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In Reply to: RE: Library (& Player) software for large Classical collections? posted by classfolkphile on July 18, 2017 at 09:35:37
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: 07/18/17Follow Ups:
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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