Suggestions wanted for Music file management which has nothing to do with iTunes

[Barnboy]

Hi

Looking for advice on an alternative to iTunes

I am dipping my toes into this murky world and am floundering

I have a netbook running Foobar and have just purchased a 24/192 VLink to export this to my MF TriVista Dac

Most of my digital music is stored as FLAC files at CD quality and I have approx. 1.5 TB Split between two external drives

Experiments have included playing files from an SD card into the main system through a cheap early 16/44 dac which was an improvement so I can understand that getting a SSD and putting everything on that in the future (When costs come down!) would be good and act as another backup

What I would like is to find an easy music management software (Windows) that can act as front end but that doesn't have all the restrictions and palaver that dealing with any fruit based provider does. I realise that this is counter intuitive as we have several ipads and iphones around the house and it would be good to use them but as far as this project goes, its to play the music through the house system in the best way possible from the medium. Once I have this together then I will start looking at Hi Res files and see what all the fuss is about. I don't need to play music throughout the house as the place is small enough to hear it everywhere if you turn it up So no SBTs etc

Any suggestions from Freeware to paid are welcome and also any other tips or experiences would be gratefully received

Cheers

 

[rockabillybass]

Jriver Media Centre.

Not free but very capable, tons of features, easy to set up and sounds great. They do a 30 day free trial. Very fast database engine. It will cope with huge music libraries.

Also has an android remote app (Gizmo) which is functional and a superb ios app Jremote.

Costs $50 (£33).

I've been using it for a few years now. I'm well impressed.

 

[Guest]

MediaMonkey

 

[Barnboy]

Thanks for the prompt replies. Both look very capable and actually when you look at the two like for like they are similar in price (Media Monkey Gold) Will investigate both although I like the fact you can run JRiver on two machines

 

[aoijin]

MediaMonkey Gold allows installation on 3 computers

Support page with link to full licence.

i use it on two PCs and it is also used to tag files for my squeezeboxes.

 

[ZincAlloy]

Hi Looking for advice on an alternative to iTunes

I am dipping my toes into this murky world and am floundering

I have a netbook running Foobar and have just purchased a 24/192 VLink to export this to my MF TriVista Dac

Most of my digital music is stored as FLAC files at CD quality and I have approx. 1.5 TB Split between two external drives

Experiments have included playing files from an SD card into the main system through a cheap early 16/44 dac which was an improvement so I can understand that getting a SSD and putting everything on that in the future (When costs come down!) would be good and act as another backup

What I would like is to find an easy music management software (Windows) that can act as front end but that doesn't have all the restrictions and palaver that dealing with any fruit based provider does. I realise that this is counter intuitive as we have several ipads and iphones around the house and it would be good to use them but as far as this project goes, its to play the music through the house system in the best way possible from the medium. Once I have this together then I will start looking at Hi Res files and see what all the fuss is about. I don't need to play music throughout the house as the place is small enough to hear it everywhere if you turn it up So no SBTs etc

Any suggestions from Freeware to paid are welcome and also any other tips or experiences would be gratefully received

Cheers

Try MediaMonkey. There's a free download option so you can see how you get on before deciding whether to upgrade to the Gold version. I don't use it a media player - merely to rip, tag and organise my music. What I really like about it is it supports what they call Collections - in other words, I can tag my rock music differently from my classical music, so when I browse my collection I see rock music albums listed by Album Artist, and classical music albums listed by Composer - all within the same browse view.

It also let's me rip all my musco into FLAC, yet transcodes this to MP3 when I sync my idevices - so a single lossless library, with multiple renditions on all my mobile devices.

ATB, Ken

 

[Barnboy]

Thanks for sharing all your experiences, Ken you have sold me on the ability to auto transcode into MP3 when working with the idevices. Better than I could have hoped!

Iain thanks for the link showing possibilities for multiple machines as well

 

[dan1502]

I've just started using JRiver on a trial basis and have found it great for music. I'm having a few issues with video playback though which is why I haven't subscribed just yet. Getting album art (and DVD info) is very easy.