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Alternatives to iTunes (Mac)
#11
(19-Dec-2016, 22:30)Mohmm Wrote: Apple's iTunes is getting more and more obtrusive such that I urgently need to find a replacement. I used iTunes only for keeping order on my collection of 3k+ albums. Recently however, iTunes permanently checks with the iTunes account and server and when you prevent it from connecting you get lots of warnings interrupting the flow of music. They want to loose customers? So be it.

Please, can you suggest alternatives for taking over the system of iTunes library, files and folders and being as versatile in ordering and labelling files as is iTunes? I play music by Roon, but don't trust its capacity of keeping the library in order after reading reports on disasters.

Thanks.

Roon won't be continuing with their 'organised' folders workflow for file organisation. I think most of the issue with 'disasters' was people not reading what it meant going that route, and having their libraries organised by Roon specs - 'destroying' their library. Without a backup it would surely have been a disaster for a few. Anyway they've decided to remove it altogether now for various reasons - no doubt that one included!

I could never use anything else now and I came from iTunes. I still leave iTunes managing any formats it can handle, and the rest I manage myself. Sounds like 1.3 will be an exciting release too.

Before Roon I used Audirvana alongside iTunes, and thought it was really nice and sounded good. But none of them are 'pretty' IMO. Roon ticks that box for me too, and brings multi-room for free. But then I'm the Roon equivalent of the Devialet super-fan!

>>> 1st Place Award: Devialet, last decades most disappointing technology purchase.  <<<

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#12
For clarity, I need to start by saying that I am a Windows user. However, I do use iTunes, Roon and JRiver. My first observation is that as a Windows iTunes user, I have not noticed any issues with iTunes becoming more intrusive, so this must be a Mac only issue I think. (Although I have noticed both my iPhone and iPad becoming a little more intrusive of late, trying to force me into iCloud and similar) I did an iTunes update last weekend so I am on the latest version and everything seamed to work fine to me. I am sure that once the various settings for iCloud, or whatever else Apple is trying to lure you into, are sorted, then iTunes should work OK. It is worth noting that for me, Windows iTunes does not sound as good as either JRiver or Roon.

In my case I continue to use the iTunes library as a kind of 'master' copy. With both JRiver and Roon, you can point the software at the iTunes library '.itl' file, give it some time and you library should appear in JRiver or Roon, still in reasonable form. The behaviour of Roon and JRiver are different. Roon does an excellent job of picking up any playlists that you have made in iTunes. In fact, you can have both Roon and iTunes open on one machine, you can make changes in an iTunes playlist and Roon will pick up these changes, more or less in real time. Roon does ignore some iTunes metadata, such as individual track ratings. JRiver by contrast does pick up most of the track ratings, but does not pick up the playlists. I guess the key point is that I have had no problems at all with either JRiver or Roon changing anything in my iTunes library, zero problems.

I know some folk are madly in love with Roon, but I have to say that I am not! Don't get me wrong, I can see why some people love Roon, in many respects it is superb. For me though, I do find Roon annoying. Some of the functionality is a long way from being intuitive, and for my usage there is some very basic functionality that is missing. For example Roon cannot sort playlists alphabetically (it can't sort them at all), playlists do not show the track artist (only album artist is shown). The latter is actually quite comical, as I end up with playlists with a vast variety of musical styles, all performed by that most versatile of bands the 'various artists' combo. Although as Hifi_swlon has mentioned, it looks like a major Roon update will be with us very soon, so the advice here is that if you do want to go for another Roon trial period, why not wait a week or two for the V1.3 Roon update to be live?

As things stand, I am not planning to renew Roon when my 1 year subscription expires. Roon has been good fun, but for me in my little world with my ways of using a music library, I'd rather use JRiver. In fact, I'd rather use iTunes, but it does not sound quite as good as JRiver, so that eliminates iTunes for the 'serious' listening. I am pragmatic though, my Roon sub has a few months to go, and I could easily see myself changing my view on Roon, depending on what the V1.3 update has to offer. I did here that there is a Windows version of Amarra coming out, which might be interesting option for dragging decent sound quality out of Windows iTunes. (or maybe not) When will all this end!
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
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#13
(22-Dec-2016, 12:25)Confused Wrote: For clarity, I need to start by saying that I am a Windows user.  However, I do use iTunes, Roon and JRiver.  My first observation is that as a Windows iTunes user, I have not noticed any issues with iTunes becoming more intrusive, so this must be a Mac only issue I think.  (Although I have noticed both my iPhone and iPad becoming a little more intrusive of late, trying to force me into iCloud and similar)  I did an iTunes update last weekend so I am on the latest version and everything seamed to work fine to me.   I am sure that once the various settings for iCloud, or whatever else Apple is trying to lure you into, are sorted, then iTunes should work OK.  It is worth noting that for me, Windows iTunes does not sound as good as either JRiver or Roon.

In my case I continue to use the iTunes library as a kind of 'master' copy.  With both JRiver and Roon, you can point the software at the iTunes library '.itl' file, give it some time and you library should appear in JRiver or Roon, still in reasonable form.  The behaviour of Roon and JRiver are different.  Roon does an excellent job of picking up any playlists that you have made in iTunes.  In fact, you can have both Roon and iTunes open on one machine, you can make changes in an iTunes playlist and Roon will pick up these changes, more or less in real time.  Roon does ignore some iTunes metadata, such as individual track ratings.  JRiver by contrast does pick up most of the track ratings, but does not pick up the playlists.  I guess the key point is that I have had no problems at all with either JRiver or Roon changing anything in my iTunes library, zero problems.

I know some folk are madly in love with Roon, but I have to say that I am not!  Don't get me wrong, I can see why some people love Roon, in many respects it is superb.  For me though, I do find Roon annoying.  Some of the functionality is a long way from being intuitive, and for my usage there is some very basic functionality that is missing.  For example Roon cannot sort playlists alphabetically (it can't sort them at all), playlists do not show the track artist (only album artist is shown).  The latter is actually quite comical, as I end up with playlists with a vast variety of musical styles, all performed by that most versatile of bands the 'various artists' combo.  Although as Hifi_swlon has mentioned, it looks like a major Roon update will be with us very soon, so the advice here is that if you do want to go for another Roon trial period, why not wait a week or two for the V1.3 Roon update to be live?

As things stand, I am not planning to renew Roon when my 1 year subscription expires.  Roon has been good fun, but for me in my little world with my ways of using a music library, I'd rather use JRiver.  In fact, I'd rather use iTunes, but it does not sound quite as good as JRiver, so that eliminates iTunes for the 'serious' listening.  I am pragmatic though, my Roon sub has a few months to go, and I could easily see myself changing my view on Roon, depending on what the V1.3 update has to offer.  I did here that there is a Windows version of Amarra coming out, which might be interesting option for dragging decent sound quality out of Windows iTunes.  (or maybe not)  When will all this end!




Many thanks to Confused and all of you for your helpful answers. I took your advice and suggestions and tried quite a few of the music Player alternatives but none convinced me at the end. Either the handling was more complicated than I am used to or the GUI was an ugly replica of a Win version or there were problems with gapless play, etc etc. So, for the time being I will need to stay with iTunes for organizing my library and for adding metadata, particularly after having downgraded to an earlier version that's not so obtrusive.



As a music player, though, I am using Roon 2.3. Roon's providing metadata, reviews and stories beyond my own metadata is a pleasure most of the time and provides a lot of information. I haven't yet discovered their announced ability to show booklet-PDFs for albums and haven't tried any of the new DSP options. I am channelling my music from Roon into Dirac Audio Processor and from there into AIR 3.0.1 ethernet.



This brings me to a question: I notice that a lot of you are using Roon together with Audirvana, HQPlayer or other software. As a subscriber to a minimal-processing-ideology I try to avoid any additional software besides the unavoidable player and a room correction. I also avoid tinkering with the quality (sample rate and bit depth) of my files like upsampling or DSDing. In my opinion a general purpose PC or Mac is far less capable of doing clean and undisturbed processing (just think of those innumerable tasks and threads visible in the activity monitor) than a dedicated DSP module implemented in the D800 or in the other Devialets.



Are there any rational reasons for using HQPlayer, for example, together with Roon? Is there some aspects that my thinking in terms of simplicity misses? In dubio pro less complexity--does that not make sense?
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#14
(22-Dec-2016, 12:25)Confused Wrote: For clarity, I need to start by saying that I am a Windows user. However, I do use iTunes, Roon and JRiver. My first observation is that as a Windows iTunes user, I have not noticed any issues with iTunes becoming more intrusive, so this must be a Mac only issue I think. (Although I have noticed both my iPhone and iPad becoming a little more intrusive of late, trying to force me into iCloud and similar) I did an iTunes update last weekend so I am on the latest version and everything seamed to work fine to me. I am sure that once the various settings for iCloud, or whatever else Apple is trying to lure you into, are sorted, then iTunes should work OK. It is worth noting that for me, Windows iTunes does not sound as good as either JRiver or Roon.

In my case I continue to use the iTunes library as a kind of 'master' copy. With both JRiver and Roon, you can point the software at the iTunes library '.itl' file, give it some time and you library should appear in JRiver or Roon, still in reasonable form. The behaviour of Roon and JRiver are different. Roon does an excellent job of picking up any playlists that you have made in iTunes. In fact, you can have both Roon and iTunes open on one machine, you can make changes in an iTunes playlist and Roon will pick up these changes, more or less in real time. Roon does ignore some iTunes metadata, such as individual track ratings. JRiver by contrast does pick up most of the track ratings, but does not pick up the playlists. I guess the key point is that I have had no problems at all with either JRiver or Roon changing anything in my iTunes library, zero problems.

I know some folk are madly in love with Roon, but I have to say that I am not! Don't get me wrong, I can see why some people love Roon, in many respects it is superb. For me though, I do find Roon annoying. Some of the functionality is a long way from being intuitive, and for my usage there is some very basic functionality that is missing. For example Roon cannot sort playlists alphabetically (it can't sort them at all), playlists do not show the track artist (only album artist is shown). The latter is actually quite comical, as I end up with playlists with a vast variety of musical styles, all performed by that most versatile of bands the 'various artists' combo. Although as Hifi_swlon has mentioned, it looks like a major Roon update will be with us very soon, so the advice here is that if you do want to go for another Roon trial period, why not wait a week or two for the V1.3 Roon update to be live?

As things stand, I am not planning to renew Roon when my 1 year subscription expires. Roon has been good fun, but for me in my little world with my ways of using a music library, I'd rather use JRiver. In fact, I'd rather use iTunes, but it does not sound quite as good as JRiver, so that eliminates iTunes for the 'serious' listening. I am pragmatic though, my Roon sub has a few months to go, and I could easily see myself changing my view on Roon, depending on what the V1.3 update has to offer. I did here that there is a Windows version of Amarra coming out, which might be interesting option for dragging decent sound quality out of Windows iTunes. (or maybe not) When will all this end!
Since you are a Windows user, Could you download the MUSIChi Suite in trial period and let me know what you think please?

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#15
Mohmm

Have you turned off the iTunes store using iTunes -> Preferences -> Restrictions.

Apologies if you have already done this but you do not mention it.
mac mini (2018, Latest MacOS, plain old iTunes) > no name USB cable or AIR3 over ethernet -> Devialet 200 -> Kimber 8TC -> KEF LS50
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#16
Still use iTunes 10.7 on the mac attached to my hifi.
Unparalleled UI, especially the thumbnail grouped view. Unique, svelte, light but feature-full software. Sounds best with Amarra (Hifi version).

On my work laptop, I use the latest iTunes, but since those earlier versions, iTunes has grown into a content selling vehicle for Apple and not a playback purpose built app.

I have also put together a little app "iBatch for iTunes" which I think is essential for iTunes.
You can check it here:
http://smarttoolboxideas.com/Smart_Toolb...index.html
Mac Mini + Matrix X-SPDIF2 + Echoes Music 1  |  Pro-Ject CD Box RS2T  ⏵  Devialet Expert 250 Pro  ⏵  Boenicke W5 SE, B&W ASW 608 Sub
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#17
For me MacBook Pro > Audirvana > AIR (3.0 Public Beta) works best. I have an Ethernet connection to my Devialet and all wired to a switch (Devialet, router, NAS). Next week Audirvana will release their 3.0 with MQA.... but already the current version (2.6.6) sounds better then iTunes and Roon (never tried JRiver). Net to this I have NO drops in the signal, all works perfect.

This is my setup for now until Devialet will give more details on their streamer, I hope it will tick all my requirements, if not, I will go probably for an Aurender at some point.
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