What are Mac audio fans using besides iTunes?

Dec 31, 2007 at 8:57 AM Post #31 of 44
Quote:

Originally Posted by BudmanNC /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Have you tried flac through VLC? I'm thinking about trying this on my new MacBook Pro. I have a large collection of flac files and am trying to move over from Windows, so this is new to me.

Thanks,

Buddy



FLAC plays just fine on VLC. I just prefer iTunes for ease of use.
 
Dec 31, 2007 at 10:04 PM Post #32 of 44
If you download Max you can convert flac into aiff at the same bit depth and sample rate. Then you can load the aiff's into iTunes. Works great for me. I'm building up a playlist in iTunes full of higher quality audio. Mostly 24/96 stuff.
 
Jan 2, 2008 at 4:20 AM Post #35 of 44
Quote:

Originally Posted by Wodgy /img/forum/go_quote.gif
are stuck in the file/folder organizing mindset. from oddball artists (e.g. from music blogs), but each to their own.


Can you expand on this a bit? What exactly do you mean by the "file/folder organizing mindset", and what's a good alternative? 80gb I'm organizing here...
 
Jan 2, 2008 at 4:55 AM Post #36 of 44
Quote:

Originally Posted by matt fury /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Can you expand on this a bit? What exactly do you mean by the "file/folder organizing mindset", and what's a good alternative? 80gb I'm organizing here...


I just mean that some people still insist that the only way to file their music is in a set of directories by artist then by album. These people generally feel that this is a better approach than using a library program to manage their music.

For various reasons, I don't think this is a practical way to manage a large music collection. It has the advantage of practical simplicitly and not needing a large music program to manage your files, but the drawbacks are very significant. What if you want to browse your music by genre? Sorry, can't. What if you want to create smart playlists, e.g. my most highly rated or most listened to music? Sorry, can't. What if you like music blogs and daily get new files by oddball artists? It gets to be a bother to manually create directories for all the new artists, and you never bother listening to the music again because staring at a list of directories isn't really an appealing way to engage with your music (CoverFlow is a lot nicer way to peruse your collection, especially if you pick a genre and then flip through your albums; having all your albums mixed together in one long list is less useful).

iTunes on Mac isn't a heavyweight or resource-intensive program anyway, and it's bit-perfect, so unless you have specific feature complaints, it's hard to argue against it. If you want to keep your music files organized manually on disk you can; however, it will never satisfy the file/folder browsing purists. That's fine. It's not intended to.
 
Jan 2, 2008 at 7:12 AM Post #37 of 44
How does having nicely organized files, independent of an application used, have anything to do with making playlists, adding files, etc.? All that you mention is in the application domain, and is not hindered by good organization of files. Turn off iTunes' automatic reorganizing feature, and all that stuff you talk about works fine, with neatly organized folders and files. Any work done by iTunes' database is entirely abstracted from the files themselves. That was not the default last time I gave it the chance, but it's a mere checkbox.

How does it help other applications to not have good files organization? How does that help Audacious? Slimserver? VLC? Random file manager of choice (Dolphin)? New stuff on a new OS that isn't out yet? It doesn't. Do I care about getting to a random new file from everywhere? No. It's going to be in a big messy pile, until I decide to sit down and sift through them all.

There is no staring at folders going on. It's a matter of accessibility, done from experience of doing it poorly.

Files in folders properly named for what is in them is the best way to organize files for easy access from any application and platform. It in no way gets in the way of doing anything with them that depends on the application's features, nor managing them in other ways at the same time, even with iTunes.
 
Jan 2, 2008 at 7:30 AM Post #38 of 44
Quote:

Originally Posted by cerbie /img/forum/go_quote.gif
How does having nicely organized files, independent of an application used, have anything to do with making playlists, adding files, etc.? All that you mention is in the application domain, and is not hindered by good organization of files. Turn off iTunes' automatic reorganizing feature, and all that stuff you talk about works fine, with neatly organized folders and files. Any work done by iTunes' database is entirely abstracted from the files themselves. That was not the default last time I gave it the chance, but it's a mere checkbox.

How does it help other applications to not have good files organization? How does that help Audacious? Slimserver? VLC? Random file manager of choice (Dolphin)? New stuff on a new OS that isn't out yet? It doesn't. Do I care about getting to a random new file from everywhere? No. It's going to be in a big messy pile, until I decide to sit down and sift through them all.

There is no staring at folders going on. It's a matter of accessibility, done from experience of doing it poorly.

Files in folders properly named for what is in them is the best way to organize files for easy access from any application and platform. It in no way gets in the way of doing anything with them that depends on the application's features, nor managing them in other ways at the same time, even with iTunes.



I'm not talking about people who use proper tagging in conjunction with file-folder organization. There's no drawback to doing that, and of course with proper tags you can do things like filter by genre, etc. There's no material difference between such systems and iTunes -- it's all the same thing.

I'm talking about the guys who think tagging is mostly unnecessary and think artist/album folder organization is enough. I don't think it is. At some point moving beyond the lowest common denominator is useful.
 
Jan 2, 2008 at 8:52 AM Post #39 of 44
We agree. That's myopic, and adds work in the long run. Even going back to what was quoted, I was thinking of the many people that just drag into iTunes and leave it, and then have a godawful mess when it comes backup time, or their OS went sour, or whatever else
smily_headphones1.gif
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Jan 2, 2008 at 11:30 AM Post #40 of 44
Although I also think itunes is a great app on osx, I do wish I had alternatives at times. It is nice to just change things up sometimes and be different than the rest of the world.
biggrin.gif
 
Jan 3, 2008 at 5:42 PM Post #42 of 44
Quote:

Originally Posted by Wodgy /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Interesting new application, given the talk here of file/folder organization. Someone's come up with a filesystem plugin that presents your iTunes library as a filesystem. It also lets you drag and drop files to iPods:
iTunesFS: your music in Finder - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)



Really interesting!
I certainly have to check out this plugin.
 
Jan 3, 2008 at 6:59 PM Post #43 of 44
i use Cog primarily because my music is organized in a filesystem that i just drag and drop when i want a listen and i never use or feel a need for the extras in iTunes
 
Jan 3, 2008 at 7:45 PM Post #44 of 44
I just started last night with Max and converted my first cd to flac. Played it in Cog and worked very well. Sounds the same as the cd. Very nice. Used the cdparanoia encoder option.
 

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