# dealing with a large digital collection of classical music



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

What is the best way to deal with a large collection of digital music?

I haven't had any epic fights with iTunes for about five years, but Apple is upsetting me now. I'm even considering reverting to PC....

I wonder what recommendations y'all have regarding:


How to store the music: hard drives, cloud accounts, or what?
What players (iTunes or whatever) do you recommend?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

These things work well for me on Windows 10 for the server and for processing, tagging etc / iPad for control, music stored on external hard drives. 

1. Logitech Media Server
2. Foobar2000
3. Squeezebox. There is a way you can use your desktop as a player, or your tablet/phone. You'll have to google it. 
5. Squeezepad for iPad. 
4. Syncback
5. Backblaze

In the past I used dbpoweramp, but I now find foobar better


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## Granate (Jun 25, 2016)

MusicBee. It's a freeware music player with lot's of options and customizations. Great for organising.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

I have my music stored on my Mac copied onto a Time Capsule
Just for safety I have iTunes Match so if the house blows up the music is not lost (wives can be replaced later subject to availability)
Using this method means all the music can be streamed to Sonos but is also available on our iPhones etc
Lots of Apple love round here


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Hey Granate, your playlists look suspiciously like mine - all that Wolfie and Dylan! 

EDIT: sorry, science, I'm not sure I understand the predicament - you have the music on iTunes, right? You don't feel it's safe there? I have a lot of stuff on iTunes too!


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## Granate (Jun 25, 2016)

Kieran said:


> Hey Granate, your playlists look suspiciously like mine - all that Wolfie and Dylan!


Not my pictures... sorry. It's on the MB forum.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Kieran said:


> Hey Granate, your playlists look suspiciously like mine - all that Wolfie and Dylan!
> 
> EDIT: sorry, science, I'm not sure I understand the predicament - you have the music on iTunes, right? You don't feel it's safe there? I have a lot of stuff on iTunes too!


Not really. Recently I upgraded from whatever to High Sierra and two of the three hard drives that I keep my music on will no longer mount. It seems to me that Apple has gone far downhill from its glory days.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

science said:


> Not really. Recently I upgraded from whatever to High Sierra and two of the three hard drives that I keep my music on will no longer mount. It seems to me that Apple has gone far downhill from its glory days.


The old versions of iTunes are not compatible with High Sierra? I have a lot of stuff on iTunes and I'm working off an old Dell laptop, Windows 10. I'll need a new laptop soon, I better start paying attention to how this pans out...


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

The OP may want to consider a Music Server. Essentially one stores digital music on an Audio Component that is a specialized Computer optimized for music playback only. The usually come with a software program that organizes the files. They come with and without DACs. I use Bluesound but there are interesting products from Auralic, Aurender, Cambridge, NAD, and just about everyone else


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Kieran said:


> The old versions of iTunes are not compatible with High Sierra? I have a lot of stuff on iTunes and I'm working off an old Dell laptop, Windows 10. I'll need a new laptop soon, I better start paying attention to how this pans out...


No, iTunes works just fine, but some hard drives no longer mount. There are discussions about it around the internet, but no one has found a solution yet.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Triplets said:


> The OP may want to consider a Music Server. Essentially one stores digital music on an Audio Component that is a specialized Computer optimized for music playback only. The usually come with a software program that organizes the files. They come with and without DACs. I use Bluesound but there are interesting products from Auralic, Aurender, Cambridge, NAD, and just about everyone else


Oh, thank you! I'll look into that!


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## Guest (May 7, 2018)

Storage on CDs, laptops, phones, tablets, mp3 devices and external hard drives.

Playback on CDs and mobile devices.

Use Asunder for ripping, Audacity for digitising, Banshee for tagging and Brasero to burn CDs.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Whether I get my digital music from CD (Wav), download from places like Hyperion/Presto (flac) or Amazon, ITunes or whatever, all of them end up as Wav files. Most of these are converted (though the original Wav files are preserved) to AAC for listening on iPhones or iTouches although as the size of the memory on my iPhones are increasing, more and more, I'm simply using the Wav files rather than converting to AAC.

This means that I have a humongous iTunes AAC folder (18g) and Wav folders (60-70g) on my PC. These are precious because a lot of work went into acquiring the music and in editing the WAV files (with Sony Sound Forge and CD Architect) so that they all have similar sound levels & lead-in/lead-out times -thus, they are backed up on external hard drives and large capacity thumb drives to take off sight.

I don't rely on any cloud backups. They may be okay for small backups, but IMO aren't practical for huge sound folders. Plus I don't trust them.

Incidentally, I finally found a music player that is far better than the generic player on iPads/iPhones: Kaisertone in the Apple Store. It's a little pricey, but worth it.


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