Max

Many of Angela Hewitt's recordings on Hyperion are available as flac downloads. CD quality, not higher, but her most recent Bach Well-tempered Clavier recording is outstanding musically, excellent sound and a chance to here something other than a Steinway, she plays a Fazioli piano. +1 (or even +2) on this recording! I bought this CD at a recent concert, and have listened to it many times already. And Ms Hewitt signed it for me - you don't get that with a download (digital signatures just aren't the same thing) Max

is now available on the App store Max

I found this problem as well. Fabrice tells me he has just submitted a bug-fix update to Apple to handle it. I'm not clear if there really is a 'fast track' approval for this situation, but hopefully it shouldn't be too long before the update appears in the App store. In other news, I will be joining Fabrice as a yTrack developer! I'm still getting up to speed with the source code at the moment, but I'm looking forward to help make it the best audiophile interface to iTunes, whether remote or local! Max

Blow auto-switching DAC resolutions! How about not truncating titles if they exceed about ten characters long? Dude, there's this thing called word wrap. You may have heard of it Max

It's been done before! There was a BSTJ (Bell Labs) paper on an 'all digital' telephone earpiece published in 1980. It used an array of transducers of different areas, and an acoustic 'reconstruction filter' which consisted of a series of coupled cavities between the transducers and the ear. Max

...but yes, everything you need to do full remote control is included in MAC OS X (10.5 and up). You'll have full control: you can turn network interfaces on and off, upgrade software, or whatever. I even rip CD's this way Max

The Gramophone Awards 2010 have just been announced. Did you know the Gramophone Magazine archives, right back to the very first issue from 1923, are available on-line? I didn't. Max

I just saw that the Apple Remote app has been updated: http://www.macrumors.com/2010/09/28/apple-updates-remote-app-with-ipad-and-retina-display-support/ I'm sure the timing of this announcement and the un-announced speed improvements to the DACP operation in iTunes 10.0.1 are not unrelated. I haven't had a chance to download the new version yet, but it will be interesting to see how it compares with yTrack. I think there is room in the marketplace for two such apps, taking different approaches to the user interface, especially if Fabrice can specialise yTrack for the audiophile market. Max

One possible solution is the M-Audio Transit USB. This converts both ways between (isochronous) USB audio and TOSLINK optical formats, as well as providing A/D and D/A converters. One of these at each end of your link could work: you might also need optical/electrical SPDIF converters, if you aren't using TOSLINK. Max

I downloaded iT10 last night & installed it on a test machine (PowerBook G4) running Leopard. This was a completely fresh, blank install, with an empty library. No problems connecting to it. I loaded one CD and could control iTunes with yTrack 1.0 OK as far as I could see: but this was only a quick look. So maybe it's an issue with library size? I'll hold off updating my main server for now. Oh and IMHO the iTunes 10 UI is definitely a step backwards. What on earth were they thinking of, putting the text to the RIGHT of the album artwork in list view? With the largest artwork size (still smaller than I used in 9.2) you get about the first five characters of the album title. Fabrice: make yTrack a better UI to iTunes & you should clean up! Max

I have encountered similar frustrations using iTunes for classical music, but I have come up with some work-arounds you may find of use. 1. Gracenote DB Metadata for classical music is a pile of foetid dingo's kidneys. I'm afraid you have to enter everything yourself if you want it to be correct. 2. There have been various suggestions about exchanging the meaning of metadata fields for classical music (e.g. swapping composer with artist) but I have decided against changing them. This means that Artist is of little or no use, but it doesn't matter as much with recent versions of iTunes as it used to. I do, however, tend to browse more by Album than Artist. 3. You need to be VERY disciplined about the format of metadata: - Composer: I always use the composer's full name, with dates to disambiguate, e.g. "Alfonso Ferrabosco (1543-1588)" or "Alfonso Ferrabosco (c1575-1628)". Sort Composer has the surname first, e.g. "Ferrabosco, Alfonso (1543-1588)" or "Ferrabosco, Alfonso (c1575-1628) - Genre: I use a descriptive Genre, e.g. "Baroque Orchestral" or "English Viol Consort" using keywords that help me set up smart playlists - Album: The album title, more or less as on the CD (but without the artist if that is part of the CD title). Sort Title is only used if the key word (most often the composer) is not the first word in the title, e.g. an Album with the title "J. S. Bach: the cello suites" would have a Sort Album "Bach, J. S.: the cello suites" - Year: I use the year of composition, or an educated guess if that is not known. This is set per Track. It helps set up smart playlists based on musical period. The year of recording goes in the comments field. - Grouping: Every classical track in my library has a Grouping. This is generally the catalogue number, artist, and year of recording, e.g. "BWV 1046a (Hogwood 1985)". All tracks which are parts of the same recording of the same work have the same Grouping. Where a composer's works are not catalogued in a well-known way, I use composer name & opus number; or composer & work title; or composer & MS number. I don't normally set iTunes to display the grouping (except when editing metadata) so the exact text doesn't matter. I turn on 'Shuffle by Grouping' to ensure shuffled play always plays complete works. - Track: The Track/song title is the difficult bit. iTunes is very bad at truncating titles, so the significant information needs to come first. It must contain all relevant information, that is not otherwise present in the Album & Artist fields, which are all that is shown in the player. I use a construction like: "1. [Allegro] - Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F Maj BWV 1046a" This starts with the movement number & tempo marking [assumed in this case], the work title, key signature, & catalogue number. I don't show the composer in this case, as he is named in the Album title. If not, the composer's name would come after the work title & before the catalogue number. If the artist did not otherwise appear (e.g. soloist in instrumental movements) their name goes right at the end, in (brackets) I use abbreviations & short forms where possible, but I still end up with very long titles. This is not disastrous, as Track titles scroll through the iTunes player display. - Track numbering: For multi-CD sets, I delete the "disc x of y" information, and renumber tracks so that disc 1 has tracks 101, 102... disc 2 has 201, 202... and so on. I also delete the "of y" entry in the track number: otherwise it shows in the iTunes column display & takes up more room. This also works round an Apple bug (now fixed) which caused the disc number to be ignored, so in a 2 CD set, both tracks 1 would be listed, followed by both tracks 2, etc. Since the red Book standard only allows 99 tracks per CD, this numbering is guaranteed to work. Getting all this right is a major pain! One tip, edit as much of the metadata as possible on the actual CD, BEFORE importing it to the iTunes library. Then, if you need to rerip the same CD to a different format, iTunes remembers what you have entered. With this library, I can browse using the column browser by genre/composer/artist in grid view fairly comfortably. Search works nicely: just type "BWV 1046" to see all recordings of the Brandenburg #1 in both versions. It's not perfect but it does work. I've also started using yTrack as a remote control for iTunes. Even the version 1.0 is MUCH better than Remote (even better than iTunes) at displaying long track names: the font shrinks as the name gets longer. I've been in touch with Fabrice (the developer) and requested a two-line display for Track titles, among other stuff to improve the lot of Classical music listeners. Max

Yes, Apple screen sharing is based on the VNC protocol: any VNC client will be usable, though not quite as fast as the built-in MAC OS X screen sharing app, which has Apple specific, non-standard extensions Max

It doesn't look to me as if there should be any major upset for yTrack from what has been announced today. Although you will be able to send audio (+video, +metadata) from any iDevice to to airplay receivers such as the new Apple TV, that content still has to go through iTunes first. And there is still no equivalent of a full-feature remote GUI for iTunes like yTrack. So keep up the good work! Max

Fabrice, The email with the loss of synchronisation bug report? Yes, that was me ;-) I just read your reply, thanks.I've spent some more time using yTrack and I definitely like it. I have seen the 'blank list' problem happen again, but I cannot reliably reproduce it (yet) Be sure I'll let you know when I do! When Remote first appeared as an iPod Touch App, I went to try it out at the Apple store. I'd been looking for a good remote control for iTunes for ages. My music server is hidden in the wiring closet, with no screen attached, and I don't have a TV in the listening room for Front Row. I was so disappointed with Remote: Apple seem to have done the bare minimum they could get away with, and were very restricted with the screen size. When the iPad was announced, I was sure they would update it to better use the bigger screen, but no. Remote is beginning to look like an orphan product.Which is good news for 3rd-party Apps like yTrack, especially Apps where the developer is willing to listen to the users! Thanks for your work: I'm sure I'm not the only CA Forum member looking forward to future versions!Max

I saw this thread yesterday & bought the app last night. It synced up with the Mini with no problems. I had only a few minutes to play with it, but I did manage to trigger a bug: Browsing by Album & selecting a track to play, then going 'back' to the album list gave me a completely blank list. Selecting 'Artist' then back to 'Album' fixed it. I'm mainly a classical music listener, & I would agree with the importance of using 'genre', 'composer', & 'grouping' (especially 'shuffle by grouping') for classical music. It would also be nice to see lyrics for the currently playing track. One thing I REALLY like is yTrack's ability to show longer track names. Neither iTunes nor Remote does this as well. However I still have have track names that are too long to show fully, even in the smallest font: maybe a 2-line option would be better. Even with such a short time (literally 10 minutes!) playing with it I like it better than Remote. I think it may have the capability of becoming a better interface to an iTunes library than iTunes itself. Well done Fabrice - please keep up the good work! I'll give it a more extensive test over the next few days and write up my thoughts. I'd be happy to act as a beta tester if you are still looking for such. Max P.S. - I also think it's priced too cheaply at present