RARs, ZIPs, ACEs, TARs, GZs, and BZ2s.)
  • Converts undesirable audio formats (APEs, FLACs, WAVs, and MPCs) to desirable audio formats (currently only Ogg Vorbis).
  • Splits one-file-albums into separate tracks when a CUE is present.
  • Identifies the album cover image and renames it "cover".
  • Deletes all other miscellaneous files.
  • Gathers metadata (artist, album, year, tracktotal, tracknumber and track title) for each track.
  • Writes filenames and tags.

Each of these actions can be turned on or off in the configuration.

What do I need to run it?

Azul depends on a variety of third-party libraries to encode/decode audio files and tag music. Please see our download page for information on what you need.

Does Azul run on Windows?

Theoretically, yes. The reason we have not supplied a "Windows" version is simply because we have never tested it. However, Azul was written with no platform-specific code and so long as you have all of the necessary libraries (listed on the download page and checked by running setup.py) Azul should run just fine.

The one thing that will not work, however, is getPUID for the MusicDNS service. It is written in C and we are working on porting it to Windows as soon as possible. Until then, Azul should be able to sort most music without it.

What is "rejecting"?

An album is rejected when Azul cannot successfully sort the album. For instance if extracting the archive failed or if we could not determine the album's artist, then that album is sent to the "Rejects" folder.

Some of the albums sent to the Rejects folder may be sortable by hand. (May we recommend EasyTag for that purpose.) Others may be too broken to sort.

Why does Azul reject my audio files?

Currently, it is designed to recognize MP3 and Ogg Vorbis as "good" audio and everything else as "bad" audio. This is of course our personal preference, and at the moment can be easily changed in the configuration.py file. In the future we will have an easy way to change the desired audio formats, however adding support for files beyond MP3 will be relatively limited. Know that tagging and other features of Azul will probably break with other audio formats in the current version.

Why does Azul convert my music into Ogg Vorbis?

We prefer Vorbis because it is an incredibly easy format to work with as well as free. Additionally, support for encoding and decoding Vorbis is highly available and free as well. Supporting MP3 is a necessary evil, but we try to not fuel our own fire by encoding more of it. That said, future versions of Azul will probably include MP3 encoding support. Until then, it is very easy to include by modifying convert.py provided you have a working MP3 encoder.

Why doesn't Azul do ________?

Check our Feature Tracker and see if we have that feature planned. There's a good chance we do.

If the feature you want isn't there, please add it.

What is your goal for Azul?

To sort the world's music, one archive at a time.

We'd also like Azul to have a super-simple interface and a greater than 90% sorting success rate.

What is Azul's current success rate?

Based on a relatively small sample size, we estimate that Azul cannot sort 25% of archives, incorrectly sorts 15% and correctly sorts 60%.

Who develops Azul?

Two university students, Matt Hubert and Rob Nagle.

What's the best way to contact the Azul developers?

The best way to contact us is to either post a message on the Support Forum or send a message to the azul-devel mailing list.

Anything else I should know?

Azul is far from done. We still have many features planned (see our feature tracker) and there are still bugs (see our bug tracker). We've worked hard to make sure that Azul doesn't destroy anything but it still might. You've been warned.

Also, Azul deletes WMAs. We're not fond of them.