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Elise_B

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  1. A tip from someone who is still learning the lingua franca: Check out the May/June 2015 issue of the The Absolute Sound for a 10-page primer with everything you need to know about computer audio. The primer will help you decode and use terms like NAS, renderer, server, bridge, lossless, lossy, etc. There's also a list of questions frequently asked by newcomers: disk space requirements, encoders for ripping, evaluating software, future-proofing your system, etc. And if you're shopping for audio gear, the product table is a good resource.
  2. For the 10% of the music market that listens to classical music, today's streaming services are a joke. Some estimates of the size of the market segment run higher, but even if the size were only 5%, we would still be talking about a lot of people who listen to classical music. Chris, apparently, is not one of them because his vision of the future of audio says little about the egregious problems with the metadata provided by streaming services. I can't comment on Chris' favorite, WiMP, because I don't live in Denmark, Germany, Norway, Poland, or Sweden. However, I have looked at Spotify. Their metadata are a horror. Try searching for Mahler Symphony No. 8. I get a list of 30 recordings. The assortment is surprisingly good, although one of the recordings in the list is actually Schubert Symphony No. 8 and two are Mahler Symphony No. 2. Now suppose I want to browse the list to find a performance by a conductor I admire. That information is not consistently available. I see one conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, but the same field contains “Gustav Mahler” for another. I'm pretty sure that he is not the conductor. A third presents “Royal Concertgebou”, the name of the orchestra (misspelled), and a fourth says “Heather Harper”, the name of one of the soloists. I can make out the conductor on some of the recordings by examining the cover art, but not all covers provide that information. Ditto if I am interested in knowing the orchestra, the chorus, or any of the eight soloists. A new feature of WiMP that Chris describes would allow me to select each recording in turn and then “press & hold” a track to get additional information, which might include the conductor. If the recording I selected has as conductor someone whose performance I do not want to hear, then I have to return to the search results and repeat the procedure up to 29 additional times. Unacceptable. Select the recording conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas (you will have to be able to recognize his picture on the cover). The first movement has four tracks. They play with gaps! Unacceptable. Maybe Chris is postulating that streaming companies will fix these problems. If they do, great! Is there any evidence that they are working on the problems? Addressing the needs of 90% of a big market satisfies most companies, so I doubt that they even care. It sucks to be in a minority, but at least I have options now – options that Chris predicts will vanish. I might have to do a little typing, but some existing programs make it possible to correct the errors and omissions of the metadata provided with downloads. With subscription services, we are completely beholden to the services for metadata. Are the WiMP editorial teams gearing up to provide the information that they are ignoring now? Is WiMP planning to go through their entire existing catalog to add the missing information? Even if Chris is able to answer both questions in the affirmative, can we be sure that any streaming company will devise a good solution to the metadata problem? Just getting the information doesn't mean that we can use it in helpful ways (ref. comments above on the press & hold feature). And then there is the problem of librettos. If I am listening to a stream of an opera sung in a foreign language, will I be able to view a translation of the words in the application provided by the subscription service? Will translations be available for users who speak languages other than English? The technology for such a service might be feasible, but expecting subscription services to expend the effort to satisfy only a portion of the 10% is fantasy. A handful of subscription services all chasing the lowest common denominator won't give a hoot about me. People who listen only to pop or who seek only background music may embrace Chris' future, but those of us who are computer audiophiles – especially the ones who listen to classical music – will ignore subscription services like we ignore cheap Radio Shack speakers.
  3. von_levi, It sounds as if you are looking for an inexpensive solution. Many savants at the CA forum would advise you to purchase dBPoweramp for ripping your software (to FLAC or WAV) and JRiver Media for cataloging and playing your music. (I think CA forum member “hifidelit” is also recommending JRiver Media. That’s the software that comes bundled with his bespoke music servers.) Those products are fine, but since you mentioned your interest in classical music I thought that I would chime in with a different idea. If you decide to use JRiver Media, here are a few suggestions. CA forum creator, Chris Connaker, is a huge fan of JRiver Media. Check out Chris’ lengthy article at CA on how to customize the JRiver Media user interface so that you get the most out of the software. You should also visit the website of Vincent Kars, another fan of JRiver Media (and also MusiCHI). His website is called The Well-Tempered Computer. Vincent has some excellent advice for classical music lovers on how to use standard ID3 tags for classical music and how to add custom tags. His explanations are well written, but if you are not a programmer, you might be overwhelmed by Vincent’s suggestions for working around the limitations of ID3 when cataloging classical works. Be prepared to learn how to use JRiver’s custom script language and also “regular expressions” to get your classical music collection in shape. While JRiver Media is a favorite of many enthusiasts, I don’t think it is the best option for a classical music lover. As Vincent Kars wrote, the software is designed for organizing pop music, not classical music. JRiver has a steep learning curve and you’ll be doing a lot of custom scripting to overcome the constraints of ID3. If you need help with the software, you’ll be posting your support requests at a public forum and hoping that a customer (or possibly someone from JRiver) will help you with your problem. For someone interested in ripping a large classical music collection, the best software is a product called Wax. Unfortunately, Wax is not available as a software-only product, only as part of a complete system (3beez’s Wax Music Management System). The system is not cheap – I had to swallow hard before I bought mine – but their custom software is the only software I have seen that really solves the classical music problem. All the software you need for ripping, cataloging, and playing your music collection is preinstalled in the system. I recently finished ripping my music collection (which includes over a thousand classical works) to my Wax Box. The Wax system was easy to use, it sounds great, and gapless works. Also, customer support is excellent. The developer himself answers emails promptly and fully. The 3beez team is obviously sensitive about their price. They have published a chart comparing their system with their competition (including prices) along with their opinions about the advantages of their product at their website. Their opinions are prejudiced, but the information provides a helpful starting point. The price for the 3beez system is in the middle of the pack. You can build or buy a computer for much less, but you won't get Wax. Well worth the $5400 I paid for the system, in my opinion, but only you can decide. Good luck with your project. Elise_B
  4. I appreciate all the constructive suggestions about music management software. I have learned a lot since my first posting, much of it from leads I got from your responses. I spent countless hours collecting information about the many options. I considered all the information from your postings. I reviewed several online manuals as well as some discussion groups and forums describing the various software products, esp. JRiver Media, Sonata, MusiCHI and Sooloos. The accusation that I “immediately rejected” suggestions is, well, amusing, though I guess I can understand how someone could reach that mistaken conclusion as there was no broadcast covering the hours I spent studying. As for not basing my conclusions on facts, well… I tried. I’ve had my Wax Music Management System for two weeks. I’m writing to share my initial impressions about the system with anyone who is interested – and esp. with “Daudio”, an iTunes user who asked for my general impressions about Wax and about creating genres and sub genres in Wax. Setting up the system took some time but it was not onerous. My experience was similar to the TAS reviewer’s experience (TAS 238): I was able to start importing and tagging my music on day one. Learning the Wax software was easy (even for a non-programmer like me) thanks to the intuitive user interface. The detailed manual and the developer’s screencasts were also helpful. I imported my legacy collection from my computer to Wax (in one operation!) and I have started ripping the rest of my CDs. I then set up genres and sub genres into which I moved my music. For example, I created a "symphonic" genre with several sub genres – "baroque", "classical", "romantic", and "modern" – and a "pop" genre with sub genres for "classic rock", "rock", "blues", "new age", "world", and "country". You can create as many genres and sub genres as you wish. (Wax does not allow you to create sub-sub genres.) If you decide later to change your organizational scheme, you can move recordings from one genre to another. (Setting up genres and sub genres in iTunes requires a lot of work and some clumsy workarounds. These limitations are probably well-known, but I would be happy to chat more about this in a separate posting.) I fully expected that I would need to "get my hands dirty" and do some work editing my metadata. As several in this forum have pointed out, there are many errors in the metadata available at Gracenote, Rovi, FreeDB and MusicBrainz. Moreover, as I expected, some of the metadata that I wanted to include with my music could not be found at any database. Wax made it easy for me to add as much metadata as I wanted (for a track or a work), although I had to enter some of that metadata from my keyboard. Wax accommodates all this metadata without any scripting or programming. The Wax software has a straightforward GUI that is easy to read on any size screen: my laptop, my iPad and even my smartphone. I’m including a screenshot from my laptop contrasting the metadata for a well-known jazz track (Miles Davis’ Freddie Freeloader) as it appears in Wax and in iTunes (miniplayer). Entering metadata about the members of the Miles Davis Sextet (artist names and what instruments the artists are playing) as well as metadata about the recording session date was easy in Wax. I had to shoehorn those metadata into iTunes (in the “artist” and “name” fields) and the exercise was a waste of time as iTunes crammed the new metadata into a small, hard-to-read text box that scrolls above the album cover art. The scrolling text obscures the cover artwork and makes it difficult to read the album title. The Wax GUI is elegant. The metadata are easy to read and the cover artwork is presented without any interference from metadata. The Wax software has several features that are very useful for organizing classical music and opera. The software allowed me to group tracks that belong together (e.g. the movements of a symphony or an act of an opera) as a track group for better organization and viewing. Creating segues where appropriate between tracks (“gapless” playback) was simple. To summarize, I am enjoying the Wax Music Management System very much. Entering my music and as much metatdata as I wish is easy - no programming skills required and no shoehorn required to stuff metadata into fields that weren’t designed to accommodate those data. The sound quality seems good to me. Viewing the music selections and all the metadata on my iPad is a pleasant and engaging experience – just what I was seeking when I started my research. I wish that the process of entering metadata were fully automatic, but that isn't possible given the nature of on-line databases. I am content to have a product for which the only impediment to having all the metadata I want is my own laziness rather than technical limitations. I hope that my comments are helpful to more readers than just Daudio. It seems to me that most members of this forum are inquisitive and open-minded, so sharing what I have learned seemed like an appropriate quid pro quo for all the useful information I have gleaned. Sorry if my efforts strike some as advertising. I guess that I am the first member of this forum to buy a 3beez system. If so, I am glad to have had this opportunity to share my experience. Thanks again for all the support.
  5. Thanks to everyone who replied with suggestions about software for preserving all of my favorite metadata. It took me some time to look over all of the options (JRiver Media, MusiCHI, iTunes, Sonata, and Sooloos). I wish there were an online review somewhere with a comparison chart for all these products. Here are my conclusions after evaluating the software options and my rationale for purchasing the 3beez Wax Music Management System. iTunes. iTunes is for pop music collectors. The workarounds for cataloging other genres in iTunes are tedious and confusing. Sonata. Kathy Geisler reviewed Sonata for Computer Audiophile (Computer Audiophile - Sonata Music Server Review ). She scared me away from Sonata with her comment that the software was “overwhelming… that once you leave the top most hierarchy, it is easy to get lost…” JRiver Media. The software seems too complicated for a non-programmer like me. MusiCHI. The software only works on a desktop interface. In fact, to view all of my metadata (potentially 8 columns-worth of data!) in MusiCHI, I would need a large screen. I’d like to be able to view my collection and set up play lists on my iPad or iPhone; that’s not possible with MusiCHI. The MusiCHI user interface is complicated - it has the spreadsheet-like look of an old version of iTunes. I would need to create a separate library to store and catalog each of my genres, i.e. one library for classical, one for jazz, one for show tunes, one for pop, etc. Sooloos. The Sooloos software seems to rely on cover art, so I would need to scroll through the cover art in my entire collection to find the one recording I want to play. Also, the Control 15, which some reviews say is the best way to access the software, is quite expensive. As I said, I ordered the 3beez Wax Music Management System (the software is not available as a standalone product). I remain hopeful, even after reading all of your suggestions, that the Wax Music Management System is the best system for my needs. (The product comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so if it doesn’t meet my expectations I can return it.) Here’s my thinking: Intuitive cataloging. I can set up my music library in much the same way I organized my CD collection: as one library with sections for each of my genres. I can group a multi-CD set together as a single work, or split a CD that has multiple works into separate recordings. Simple, uncluttered user interface. The Wax user interface is thoughtfully designed. The GUI is attractive and easy to read on any platform: desktop, tablet, even a smartphone. Features that I need rarely are hidden until I need them. Tags specific to one genre do not clutter up the screen when I am viewing a recording in a different genre. (So, for example, the tag “opus” would be present for a classical work but not for a jazz work.) All of my metadata, just the way I want it. I can create as many keys as I want without any programming skills. I can add metadata to a work or to an individual track. It never occurred to me, until I studied the 3beez website ( Track Metadata ), that I might want to add metadata to individual tracks of my pop recordings. For example, I have some tribute albums, where each track is performed by different artists. Wax allows me to store the name of the artists for each track. Importing my music. I can bulk import my music over a network or from a hard disk drive into Wax. I can also rip music from a CD and tag the music using the Wax software (which retrieves metadata from several databases). I can fill in additional metadata while I am ripping the CD to Wax. After I’ve imported music, I can move the music into genres or subgenres to improve the organization of my library and to make it easier to find recordings. I realize that the software products you folks suggested are able to do some of these things – and no doubt some do things that Wax cannot do – but the Wax system seemed like the best match to my needs. Thanks for all the suggestions!
  6. Thanks for your suggestion, Paul. I checked out JRiver Media, but it looks too complicated for me. I see that JRiver Media has several advanced functions for tagging and cataloging music (esp. classical music), which sounds good. However, using those functions requires that one write scripts. I found some excellent online resources (for example Vincent Kars’ The Well-Tempered Computer and JRiverWiki) with instructions on how to do the scripting, but I have neither the desire nor the programming skills to assimilate those instructions. I was looking for software that is simple to learn and simple to use - software that will allow me to enter any metadata present in the CD liner notes of a work in any genre (classical, jazz, opera, show tune, pop, etc.). The absence of any responses other than Paul's tells me that there probably isn't such a product. Fortunately, an audiophile friend pointed me to The Absolute Sound (Issue 238) which contains a review of a product, the Wax Music Management System, from a company called 3beez ( 3beez.com ). The 3beez software appears to have everything I want: a clean, uncluttered user interface that is easy to use and that can accommodate all my metadata - no programming skills required. Unfortunately, the 3beez software is not sold as a standalone product, only as part of a complete system (hardware and software). Nevertheless, I ordered one because the TAS review convinced me that I could be up and running with the Wax Music Management System on day one!
  7. I am a music lover, not a technology wiz, but I hang out at CA hoping to read about new products that meet my needs. I was excited when I found the thread about the Daphile software development. It appears to do many things right, but it addresses none of the problems with the presentation of metadata that music lovers like me care about. In the screenshots I have found, I still see only album title, artist, track title, genre, and year. What if I want to know all the artists in a jazz combo? How would I distinguish multiple versions of Beethoven Symphony No. 5? Where do I put the names of the cast of a show? If I were a programmer, I would write some software myself on behalf of all music lovers, but I'm not. Is it impossible to write a program that solves these problems? Am I waiting in vain?
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