How to replace a lower quality album by a higher quality (or lossless) one

[boroda]

Firstly, both albums must contain the same number of tracks, and must be identically tagged and have identical filenames including file extensions. At least all tags you are using in your auto-playlists must be the same, if you want to keep auto-playlists working. If you consider your higher quality album already properly tagged, then skip reading to Part 2.

NOTE: Higher quality album music files must be stored in the folder different from old lower quality tracks folder.

PART 1

1. Manually add (e.g. just drag'n'prop tracks from file manager to MusicBee) higher quality album to the inbox.

2. Copy mostly important tags (i.e. tags, which you are going to use in the future) from lower quality album to higher quality one. You can copy tags using "Copy tags to clipboard"/"Paste tags from clipboard" commands of Additional Tagging & Reporting Tools plugin. Make sure that track count and track order are the same for both album versions. The mostly easy way to sort tracks identically is to sort them by tracks number on the album (if track numbers are already correct for both album versions).

PART 2

Rename both old tracks and new tracks, so their filenames are the same for the same tracks.

1A. Filenames of music files must have the same extensions for both old and new album versions. If they don't, then convert old tracks to file format of new tracks: select all tracks of old album version, click MusicBee menu> Tools> Convert Format. Select format of new tracks in the "encode as" field (you can set any quality because you only need to change extensions of files, it's better to choose the fastest encoding preset, because these files will be anyway replaced by new higher quality, probably lossless, ones). Select option "Replace the source file". Click "Proceed".

1B. Select all old tracks, which are already in the library, then click MusicBee menu> Tools> Organize Files. Uncheck "to folder", remove all exceptions (if any), change last part of "naming template" (which corresponds to filenames only, not to folders), click "Reorganize", or just copy this part to use it in the following step.

2. Select all new tracks in the inbox, then click MusicBee menu> Tools> Organize Files. Uncheck "to folder", remove all exceptions (if any), change last part of "naming template" to make it the same as naming template for old tracks in the library. Click "Reorganize".

3. Close MusicBee.

4. Copy new album tracks over old album tracks with file manager, overwriting old music files. You can see tracks folder (paths) right-clicking on one of the tracks of the album, then clicking "Edit", and selecting "Properties" tab in tag editor (see "Location" field at the bottom of "Properties" tab).

5. Open MusicBee and delete new album tracks from the inbox. You may want to delete music files contained in the inbox, both from the inbox and from the PC (because you already have the copy of these files in the library by this moment).

NOW YOU HAVE HIGHER QUALITY TRACKS IN YOUR LIBRARY, AND ALL BOTH STATIC AND AUTO PLAYLISTS ARE UNTOUCHED.