Attention software developers: metadata matters

[Elise_B]

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?

[Paul R]

Have you, perhaps, tried JRMC on a Mac or on a Windows PC? It does metadata amazingly well. There is an entire thread here about tips and tricks using it -

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/j-river-tips-and-techniques-user-experiences-repository-13684/

 

-Paul

 

P.S. And welcome to CA!

[Elise_B]

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!

[DaQi]

Even better would be software that didn't require us to spend endless hours entering and fiddling with metadata and just got it "magically" right. Maybe I am dreaming but I am tired of adapting myself to computers I thought they were supposed to help us.

 

I do use JRMC and seem to spend a lot of time fiddling. Although I moved away from iTunes for a variety of reasons it did seem to have it better figured as far as making it easier. It had other major issues - hence the move.

[Miska]

What if I want to know all the artists in a jazz combo?

 

Usually best source of information is associated PDF leaflet.

 

How would I distinguish multiple versions of Beethoven Symphony No. 5?

 

FLAC has "artist" and "performer" metadata fields, while ID3v2 has for example "artist" and "composer" fields. I use these quite a lot for classical music.

 

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?

 

Problem with player GUI is how much information to cram in a view at once and how to balance complexity and simplicity of functionality. ID3v2 has closer to hundred different kinds of tags, each possibly having varying amount of information, or the same tag repeated multiple times with different content. If you'd like to have all this available through GUI you end up quite complex application.

 

Another problem is that apart from track title, artist and album, the internet metadata databases contain almost systematically inconsistent or incomplete/wrong information. For example most of the time genre is wrong, almost every album of Pink Floyd has different genre when fetched from some internet databases.

 

When I ripped my CD's, I didn't bother to go and fix all the information. It would just have been way too much work.

[bibo01]

Elise perhaps MusiCHI could interest you. It is especially good for classical music and it uses its own database.

[Musicophile]

Couldn't agree more.

 

In the meantime, here are some workarounds:

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/managing-classical-music-metadata-itunes-experiences-17856/

[hifitubes]

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!

 

JRMC is the app you are looking for. Not sure what scripts you are referring to? JRMC does have advanced expressions and smartlists, but it's quite simple to create your own Custom fields and tag away with the help of 3rd party apps like Jaikoz/MusicBrainz.

 

I don't think you can want to have so much control and involvement over metadata without getting your hands dirty...

 

You can use custom Theater View or Playing Now screens to display anything to your liking, or use JRemote to control it all and display tags - even navigate by tags while browsing Playing Now. Very powerful stuff - the more you invest the more you will reap.

[Audio_ELF]

Maybe check out Sonata Music Server - built using J.River.

 

Or if you want something built for you; you may need to look at Sooloos.

[Elise_B]

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!

[Daudio]

Wax... 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

 

Elise,

 

Can you create your own genres and subgenres in Wax ? how many levels of nesting ?

 

I've done most of what you talked about here in iTunes, accommodating multiple different Genres. Some better then other for sure, but I think I had a good set of tools to organize my diverse Library.

 

I'll be interested in how you get on with Wax, and your opinion on how it lives up to the 'advertised'.

Please keep us informed

[Ran]

You are looking for this:

 

Qoobar, a tagger for classical music

 

Free, open source and runs on everything.

[pre]

Iḿ sharing similar challenges like Elise and others for managing the related music tag information. I have ripped several of my SACDs and have been wondering, which ID TAG edit programs are the most recommended especially for SACD rip files / ISO files. My computer music story is relatively short and started with SACD rips first and will rip CDs also later :-)

 

These tag editors I have downloaded for testing from Ubuntu 13.10 software center.:

MusicBrainz Picard - https://www.google.fi/#q=musicbrainz+picard

Pudletag - https://www.google.fi/#q=puddletag+tag+edit

Ex Falso - https://www.google.fi/#q=tag+editor+ex+falso

EasyTag - https://www.google.fi/#q=tag+editor+easytag

 

I prefer the candidates for linux. Youtube demo video for MusicBrainz Picard was quite convincing. Your recommendations for above or further new candidates would be highly appreciated. Which is best for tagging ripped SACDs, easy to use and reliable to use with network disk system ?

[Ran]

Only Picard supports DSF files. I open a bug / request with both EasyTag and PuddleTag a while back.

[Old Listener]

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!

 

These posts by Elise come across as a commercial for the product she touts. Suggestions from members are immediately rejected with reasons that aren't based on fact. This post is very detailed for someone who claims to be a newby, unable to deal with complexity.

[One and a half]

The Wax Music Management System is a server that finds metadata from two publicly available databases. The information online is very often incorrect and requires manual intervention.

The 'system' costs $5000. For that money, I would (and have) taken the time to get the metadata right, the way I want it. This thread sounds like a promotion from the start, and I echo Old Listener's comments.

 

Anyway Wax doesn't tag DSD, so it's of no interest to me anyway, but am following others experiences with different software.

[Elise_B]

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.

[couchjr]

Elise_B, thanks for posting your experiences. I've seen the Wax Box in action, and I agree that it has an elegant interface. In general I think the current state of computer audiophilia under-emphasizes the importance of UX design. It's a shame to leave such an important aspect to the high-end commercial firms, when so much innovation in other areas is being driven by dedicated amateurs and small shops like JRiver. I continue to hope that the Mac version, at least, of JRiver Music Center will improve its interface as it matures and gains market share in a growing market.

 

I've also played with MusiCHI, which is incredibly powerful, but it looks like a tool for database programmers, and is not available on the Mac or (last time I checked) iOS devices.

 

There's no reason that these software products need to have presentations that look like stack traces or low-resolution spreadsheets. Even some of us who spend our days scrolling through code and can assimilate it quickly may want a break from the fatigue, and it would certainly make many tasks quicker and easier to perform if the cognitive load were reduced by losing some visual noise.

 

Power and usability are not incompatible, as programs like Photoshop proved long ago. But for now it looks like good UX design is a differentiator for high-end commercial products because it adds value. I'd like to see it propagate more widely in the audiophile software space.