Whatever the source (320MP3 or better, preferably lossless), my tracks go through Platinum Notes, then MIK. Then into Cross where I don’t analyse bpm and key anymore, so pretty much just waveform. Since Cross has it’s own smartlist I (thankfully) don’t have to worry about using iTunes.
Tagging genre is always a b*tch of course, especially since officially you are stuck to one choice in your mp3 tag.
The thing with tagging is, a mis-tagged tracks won’t be found. So I tend to keep my genre tag rather broad and use other things like year of publishing (the smarlist let’s you define any given period) and I always rate my tracks. No stars = hasn’t been rated yet (have a bit of a backlog), 1 star = toss out of main collection (it’s often quicker to use the preview player and mark the rating and later select everything with one star and bulk delete, rather than delete every track individually), 2 stars = keep it in the secondary collection (I do weddings, so lots of stuff is request only, still you want to have it around. Difference with 1 star selection is that it’s actually useable=danceable). 3 stars = keep it, but if something has to go to make room for others, these are the ones to pick from. 4 stars = great stuff, first pick for any night of the week, I can blindly pick a 4 star track if the beat, key (and energy sometimes) are a match. 5 stars finally are the mainstay of the collection. I use these tracks for example when in doubt, when doing a big bpm or genre transition or when the party is a slow-starters (especially weddings can be like that if family members have not seen each other for ages and take hours to catch up on family tales LOL). These are the tracks you build up to. Floorfillers, but with the addition of being (potentially) timeless tracks. In theory, once in my collection as a 5 star, never out again).
That’s pretty much my track workflow.
Greetinx.
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