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November 22, 2016 - 10:56am
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Music collection management software
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My recommendations are:
1. Get JRiver Music Center for your manager. It is extremely capable and flexible. 1500 CDs is an almost trivial use for it but you will likely not find any limits going forward. There is a little learning curve while you customize it to your preferences. It will do automatic back-ups of its library data. (Supposedly, foobar will also do all of this but I have no significant personal experience with it.)
2. Arrange for complete and physically separate back-ups of your library content (music files). There is no reason to risk the loss or unrecoverable corruption of your files.
Thanks. I downloaded it and I am going to try it out. I did back up my drive, but the problem seems to be on the backup drive as well. I think it is a Windows Media Player problem. Can this program you recommend go to the Internet and plug back in missing tags, album art, etc.? In other words, does it have the capability of repairing my existing files?
Yes but only to a degree. Album art is pretty good but other tags vary depending on what you have and what you want. I know of no program that will do this automatically and completely.
I use Music Collector, and it is very useful.
I took a look at it and it seems comprehensive but does it function as a player?
I use MusiCHI for CD ripping and for difficult tagging because it is optimized for classical music but JRiver is the most capable player I have used.
OK. I downloaded and tried, on a minor scale. JRiver Music Center and Music Collector. Both are nice.
Music Collector appears to have filled in the missing track names and generally found the cover art, which should be in the data. So, based upon very limited testing, I can call up a CD that previously had lost the name and other information for track 1 and track 1 will be there, properly named.
JRiver Music Center also displays the cover art, but seems to still omit the track that is labeled “unknown” or something along those lines. It appears to be a problem only with track number 1 in each instance and not any of the other tracks. JRiver Music Center will begin with track 2 on an album or CD and have the remaining tracks, with track 1 just omitted. You can see this because JRiver Music Center has the track numbers and they begin with number 2 instead of 1. I have not yet really tried to get JRiver Music Center to find the “missing” track and put it where it should be. Note that track 1 will be on the hard drive and it is not corrupted, so the problem is just with its identity.
I think either program will find cover art, but I was very impressed with Music Collector when I sought cover art. There are some ripped CD’s in my collection that never had cover art, notwithstanding Windows Media Player, and so this is a nice feature. Although they appear to have to be done one by one, which is very time consuming, I can live with that if most selections have cover art.
Notwithstanding the positive benefit of Music Collector, there seems to be a problem. When Windows Media Player worked right, it would create an artist folder and then each CD would have its own subfolder under the artist folder. For some artists, there might be only one subfolder for a CD, but many artists have several subfolders. The Beatles have many subfolders, as do the Rolling Stones in my collection. So far, when I have Music Collector display artists, or group by artist, I get the artists, but I also get separate folders for individual CD’s by those artists (if they have many CD’s). So, I have a “Beatles” folder for example, and I have separate folders for individual CD’s as well. I suspect that Music Collector has combined my artist folders and my individual CD folders, essentially not recognizing the folder and subfolder structure.
So, does anyone know how I fix Music Collector so that it groups individual CD’s by artist without having individual CD’s also listed separately? Also, what might I be doing wrong or just misunderstanding with JRiver Music Center? I am sure that the program is not necessarily flawed just because I have problems.
I would recommend two options:
1. If you want to try and save your catalog, follow the instructions at the following link http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15693/update-metadata-and-cover-art-in-windows-media-player-12/. If that doesn't work, then...
2. Invest in a NAS and re-rip your CDs using a lossless format.
Your clue of "1500 CD’s, my personal collection, with Windows Media Player. This was done with Windows XP..." suggests a seasoned nature of a lossy-compressed catalog, which has likely withstood moving from one machine to another and/or several OS upgrades. (Please do correct me if I am wrong.)
At this point, just bite the bullet and invest in a NAS / Server / Streamer, and re-rip your CDs. (There's a part of you that was subconsciously looking for this type of advice anyway.)
If you've already purchased JRiver MC, you can stick with it for ripping. Otherwise, I recommend you look at the features of Exact Audio Copy (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/overview/features/features-of-eac/).
(FWIW, I personally use - and love - the Synology DS214play, which has since been replaced by a newer model.)
Thanks. You are probably correct about the rerip. I do have maybe a few hundred that I have been holding off on ripping while I decide which way to go. My plan (maybe at this time) is to begin ripping the others and then salvaging what is not damaged in the original rip by copying the good ones over to the new project, leaving a sizable, but more manageable task. But any advice at the outset is welcomed. I do not want to do this again.
I think that the link does not help my situation. It is worse.
Having said that, you gave me a new (new to me) term for the mix, namely a NAS. I did some very quick looking and it seems that that is a Networked Attached Storage or Network Attached Storage. I do have Exact Audio Copy and I do use it. In fact, I have sometimes ripped with Windows Media Player and then with EAC and deleted the tracks ripped by Windows Media Player and replaced them with the EAC rips.
Although I can and will do my own research on NAS, if you care to give me some further advice and some basics on the subject, I would be most interested in reading what you have.
If you are running both programs only on your already corrupted file base, it is not a great or fair test. Let me suggest that you test them with new rips and/or new downloads before deciding.
It functions as a player indirectly, by linking to your Windows Media Player library or other source files. the music must be already on the computer; it does not search the net for tracks.
I feel your pain -- I had to go through all that a while back as I was getting away from lossy and in to lossless, higher resolution files. That's why I said to bite the bullet.
NAS = Network Attached Storage. Correct! Sister site Audiostream has a "101" on NAS: http://www.audiostream.com/content/computer-audio-101-nas
(Unless you use whyTunes, you can skip the details in the section entitled "Moving Your iTunes Library Onto Your New NAS" - just know that catalogs need to be migrated to the new NAS and how it's done depends upon the individual user's equipment.)
Audiostream also has two NAS recommendations: http://www.audiostream.com/content/greatest-bits-storage-network-attached-storage-nas
If you want a "best of 2016" kind of list:
https://www.cnet.com/topics/storage/best-hard-drives-and-storage/network-attached-storage/
If you want a premium product (with a premium price tag), read about the Bluesound Vault 2:
http://www.audiostream.com/content/bluesound-vault-2
This will help ease the pain of re-ripping since it actually has a drive (albeit, only a single drive).
(Personally, I chose the Synology because it had built-in media server and video transcoding capabilities via DLNA. You're going to have to do some homework on NAS features because everyone's use cases and equipment vary.)
A quick comment about EAC: keep in mind that it extracts to .WAV and THEN converts the .WAV to your specified file format(s). You can also select whether or not you want EAC to dispose of the resulting .WAV extract. (I personally chose FLAC as the desired file conversion format.)
Let us know about your progress and what you decide.
Happy listening!
By "net," do you mean home network or internet?
It looks like the SOB's cut me off by ending my test period before I could fully check out Music Collector. I did a rip of a new CD on EAC (disc 2) and I am doing disc 1 with Windows Media Player. I am having some trouble with seeing the cover art on the EAC disc. When I play it back on Windows Media Player, I get no cover art. But if I go to the upper right hand corner and switch to library, I see the cover art. If I play the Windows Media Player Rip, I get cover art immediately and if I switch to library. I do not understand, but EAC must have obtained cover art or I would not get it at all.
I will be glad to lose Windows Media Player, by the way.
I tried to add the one ripped disc to JRiver, but I cannot see it. I added or tried to add one folder (the new rip with EAC) to JRiver. It is in the library somewhere, but I cannot see the cover art, nor can I find the disc. however, a search got me the ripped songs and I could play them, once I found them with a search. I still cannot find them in the displayed albums or artists and this disc has just been ripped.
Kodi.
https://kodi.tv/about/
Outside of dev-authored documentation, here's everything you need to know about its music tagging features and options:
http://kodi.wiki/view/Music_tagging
Long live OSS projects!
I remove it from all my machines.
Then you are doing it wrong, I think. Adding individual albums and/or directories to the library in JRMC is trivial and consistent. How are you doing those tasks?
The internet.
I tried ripping with JRiver again. I took a disc that had not been ripped. At first, it was the APE format, but I changed it to uncompressed Wav for the next attempt. In order to play with Windows Media Player, it had to be Wav files. There was no problem with JRiver. The cover art came up and the disc played just fine. However, when I played the Wav rips on Windows Media Player, I did not get the cover art. Now I plan to ditch Windows Media Player, but I would like for it to display the cover art when I play something on it.
I went back in and ripped to the format that read Windows Media Player. All was fine with the cover art on Windows Media Player, but then I discovered that it was that WMA format, which I do not want. I used JRiver to convert the WMA to Wav files and the cover art came up in Windows Media Player. However, I do not like having to go into the program and converting the files to Wav files each time. My project will involve many discs and so having to do each one individually is a problem.
On the bright side, I did get JRiver to edit some of my orphan tracks (where Windows Media Player had stranded track number 1 somehow) and make them merge into the CD where they belong, complete with cover art. That would be quite a chore, but it is nice that it can be done. Nevertheless, it does not appear that the corrections were applied to my ripped files when I used Windows to open up the folder and look at the tracks. Track 1 was still "unknown".
Music Collector has some errors. I cannot tell if they can be edited like JRiver. The SOB's cut my trial off too soon. When I try to edit in Music Collector, it asks if I want to buy yet. I hit continue and nothing happens. It might be that Music Collector will do the same thing, namely make the edits that would cause the orphaned track to return to its CD.
Does Music Collector not have ripping software included?
Why are you still bothering with WMP?
I was only using it to see how the ripped CD came up in terms of the cover art.
1. Ditch WMP
2. See #1 above.
3. Invest in a NAS.
4. RE: JRMC and/or Music Collector, doesn't make sense to use software if you have no intention of purchasing a license.
5. Again, use EAC to rip to a lossless, uncompressed format, have it create another file format (without re-ripping), ensure the metadata is how you like it (which supports several database options), decide what you want to do with the original uncompressed file.
If you are really desperate to get it to work in a native Windows application, try Windows Media Center. If you didn't get WMC when you upgraded Win8, then use Kodi as a free alternative.
foobar2000 can also convert file formats.
Capisce?
I think I am close to a decision. Windows Media Player is definitely gone. It does appear that I will need to rerip most, if not all, of my CD collection, so I have resolved myself to that fact. Up until now, I have just been testing some of the software that has been suggested. I will buy a software.
It's honestly much better to buy a software than use built-in WMP management system. WMP is just bad to be honest with you. It's okay for rare uses... But if you need to manage your stuff i'd search for something better.
Regards,
Robert - online college homework help expert
I am agreeable to the NAS point made in this post. I recently purchased a Synology Diskstation 218+, and with +2000 albums presently on it (some 600 more is being ripped with foobar2000 as I write this), it works flawlessly. Also my brand new Oppo udp-203 plays the NAS music wirelessly through its own DAC, and then through my Parasound amps. The sound quality is really great, so I can recommend getting a NAS.