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Hi all,
What are people using for their library/player software for large classical collections? I have about 3.5 TBs of mostly classical music on my Mac Mini connected external hard drive and have always used iTunes but it's always been a pain (missing files, duplicating folders - and I'm not particularly computer savvy).
Roon doesn't do classical well. JRiver for Mac seems like an afterthought. Musichi?
Follow Ups:
On this same topic of a large classical collection, do any of these programs allow for a central library with outputs in multiple rooms with possibly different music in each room, output format tailored to the DAC in each room, and control through iPhones / iPads? The output could be through ethernet -> something like Raspberry Pi or Sonore uRendu -> USB DAC.Roon can do this, but like some said, it's still not that great with classical. Can JRiver do this?
Edits: 07/22/17 07/22/17
NT
... now allows you to custom catalogue it any which way.
There are a number of questions about that in the forum.
It's not fashionable here, but I've been using it for about 5 months and haven't anything but good things to say.
I went to their website to see what they offered and search there turned up nothing for DSD, DSF, multichannel or NAS! Even the search for 5.1 returned only info on upsampling to 5.1 but nothing on actually playing 5.1 files.
The OP is a Mac user. Musicbee is Windows only.
Too bad, too - I wish MusicBee were available for the Mac. It uses .Net, if I'm not mistaken.
I had a look at Musichi a couple of years ago and , noting that you feel that you are lacking in computer skills, have to say that it defeated me though I was then very new to computer audio and certainly did not have all of the skills needed. Although I am sure that it is fine if you can get it to work it has a limitation being a development apparently by one lone individual. It also seems to be built around a graphically somewhat archaic database unless recently updated.
I am still building my library of albums and am nowhere close to having a library of your size ( so far around 500-600 albums ripped and downloaded). I am however very happy with JRiver ( MC22 currently). It plays just about everything including .dsf files and, as Old Listener points out, can be configured in various ways. The only significant downside that I am aware of is that albums having almost the same title can, in album view, be concatenated e.g. Beethoven Symph 1 Karajan and Beethoven Symph 1 Norrington can be searched individually but at track level may appear as Tracks 1-4 Karajan, tracks 5-8 Norrington. However this may relate only to the remote control view in Gizmo. As a Mac user if you want to use a remote on your phone or tablet then there is a Mac alternative which may not do the same.
JRiver also displays the metadata at track level for classical music very well ( i.e. there is no artifical cut off after x number of characters in a line) but this will depend upon how the album has been ripped and decisions made at that time or the metadata supplied in respect of downloads.
I could post some screenshots if the want but , more to the point, why not just try it? It offers a very reasonable free trial period which should enable you to make up your mind.
I'm thinking I will probably try it.
I like MusiChi, especially the tagger.
Its reference database and the fact that it does understand Composition makes it great tool for classical.
But you say Mac mini and CHI is Windows only.
Recent iTunes can be configured to handle compositions
http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/OSX/Classical.htm
The Well Tempered Computer
nt
I have been using JRiver on a PC for some time with a primarily classical collection that, so far, is just over 20Tb. I am happy with it. I was disappointed when I tried the Mac version on a MacMini but I credited that to my lack of experience and skill in Mac things.
What I did was to install BootCamp and Win on the MacMini and it has performed well for the past couple of years.
20Tb sounds impressive - are they WAV files?
Since you asked, I looked it up (filetype: albums, files):
AIF: 1, 2
AIFF: 1, 36
WMA: 2, 13
DFF: 29, 258
WAV: 30, 420
FLAC: 955, 14056
DSF: 3399, 47056
(There are no DXD files, per se. They are simply 352.8/24 WAV or FLAC)Eventually, all the AIF, AIFF, WMA and WAV will be converted to FLAC and the remaining 1000 or so SACDs will be ripped to DSF.
Edits: 07/19/17
(There are no DXD files, per se. They are simply 352.8/24 WAV or FLAC)
to explain the high data usage. Those files are huge. :)
Only 47 DXD files and they are mostly (compressed) FLAC. The DSD256 files, otoh, are bulkier. ;-)
Now I see what you mean. I was comparing DXD to DSD64 on the 2L site .
With apologies to Senator Dirksen, a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real data!
My collection (devoid of DSD) is a mere 300 GB. :)
"My collection (devoid of DSD) is a mere 300 GB. :)"
I just downloaded a multidisc album which, alone, totals 50.9GB
Where do you purchase DSD256 content or 50.9GB downloads, if I may ask? NativeDSD? HDTT?
1. DSD256 primarily from NativeDSD. Some from personal contacts.
2. The big download was from AcousticSounds.
Thanks! I was quite surprised when I saw that you have 3399 DSD albums and another 1000 unripped SACDs. The entire DSD catalog at NativeDSD is 1187, at AcousticSounds 830, at HDTracks 177, and at HDTT 423. So even assuming no duplicates, we're still only up to 2617.
All the SACDs available at AcousticSounds seem to number ~1500 max and all of the SACDs & Hybrid SACDs at Amazon total 13,461 but probably include a large proportion duplicates. You have probably at least a third or more of the entire worldwide supply of DSD content.
How do you store the files, if I may ask? NAS with a few 8-10TB drives and then some backup system?
A lot of SACDs (and DVD-A) have been discontinued and do not appear on those sites. Rips of those account for a substantial number in my collection.
I have 2 NAS RAID drives, each with a 40TB raw capacity. I keep/use one in my apartment and one in my house. In addition, I have a non-RAID backup on HDDs.
Thanks again. Even so, the Amazon 13,761 figure included > 3,000 used SACDs.Based on the "Associated Equipment" part of your Stereophile reviews, I take that NAS to be QNAP TS-569L.
Edits: 07/20/17
I have 2 QNAP TS-569Ls at the house and a new QNAP TS-831x in the apartment.
I marvel at the amount of data involved with music.
I toured the Coca Cola data center in Atlanta near the airport around 1990. One floor of the building was dedicated to housing all the DASD while the water cooled four processor IBM 3090 Sierra mainframe and a huge Hitachi RAM drive took up the main floor. The total storage to run the entire enterprise back then wasn't even close to that.
Just boggles the mind for this old guy. :)
Then again today, there's Google...
I agree, and it is a royal pain to build, tag and maintain it all with proper backup. Especially for Kal, and for me too, in hi rez multichannel. The results, however, are worth it.
Not sure if we will see it in my lifetime, but if it could all be streamed from the cloud, I would love it. However, it is especially unlikely for the Mch classical music Kal and I prefer. Existing streaming is just not friendly to classical or to Mch.
All my MC files are essentially in folder and file order from the (Mac) operating system. That's it as far as organization goes for multichannel in my system.
Now I COULD use the Audirvana database for multichannel - but Audirvana doesn't support ASIO. OTOH, HQ Player supports ASIO, but doesn't have database capabilities. Do I need to give JRiver another try?
Chris - I have way too many albums, and I want to be able to have multiple views by album, composer, artist, genre, etc. So, one dimenensional folder/file organization is not workable for me. I am way beyond that.
So, I use tags within JRiver. It is a lot of work to maintain them, but worthwhile. Normally, I can get to any composition by any composer by any artist in seconds via the JRemote display on my iPad. Browsing is nice and easy, too.
JRiver has also allowed me to eliminate the prepro from my system, which is basically just a PC to Mch DAC to amps to speakers. The PC runs JRiver and Dirac Live. My library is on a NAS as is an Ethernet cable TV tuner. I rip SACDs to the NAS from an Oppo 103. PC optical drives can play CD,DVD, BD. I eliminated the normal prepro, player and cable box from my system over 3 years ago and I have no regrets.
JRiver is feature packed, so there is a considerable learning curve with it. But, I am quite happy using it.
The Apple version of JRiver has lagged the Windows version, but I think they might be fairly close now for audio. I do not think there is anything more comprehensive out there. I do not think Roon is able to effectively handle a large classical library.
It's just that it appears fairly daunting for me to start over at the beginning, having to edit all the tags and meta information which I've already done with iTunes, just to get the info into JRiver properly. I may just give Audirvana some more time to see what they can do as far as ASIO support is concerned. My multi-channel files still number below a thousand at this point, so I can probably wait a bit longer. And I still love some of the capabilities of HQ Player which don't seem to exist on other playback software.
I think that, no matter what you do, you can't have it all! ;-)
Chris - I know nothing about iTunes, except it seems to be a boy purporting to do a man's work. But, I am not sure there is a tagging problem. As long as iTunes adheres to industry standards for tagging, that should transfer to JRiver. JRiver can also support as many custom tag fields as you desire, but you really do not need many beyond its standard set to handle a big classical library. I recommend only two:
Composition: the title of the composition which might have multiple movements on multiple tracks.
Subgenre: while the Genre tag might indicate Classical, Popular, Jazz, etc., the sub-genre can be useful in classical to identify Symphony, Oratorio, Ballet, Opera, Chamber, etc.
If all the other audio library tools included just these two added fields to their standard tags, it would make a world of difference. But, then again, the disc authors don't even fill in all the standard metadata they should as it is.
. . . you'll have a double CD set, and disc 1 will have the info entered in a certain way, while disc 2 (from the same set!) will have a completely different way of entering the data - as if two different people entered the data, using multiple standards. I even find that my own entries are inconsistent, as I've changed changed (or forgotten!) my methodolgies over the years.
Maybe I'm a bit defensive about the iTunes database capabilities: yes, it does have its restrictions (notably, it doesn't deal with the FLAC format, or with multi-channel), but I wouldn't say that makes it "a boy purporting to do a man's work" - but whatever. I definitely can't use it for my multichannel files, so I do need to find something else for these files at some point.
Regarding the tagging fields, you're recommending only two (composition and subgenre)? What about composer, or artist (performer)? And as Kal's and Old Listener's examples show, there must be a field for album or booklet cover too - I've gotta have the album cover field! ;-)
Those 2 new custom fields are all that I found necessary to add in JRiver. Composer, artist, etc. etc. and all the other fields necessary for comprehensive classical tagging are already defined in JRiver's standard library format.
Sorry, but a library tool that will not handle Flac and Mch, is rather puny these days. I have not heard of an audio or video format JRiver cannot handle.
But, yes, the metadata supplied by the authors on the disc itself is seldom reliable or complete, especially for classical. Everything has to be edited or filled in manually. As long as the library tool handles industry standard formats, there is no problem. I have heard some weird stories about Foobar on that score, for example.
Maybe so, but remember that the vast majority of listeners (unlike you, Kal, or me) are not into multi-channel at all. Most listening today is through headphones and earbuds. So I don't blame Apple for sizing up the market and acting accordingly. As for FLAC, that format is very easy to convert to other formats if necessary.
In any case, I played around with the Audirvana database a bit more earlier today. It seems equally at home with multi-channel, 2-channel, FLAC, AIFF, etc. I still need to see what it does with DSD.
If I do start to rely on Audirvana as my primary database, I'll be sad to lose some of the capabilities of iTunes, such as the count it keeps of how many times I've listened to certain tracks, the last time I listened to a track, etc. - fun things, rather than make-or-break things. But fun things can still contribute to making life worth living! ;-)
Chris - I have zero actual experience with iTunes. So, my opinion is superficial at best. And, yes, we can exist using different specialist tools for different formats. But, I prefer a single library tool that handles all my formats - including video by the way - both now and in the future. I prefer a single method of tagging and maintaining my entire library, and a single user interface for album/track selection for playback.
iTunes strikes me as both lightweight and oriented to Apple's own proprietary pop music market aspirations and concepts, regardless of what my actual needs may be. Sure, Roon and many others are the same.
And, for me it is a must that any tool I use also handle classical tagging and cataloging in depth. If my needs do not conform to what is popular in the marketplace, then I need to move on to find the niche tool is that does best meet my needs.
MusiChi is designed from the ground up for classical. If all I played were CD's and downloads in stereo, I might be satisfied with that. But, I need much more than that, since 99% of my music collecting over the last 10 years has been Mch SACD, BD-A and BD-V. So, JRiver is easily the ticket for me, and it has allowed me to streamline my audio/video system in the process.
BTW, JRiver automatically maintains information about previous plays by track, including the date you last played something. Agreed, that info is not crucial, but it is handy sometimes.
My only major disappointment with JRiver is that it still offers no easy scheme to tag at the chapter level of Blu-rays, and it also does not have access to the BD disc menu. Most all available tools do not, because the BD format is so difficult to deal with, but it sure would be nice.
But, I am approaching the 4,000 album mark in my library with JRiver, including many multi-disc albums. No CDs, just SACDs in DSF, Mch downloads also in DSF at DSD64,128 and 256 plus Flac from 88k-384k, BD-A and -Vs with LPCM, DTS-HDMA, Dolby THD in PCM 48k-192k. Handling all these formats in Mch is a minimum requirement of mine.
It was more capable than I remembered and it too remembers your track playing history. And it turned out that most of the files converted over just fine, without too much hassle or "damage" to their fields.
Unlike you, I have not ripped DVD-A's, SACD's and blu-ray audio discs to the computer, except for a few DVD-A's. As you may remember, native Mac support for blu-ray is non-existent, although there are some third-party utilities which can be used. (Steve Jobs famously called blu-ray "a bag of hurt"!) So almost all of my MCh files on computer are directly from downloads, and most of my rips are from plain old CD's. I'm at the 2,500 mark right now in terms of number of albums available, but I have plenty of discs still to be ripped (including almost all my MCh discs).
I may still give JRiver another shot at some point.
Chris,
So if I understand correctly, upon transferring to JRiver from iTunes all of the information has to be re-editied? But not if going from iTunes to Audirvana?
What is the advantage of ASIO drivers?
TIA
Rob
I have not dealt with the JRiver database.
As for Audirvana, it can operate in two different modes as far as which kind of database you want to use is concerned. It has its own database which you can use, or you can switch to Audirvana's "iTunes Compatibility Mode", where you use the iTunes database, but the Audirvana engine takes over the actual sound playback function. (IOW, iTunes is used just for its database organization and nothing beyond that.)
The ASIO driver I use is for use with the exaSound e38 DAC - it has more capabilities than Apple's standard Core Audio driver, such as support for very high PCM sample rates or unconverted DSD output. This would be useless however if I didn't have playback software (in my case, HQ Player) which also supports the ASIO driver. exaSound installs a handy little program which allows you to choose between Apple's Core Audio driver and the ASIO driver (which I believe originally came from Steinberg Technologies).
.
I've used JRiver on PCs for over 11 years for my mostly classical music collection. That collection is about 1 Tb in size, composed of lossless Flac files. Others use JRiver for much larger collections with equal success.Some key features for classical music:
- gapless playback
- great features for editing tags
- good selection of standard tags including composer and conductor.
- ability to define custom tags
- ability to define custom viewsI also use JRiver on a Linux PC but I have no experience with JRiver on a Mac. I suggest that you ask questions on the JRiver forum.
The screenshot shows a custom view with some custom tags that I have used for years. I select a view on the left. In this view, the panes at the top list values for Sub_genre (chamber, orchestral, concerto ... , sonata), Composer, Work_name, Artist (performers) and Version (to distinguish mono/stereo and re-mastered versions). I can select music by clicking on a value in any column and then clicking on a value in a different column. The list of files below those panes contains those files that meet the current selection criteria.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
Edits: 07/18/17
I'll try again.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
A bit more explanation. When you select a value for one tag such as composer, the other panes are updated to show only values that occur in files with the value you selected.
Suppose that you selected Sub_genre = "Chamber". The composer pane would show only those composers for whom there is at least one chamber music track in the collection. If you then select Composer="Beethoven", you'd see only chamber works by Beethoven and only Artists who performed one of those works in tracks in your collection. At each stage, the list of music files shows only those files whose tag value match the values you selected. Select one Artist value and you have performances of a work by that (those) performers. Normally that narrows it down to a single recording. If there is more than one, the Version pane gives a way to select just one recording.
I've described the way I set JRiver up to meet my needs. You could use a similar approach or work out a different way.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
I find that a big time saver when I'm just browsing through my collection. If it does, could you show a screen shot of it? TIA!
It has been years since I used iTunes. You'll have to explain how the album view works in iTunes.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
Here's a screen shot:
Yes, see screenshot.
I long since removed the album view from my JRiver library so I had to scramble to find out whether JRiver contained an album as you described.
I don't use album cover art so there are some thumbnails missing. I usually put the work name into the Album tag rather than the official Album name.
How it works: Double click on an album thumbnail and a list of tracks in that album appears at the bottom of the window. You can play all those tracks or selected ones.
This view provides a single level of selection. My permanent music library has 2200+ album values. Scrolling through that many thumbnails would be a pain. Typing a letter takes you to the first thumbnail whose tag begins with that letter. Still a time consuming and awkward way to browse and select music. Hardly the way I'd choose to select from a large library of classical music.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
. . . but somewhat disorganized with the redundant repetitions of album covers showing. I have almost the exact same number of album titles as you do for your album "values" (approximately 2300), and I've put a considerable amount of time into getting my meta information into a form which is useful for me in an album view. In contrast to your experience, I don't find scrolling through the album covers to be time consuming or awkward at all. In fact, I like the experience, because it will sometimes help me recall certain albums I'd had on the back burner for too long. ;-)
Different strokes for different folks.
Note that this is only one of a number of views that I can create and access. This one is "Albums Classical MCH" and displayed in order of acquisition. There are other views listed on the left. Note also that one can scale the size of the cover art to suit and on-the-fly.(Yes, I saw the John Hammond album which doesn't belong. I just fixed the classical flag.)
Edits: 07/19/17
. . . since I can't add multi-channel albums to iTunes. However, with 2-channel, I can also have the albums appear in various views too.
I actually tried the trial version of JRiver Media Center years ago, but it exploded into a detonation of white noise between tracks one time - which sent my wife and my cat scurrying from the house. My wife said she even got heart palpitations from this incident! So, given that little disturbance (!), I went with Audirvana (which has its own database you can use as well as its "iTunes Compatibility Mode"), and, later, with HQ Player, which doesn't seem to have database capabilities at all. Sometimes, I'll play with the Audirvana database (you can switch back and forth between this database and the iTunes database), but I get a lot redundant entries (kind of like what Old Listener showed with his JRiver album view), and it would require more work than I want to put in in order to whip it into shape! (And besides, as we discussed on another thread, Audirvana doesn't work with the ASIO driver - at least not yet.)
Here are a couple of other iTunes views:
By Date:
(Remember, this does not show multi-channel files.)
Another Artist View (just for comparison to my last post):
"I actually tried the trial version of JRiver Media Center years ago, but it exploded into a detonation of white noise between tracks one time - which sent my wife and my cat scurrying from the house."
I gotta say that I've never experienced that from JRiver and I have been using it for years on PC and Mac. Occasionally when using an incorrect or defective driver, I have experienced low level white noise but that just told me to get the fix.
Here's another useful view.
. . . and I don't think they quite had all the kinks worked out. I'm sure it would be fine today.
I use Audirvana.
What screen shot?
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