# Classical music audio player



## RaphTeller

I've been getting so frustrated with iTunes, trying to manage hundreds of my classical music albums in a way that makes intuitive sense. Am sure many have struggled with the challenges of having only one genre ("Classical!") to cover all classical music, problems with organising by composer, struggling to keep works together (really movements are not songs and albums are not works) - well the list goes on. I know i can re-tag, add in my own genres etc, but I'm beginning to wonder if there is a more intuitive classical music audio player out there, that's been designed to cater for the idiosyncrasies of classical music collections, rather than force fitting into the structures of the pop/rock world. Does anyone have a good experience of another media player to share?

Also I've found my online buying experience at the iTunes and Amazon stores to be frustrating as well. Is there a better place to search and buy classical music? 

All thoughts welcome!


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## jtbell

I'd be interested in hearing about a player that displays information about classical music better, but I've re-tagged enough music so it produces a reasonable display on my Apple TV, that I don't want to change gears now. I'm pretty much committed to re-tagging everything as I download or rip it.

I buy my downloads from

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/
http://eclassical.com/
http://www.theclassicalshop.net/

because in addition to MP3s, they carry lossless FLAC downloads, which I prefer.

Also check out

http://www.classicsonline.com/

which has a very comprehensive selection of MP3s.


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## bigshot

Tagging is what controls the sorting... that isn't iTunes, it's the tags in the files. There are other programs, like Plex that have much more graphical interfaces, but if you have trouble with iTunes, you're not going to do much better with Plex.

The root of the problem is that people insist on tagging their files in non-standard ways and then uploading those non-standard tags to Gracenote. If people followed the established naming convention for classical music, everything would work fine in every player. But there are a lot of people who refuse to learn and follow that, so the tags are sometimes chaotic. Thankfully, that is less than 20% of the tags I run across.

As for keeping separate files in a work together, that depends on the title of the album. If you want to shuffle play, simply join tracks as you rip from CD.


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## Nereffid

I haven't used it myself, but MusiCHI (http://www.musichi.eu/) might be worth a shot.


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## ribonucleic

Creating playlists organized into playlist folders will give you total control of what tracks constitute a single work and how those works are organized. 

For example: you could create a Classical-Romantic > Beethoven > Piano Sonatas > Schnabel folder structure. Then inside the Schnabel folder, you could have a separate playlist for each sonata. The program wouldn't need to understand which tracks should go in that playlist because you would specify that yourself.

But yes, iTunes comprehensively sucks. Apple has successfully forced me to use it to get music onto my iPhone. But they haven't yet figured out a way to force me to use it as a media player.

Speaking as a Windows user, they can have my Winamp when they pry it from my cold dead fingers. foobar2000 and JRiver also have their merits. But I'm not sure if any of these offers a significant advantage in the challenges of managing a classical music library.


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## bigshot

iTunes is the best music player for the Mac. I think the reason it sucks on PC has more to do with Windows than Apple.


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## ptr

bigshot said:


> iTunes is the best music player for the Mac. I think the reason it sucks on PC has more to do with Windows than Apple.


I'm sorry to say that in this case you're wrong, I've been a Mac user since 1989 and there has been no Mac software since that has sucked as much as iTunes! Currently I'm running JRiver Media Center on both the Mac's and Windows machines in my household and it is generations more intuitive than iTunes.

I tried "MusiCHI " that Nereffid suggests above for a few days, but it is very French and quite counter intuitive and has very a uninviting "technophile" user interface!

/ptr


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## ribonucleic

bigshot said:


> iTunes is the best music player for the Mac. I think the reason it sucks on PC has more to do with Windows than Apple.


As recently as a few days ago, I assumed the same. But the most recent episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast had one of the die-hard Apple supporter hosts observing how simply deleting a few podcasts from the software creates one-two-three-four-five second delays.

To be sure, it must suck even harder on Windows due to having had to be translated from OS X. But even in its native habitat, it sucks plenty.

And, hey, Apple, if writing Windows software isn't your bag, that's cool. But then maybe you could have refrained from breaking the ability of third-party applications to sync modern iDevices?


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## KenOC

I have used iTunes on a Windows PC for years to keep my iPods up to date and play music from my iTunes libraries at my computer. It works just fine for that, no issues at all. I use other programs, most of them open source, for other things.


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## TurnaboutVox

I have been using Foobar2000 very happily for about 3 years now. I run it on two Windows 7 PCs and - unable to find anything with comparable functionality - on my PC running Linux Ubuntu, using Wine Windows program loader.

I did have in-house IT support (my son) to set up the user-interface to my specifications, but there's no maintenance to be done and it's been trouble-free to use. CDs are ripped and converted to FLAC files for storage using EAC. I buy FLAC downloads too, wherever available. 

My usual source of discs and downloads is Presto Classical, though I buy a fair bit second hand too.


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## ribonucleic

TurnaboutVox said:


> I did have in-house IT support (my son) to set up the user-interface to my specifications


Lacking your son, my attempts to do the same have all failed.

It's a shame. I would really like to use foobar2000. I admire how lean it runs. But I found the learning curve just too damned steep.


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## TurnaboutVox

ribonucleic said:


> Lacking your son, my attempts to do the same have all failed.
> 
> It's a shame. I would really like to use foobar2000. I admire how lean it runs. But I found the learning curve just too damned steep.


Yes, that is a drawback - it's not very intuitive to set up (like you, I have tried).


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## KenOC

ribonucleic said:


> It's a shame. I would really like to use foobar2000. I admire how lean it runs. But I found the learning curve just too damned steep.


It's like a Swiss army knife that you don't know where they keep the blades. I'm still finding out things it will do, but they have to be stumbled upon by accident. Someday I'll figure out what the tabs are good for...


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## bigshot

Any program that can do a wide variety of things requires you to learn how it works. Simple things like playing and searching can be made intuitive, but more complex tasks like building smart playlists and managing tags have a learning curve. My iTunes libraries are organized by type of music and all together have nearly two years of music playing on random shuffle 24/7, all instantly accessible through my phone. iTunes does a great job of handling very large music libraries.


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## Markbridge

I had this same dilemma five or six years ago when I decided to take the mp3 plunge. I'm somewhat tech savy and very **** about how I want my music stored/sorted on itunes. Even after all these years it probably still isn't absolutely perfect, but it works well for me. I basically delete/override the track info and substitute my own info. I use the following columns: Name, time, artist, album, composer, and genre. For example:

Name......Time.....Artist.....Album.....Composer.....Genre
Liszt: Consolation in F.....3:32.....Vladimir Horowitz......Liszt: Consolation in F.....Liszt, Franz.....Piano Solo
Liszt: PC #1.1; Allegro maestoso.....5:01.....Freire/Plasson/Dresden Philharmonic.....Liszt: PC #1.....Liszt, Franz.....Concerto (Piano)

Enerything alphabetizes for me in the correct order.


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## SixFootScowl

I simply organize my music in folders. Very easy to find items. Probably helps that I don't keep everything on the mp3 player but just what I am most interested in at the time, which right now is less than 4GB. I have never used Itunes or synchronized my player to a music player. In fact I had a music player on my Linux OS that wanted to organize my music for me, so I deleted it an use VLC media player for playing music.


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## Kelt

*about audio players and classical ... there should be a "sticky"*



RaphTeller said:


> I've been getting so frustrated with iTunes, trying to manage hundreds of my classical music albums in a way that makes intuitive sense. Am sure many have struggled with the challenges of having only one genre ("Classical!") to cover all classical music, problems with organising by composer, struggling to keep works together (really movements are not songs and albums are not works) - well the list goes on. I know i can re-tag, add in my own genres etc, but I'm beginning to wonder if there is a more intuitive classical music audio player out there, that's been designed to cater for the idiosyncrasies of classical music collections, rather than force fitting into the structures of the pop/rock world. Does anyone have a good experience of another media player to share?
> 
> Also I've found my online buying experience at the iTunes and Amazon stores to be frustrating as well. Is there a better place to search and buy classical music?
> 
> All thoughts welcome!


Just an FYI - All players produce the same audio quality - I am suspicious of any software product that claims it is more "audiophile" than any other. It isn't possible - digital audio files don't benefit from any software meddling, you are best off ripping your collection to flac and using the player of choice. Don't even think about using a player because of claims that it sounds better - that's nonsense. Just putting that out there in case someone recommends "X". There's nothing you can do to make bits sound better, they're either there, or they're not. As for audio type, stick to flac and ogg, the open format ones. All the others restrict how you can tag, or what you can do with it. flac and ogg are the only ones to use; flac for uncompressed and ogg for compressed. I convert to mp3 for the car.

That said, Musichi and Quodlibet are the only two players I know of - and I looked long and hard forever - worth using for a classical collection. You may find Musichi good enough, but QuodLibet can do anything you want with tags, it's what I use. Musichi is pretty good but nowhere near as powerful as QL, I tried Musichi for a while, but since I don't use windows, it wasn't all that useful to me. One advantage Musichi has is that when you buy it, you get access to their database which has sane data for classical music, so you would tag against that.

Otherwise, it is a daunting task to enter in the data manually, or massage and tweak the junk data you get from gracenote or cddb, but I did it, for what it's worth. I did a lot of it with scripts to make it easier, and there are many tagging tools out there that can make sense out of junk data, as long as it is consistently junk, like puddletag (very powerful, but not so easy to use). 

At any rate, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a screen shot of Quodlibet. It has native Mac, Windows and Linux versions. I posted the tag data below the picture; the display there is assembled from the tag data. Of course, you don't have to be as obsessive as I am (I like to enter everything from the booklet), just a few useful tags would do, really. Musichi can't even remotely accomplish the below, but it would suffice for most listeners needs I suppose. I am weird and obsessive about my collection.










_The tags here are the tags from the audio file._


Code:


albumartist=Jacobs, Concerto Köln
album=Mozart: Cosi fan Tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti
arranger=
artistsort=Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
artist=Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
award=ClassicsToday.com - 10/10
cadenzas=
cddb=
choirmaster=
compilation=0
composer=Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
conductor=René Jacobs
date=2004
discnumber=1
disctotal=3
engineer=Mark Hohn
ensemble=Cologne Chamber Choir
ensemble=Concerto Köln
ensemble=Kölner Kammerchor
favorite=yes
genre=Opera
grouping=Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti
grouping_en=Thus Do They All, or The School for Lovers
groupsub2=Scene 2
groupsubtitle=Act I
hip=yes
language=Italian
link=http://www.allmusic.com/album/release/mozart-cos%C3%AC-fan-tutte-mr0002518604
link=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=90696
link=http://www.classicstoday.com/review/cozy-cosi-a-knockout/?search=1
location=Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln Studios, Cologne, Germany
lyricist=Lorenzo di Ponte
organization=HARMONIA MUNDI
originaldate=1790
performer:despina=Graciela Oddone
performer:don alfonso=Pietro Spagnoli
performer:dorabella=Bernarda Fink
performer:ferrando=Werner Gura
performer:fiordiligi=Veronique Gens
performer:guglielmo=Marcel Boone
period=Classic
playcount:[email protected]=1
producer=Barbara Valentin
producer=Eva Coutaz
producer=Klaus L. Neumann
recordingdate=1998
role=Dorabella
role=Fiordiligi
title=№ 4. Duetto "Ah guarda, sorella"
title_en="Ah look sister"
tracknumber=6
tracktotal=22
version=K. 588
versionminor=


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## bigshot

The trick to iTunes is to join tracks by works to prevent movements being played out of context, and to tag with the composer's name at the beginning of the work title to make is a breeze to sort. It also helps to have multiple libraries, organized by musical genre, so jazz isn't mixed in with classical. All those are simple fixes.


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## Albert7

iTunes has been flawless with my classical music for the albums I purchased from the store.


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## AnotherSpin

Best audio players for Mac - JRiver, Amarra Symphony, Audirvana+, HQPlayer (my preference).


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## bigshot

I tried Audirvana and it sucked royally. Never could figure out how to make that interface do much. Buggy too.


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## AnotherSpin

bigshot said:


> I tried Audirvana and it sucked royally. Never could figure out how to make that interface do much. Buggy too.


 Each player I recommended requires some initial effort to understand settings, etc. If one want better sound and has good equipment to reproduce music such effort would give impressive result. If the main purpose is to organize files/covers and sound reproducing system is decent, than iTunes will do the job. I speak about Mac.


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## Albert7

AnotherSpin said:


> Each player I recommended requires some initial effort to understand settings, etc. If one want better sound and has good equipment to reproduce music such effort would give impressive result. If the main purpose is to organize files/covers and sound reproducing system is decent, than iTunes will do the job. I speak about Mac.


Indeed... as long as one realizes that iTunes draws its info from GraceNote then it's easy to edit the information.

And I make sure to submit my corrections as soon as I can to the iTunes server .


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## bigshot

Audirvana promised better sound, and it plays more formats than iTunes, but I found it to be terribly buggy with a poorly designed interface... and the sound quality depends more on the file than the player. I decided to use Plex to play multichannel formats iTunes can't play. It works a lot better, but the gapless playing could be better. I'm considering just converting and merging to MKV.


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## AnotherSpin

bigshot said:


> Audirvana promised better sound, and it plays more formats than iTunes, but I found it to be terribly buggy with a poorly designed interface...


 From all audiophile players Audirvana is not my first choice, I prefer HQPlayer, which do some wonders with source files, such as on the fly upsampling from PCM to DSD what makes redbook rips sound most analogue. Nevertheless, Audirvana+ is good player, very stable, with lot of possibilities that put it on a ground not accessible for convenient players. I have no idea what would make it buggy in particular system, but I would suggest the problem may be somewhere outside the player itself.


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## bigshot

I don't really need up sampling. I see no need for that. All I am interested in is the ability to play 5.1 flac files. Does HQPlayer do that with gapless?

I still suspect that with the small number of 5.1 music files out there, it might be easier to just mux it to a self contained MKV with chapters and a bitrate that does the job without tons of digital excelsior bloating the file size unnecessarily.


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## Albert7

bigshot said:


> I don't really need up sampling. I see no need for that. All I am interested in is the ability to play 5.1 flac files. Does HQPlayer do that with gapless?
> 
> I still suspect that with the small number of 5.1 music files out there, it might be easier to just mux it to a self contained MKV with chapters and a bitrate that does the job without tons of digital excelsior bloating the file size unnecessarily.


Can VLC player handle the 5.1 FLAC files directly?


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## bigshot

Not gapless as albums.


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## candi

Thanks Kelt. Just installed Quodlibet on my mac and its nice with lots of options. itunes is toast. 

Quodlibet doesn't copy and paste by keyboard shortcut, but by right clicking via mouse works. I use a tablet and haven't used a mouse on a mac in decades. The program is a little buggy and not as polished, but much better than itunes because I can play FLAC files directly. 

I haven't looked carefully where to add the artwork, and may have to use other utilities... Max i believe was my other tagger that imported artwork whereas Tag was easier to use, until now.


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## AnotherSpin

bigshot said:


> I don't really need up sampling.


 Did you try it with HQP? I do not care to go into arguments, and theory of upsampling vs. no-upsampling is of no interest to me. I tried once and was hooked with no return. After that all other players became history. JRiver also makes it, but not with such good results in my system as HQP.

I do not listen to 5.1 files, can not tell.


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## bigshot

I've done extensive A/B testing of native 16/44.1 and 24/192 and can't hear a lick of difference, so I don't see much point in up sampling. I wouldn't put it past audiophile software designers to deliberately hobble redbook to make their magic button sound better though. I just want a player with a nice interface that plays files to spec.


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## Triplets

bigshot said:


> I don't really need up sampling. I see no need for that. All I am interested in is the ability to play 5.1 flac files. Does HQPlayer do that with gapless?
> 
> I still suspect that with the small number of 5.1 music files out there, it might be easier to just mux it to a self contained MKV with chapters and a bitrate that does the job without tons of digital excelsior bloating the file size unnecessarily.


 I find that the easiest and most rewarding way to play 5.1 files is to put them on a nice shiny polycarbonate disc, pop them into an SACD or Blu Ray drive, and away we go!


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## Becca

Upsampling is of a par with gold cables, etc. in that it is playing on the expectations of the listener. The fundamental fact is that there is NO way to create new intermediate data points which are anything but extrapolations between the two existing points. Depending on sophistication of the digital to analog converter, you might end up with a slightly smoother curve but in no way is it anything but an estimate of the original analog waveform. Fundamentally ANY analog to digital conversion is lossy, no matter how many bits are used.


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## bigshot

Triplets said:


> I find that the easiest and most rewarding way to play 5.1 files is to put them on a nice shiny polycarbonate disc, pop them into an SACD or Blu Ray drive, and away we go!


Yes, especially since I don't have a lot of them. But as I build my media server, I want to be able to play all formats on it, both video and audio. That way, everything can be in one place with one player and it can all stream all over the house to any TV or stereo I want to play it on. That is a huge advantage over physical disks.


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## bigshot

Becca said:


> Depending on sophistication of the digital to analog converter, you might end up with a slightly smoother curve but in no way is it anything but an estimate of the original analog waveform. Fundamentally ANY analog to digital conversion is lossy, no matter how many bits are used.


Nyquist says that as long as the sampling rate is double the frequency, it can be *perfectly* reproduced. Redbook can *perfectly* reproduce any frequency in the audible spectrum. If you upsample, it isn't any "smoother" in the audible spectrum, it simply packs the file out with placeholder bit rate for frequencies that don't even exist in the original file being up sampled. In short, a larger file size with no benefit.

People mistake up sampled music for up sampling that occurs in every modern DAC. The reason DACs upsample is to be able to apply a cleaner brick wall filter at the top end beyond human hearing. That eliminates super audible frequencies which can create harmonic noise down in the audible range. That is completely different than up sampling with the vain hope that it will improve the sound quality of the original recording.


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## Becca

bigshot said:


> Nyquist says that as long as the sampling rate is double the frequency, it can be *perfectly* reproduced. Redbook can *perfectly* reproduce any frequency in the audible spectrum.


That is correct only if you have a simple sine wave and music is anything but that. Just put an audio file into the _Audacity_ program to see how un-simple it is. Now I admit that the degree of error is marginal over the majority of the audible spectrum but reproduction is certainly not "perfect".

As to your comment about a larger file size with no benefit, I agree totally.


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## bigshot

No, that isn't true. EVERY sine wave that represents any audible sound frequency is perfectly reproduced. It doesn't matter if it's a test tone or a symphony orchestra. That is a common fallacy, along with the stair step fallacy and the timing fallacy.

If you'd like more specifics, I'd be happy to provide some resources. But the videos in my sig file are a great start.


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## Albert7

bigshot said:


> I've done extensive A/B testing of native 16/44.1 and 24/192 and can't hear a lick of difference, so I don't see much point in up sampling. I wouldn't put it past audiophile software designers to deliberately hobble redbook to make their magic button sound better though. I just want a player with a nice interface that plays files to spec.


And honestly I can't really tell much of difference between 256kbps encoded AAC files and 16/44.1 files either.


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## AnotherSpin

Becca said:


> Upsampling is of a par with gold cables, etc. in that it is playing on the expectations of the listener. The fundamental fact is that there is NO way to create new intermediate data points which are anything but extrapolations between the two existing points. Depending on sophistication of the digital to analog converter, you might end up with a slightly smoother curve but in no way is it anything but an estimate of the original analog waveform. Fundamentally ANY analog to digital conversion is lossy, no matter how many bits are used.


 I very much sure you are most precise in your scientifically based arguments. Still, my wife easily notices the difference when I play the same redbook rips as regular FLAC in A+ or turned to DSD in HQPlayer. And my cat seem to notice difference too. Presume both are very far from fundamental facts of physics, as I am too.


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## bigshot

If you did a proper comparison, with line level matched, double blind, direct A/B switching, all of those differences would disappear. There have been many attempts to hear the difference between redbook and high bitrate audio with controlled testing. No one has been able to do it consistently yet. If your wife can, please take her to an audiologist. Her hearing is remarkable and should be studied scientifically to find out why she can hear things no other human being can.

It's possible your cat has better hearing than you do. I don't know much about cat's hearing ability. I focus on the specs for human hearing since those are the kinds of ears I am blessed with.


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## bigshot

Albert7 said:


> And honestly I can't really tell much of difference between 256kbps encoded AAC files and 16/44.1 files either.


There is no audible difference between those. AAC 256 is over the line into audible transparency.


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## AnotherSpin

bigshot said:


> If you did a proper comparison, with line level matched, double blind, direct A/B switching, all of those differences would disappear. There have been many attempts to hear the difference between redbook and high bitrate audio with controlled testing. No one has been able to do it consistently yet. If your wife can, please take her to an audiologist. Her hearing is remarkable and should be studied scientifically to find out why she can hear things no other human being can.
> 
> It's possible your cat has better hearing than you do. I don't know much about cat's hearing ability. I focus on the specs for human hearing since those are the kinds of ears I am blessed with.


Some people live in a land of explanations, some other live in a land of possibilities.


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## Albert7

I have been keeping things simple lately. Here is my outfit for hitting up classical music.


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## AnotherSpin

Albert7 said:


> I have been keeping things simple lately. Here is my outfit for hitting up classical music.


 I like to listen classical music from iphone with apple ear-pods while riding my cheap bicycle along the sea shore. Some old rock music too.


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## bigshot

I use my iPod with my Oppo PM-1 headphones every day too. First class sound quality and no need for a lot of black boxes to lug around and batteries to change.


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## Albert7

AnotherSpin said:


> I like to listen classical music from iphone with apple ear-pods while riding my cheap bicycle along the sea shore. Some old rock music too.


Awesome. I hardly do that much classical music listening at home most days due to my crazy work schedule but for me, I need durable headphones. The Sol ones I have are modular so in case I destroy the cord, I can replace it with a new one. Or the drivers too.


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## bigshot

Albert7 said:


> The Sol ones I have are modular so in case I destroy the cord, I can replace it with a new one.


That is an important consideration for headphones. I went to get another cable for my Oppo PM-1s and they wanted $200. Two bills for a wire! They're nuts. I'll break out a soldering iron and make my own.


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## Wunderhorn

On a Mac - after trying out dozens of options I found Swinsian to be the best music player - hands down.

iTunes has become a nightmare, the search has become counter-productive with its super-slow pop-up menu and regarding privacy it calls home constantly for undocumented reasons.

Anyway, a few aspects of Swinsian (Swinsian.com) that made me choose it (and I run it for over 2 years now as the main player)

- It is much, much faster than iTunes when you have a large library
- It can do all the tagging and advanced organization that you might know from iTunes
- It plays lossless formats, as well as gapless
- It has a simple, efficient and fast search
- It does not spy on you
- It finds cover artwork for you
- Frequent updates and bug fixes
- It still features the handy cover art display in the lower left corner that was removed in iTunes
- It uses less resources than iTunes

I am not affiliated with Swinsian, but when I find something that simply works AND proves to be useful I am happy to help the developers by spreading the word. It made me a happy camper/listener for sure.


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## Kelt

candi said:


> Thanks Kelt. Just installed Quodlibet on my mac and its nice with lots of options. itunes is toast.
> 
> Quodlibet doesn't copy and paste by keyboard shortcut, but by right clicking via mouse works. I use a tablet and haven't used a mouse on a mac in decades. The program is a little buggy and not as polished, but much better than itunes because I can play FLAC files directly.
> 
> I haven't looked carefully where to add the artwork, and may have to use other utilities... Max i believe was my other tagger that imported artwork whereas Tag was easier to use, until now.


I can help you with it if you like. Just launching it won't give you even an inkling of what it does! The docs are pretty good, but sometimes it can be difficult because it gives you a lot of room to be creative in configuring it.


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## tortkis

Wunderhorn said:


> On a Mac - after trying out dozens of options I found Swinsian to be the best music player - hands down.
> 
> iTunes has become a nightmare, the search has become counter-productive with its super-slow pop-up menu and regarding privacy it calls home constantly for undocumented reasons.
> 
> Anyway, a few aspects of Swinsian (Swinsian.com) that made me choose it (and I run it for over 2 years now as the main player)
> 
> - It is much, much faster than iTunes when you have a large library
> - It can do all the tagging and advanced organization that you might know from iTunes
> - It plays lossless formats, as well as gapless
> - It has a simple, efficient and fast search
> - It does not spy on you
> - It finds cover artwork for you
> - Frequent updates and bug fixes
> - It still features the handy cover art display in the lower left corner that was removed in iTunes
> - It uses less resources than iTunes
> 
> I am not affiliated with Swinsian, but when I find something that simply works AND proves to be useful I am happy to help the developers by spreading the word. It made me a happy camper/listener for sure.


I've been using Swinsian for a few days. It is very good so far. I wanted an alternative to iTunes because it does not support FLAC. The interface of Swinsian is neat, and the software can do almost anything I want it to do. It is not freeware, but probably I will pay for it after the 30 days trial period, unless I find a better player. (There are some other players mentioned in this thread which looks nice.) I tried Clementine, but it does not seem well maintained, cannot sort albums, and some operations are tedious. Vox is a track-base player, so it's not for classical music.


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## Triplets

tortkis said:


> I've been using Swinsian for a few days. It is very good so far. I wanted an alternative to iTunes because it does not support FLAC. The interface of Swinsian is neat, and the software can do almost anything I want it to do. It is not freeware, but probably I will pay for it after the 30 days trial period, unless I find a better player. (There are some other players mentioned in this thread which looks nice.) I tried Clementine, but it does not seem well maintained, cannot sort albums, and some operations are tedious. Vox is a track-base player, so it's not for classical music.


I tunes now supports FLAC


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## tortkis

Triplets said:


> I tunes now supports FLAC


I tried importing a flac file using iTunes 12.8.0.150 but it didn't work.


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## Ralfy

For portable players, I've been using a FiiO X1 with a Sennheiser CX300II. I still have a Sony Discman that runs, but I rarely use it.

For home use, a Sennheiser HD 518 connected to a JVC EX-A5 (it's a 24 m2 room). Without the headphones, I use the speakers included with the set and a Jamo SUB 210 subwoofer.

I've not tried using the PC (which has a regular 5.1 audio card and Creative Labs speakers), but I read that the best option is to attach the PC to a good receiver and speakers, and the audio should be fine. I'm guessing tweaks will be made in the receiver, so it doesn't matter what software is used.

For software, I got a copy of Music Collector during one of those holiday sales, but since I have not been buying a lot lately (I balance between music, books, and films), it's not that important. I do have a Spotify premium account because relatives got a family account. I've never tried buying digital, but that should make listening to classical music even better.

For making copies for portable listening, I just use MP3 and standard settings to adjust to storage constraints. For making copies of CDs, I use the cheapest first-class media for CDs or DVDs. For the latter, the ones from Mitsubishi are probably OK.


----------



## jegreenwood

tortkis said:


> I tried importing a flac file using iTunes 12.8.0.150 but it didn't work.


Same for me. I know you can use iTunes to transfer flac files to an iDevice, which can then play them using a third party app.


----------



## Guest

My last Windows computer died, I have a pile of audio files in the form of cue+flac. I want to stream them to a DAC using my Mac.

I don't care about tagging, organization. My music files are organized by folder in a way that allows me to find whatever I want by browsing the directory structure. I used to use foobar2000 to stream a cue+flac to a DAC through an optical output on the desktop PC's motherboard or through a USB port. By allowing foobar2000 to have direct access to the port the 44.1kHz stream came out unaltered. Is there a program for Mac that would allow something similar, streaming digital audio data from a FLAC file. On the Mac only USB ports are available.

I experimented with iTunes, (used XLD to convert cue+flac to apple lossless files). The result wasn't satisfactory. My DAC indicated 48 kHz audio was being received, meaning MacOS was managing audio output by converting to a common time base. Also, I noticed some clicks or pops indicating that there was some data loss. (It was communicating with a DAC that did not use a dedicated driver, maybe it doesn't cope well with MAC data streaming.) I want something that will output raw 44.1 kHz data without any tampering. It is also annoying that when I play an audio file iTunes wants to add it to my iTunes library. I just want to stream to audio, I don't want it added to anything.

I'm assuming I will get Parallels, VMware, or something similar to run Windows under MacOS for some legacy programs, can I run foobar2000 under windows on the Mac?

I've been using XLD to do some conversions of audio formats on Mac (convert cue+flac to iTunes compatible format). I've seen statements that XLD can play audio, but I've not figured out how. Documentation for XLD seems to be nonexistent.

Looking above, Swinsian seems to be an option, but appears to be way more complicated than what I need.


----------



## jegreenwood

Baron Scarpia said:


> My last Windows computer died, I have a pile of audio files in the form of cue+flac. I want to stream them to a DAC using my Mac.
> 
> I don't care about tagging, organization. My music files are organized by folder in a way that allows me to find whatever I want by browsing the directory structure. I used to use foobar2000 to stream a cue+flac to a DAC through an optical output on the desktop PC's motherboard or through a USB port. By allowing foobar2000 to have direct access to the port the 44.1kHz stream came out unaltered. Is there a program for Mac that would allow something similar, streaming digital audio data from a FLAC file. On the Mac only USB ports are available.
> 
> I experimented with iTunes, (used XLD to convert cue+flac to apple lossless files). The result wasn't satisfactory. My DAC indicated 48 kHz audio was being received, meaning MacOS was managing audio output by converting to a common time base. Also, I noticed some clicks or pops indicating that there was some data loss. (It was communicating with a DAC that did not use a dedicated driver, maybe it doesn't cope well with MAC data streaming.) I want something that will output raw 44.1 kHz data without any tampering. It is also annoying that when I play an audio file iTunes wants to add it to my iTunes library. I just want to stream to audio, I don't want it added to anything.
> 
> I'm assuming I will get Parallels, VMware, or something similar to run Windows under MacOS for some legacy programs, can I run foobar2000 under windows on the Mac?
> 
> I've been using XLD to do some conversions of audio formats on Mac (convert cue+flac to iTunes compatible format). I've seen statements that XLD can play audio, but I've not figured out how. Documentation for XLD seems to be nonexistent.
> 
> Looking above, Swinsian seems to be an option, but appears to be way more complicated than what I need.


JRiver for Mac? I know JRiver for Windows supports Cue files (although IIRC you have to use a very specific format, which I think I still have).


----------



## Guest

jegreenwood said:


> JRiver for Mac? I know JRiver for Windows supports Cue files (although IIRC you have to use a very specific format, which I think I still have).


Thanks for the suggestion. I'll put in on my list of things to try.


----------



## Larkenfield

For those quite often listen to their music library off their computer and are looking for sound enhancers, _BitPerfect _and _Fidelia_ are both excellent, and it's easy to find out information if you have a Mac. Add a good set of headphones (like the lightweight Grado SR-80s or the GS-1000s), plus a hybrid/tube headphone amp, such as the inexpensive Nobsound NS-08E with GE 6688 tubes, and you will be amazed at the depth and musicality of the sound.


----------



## Guest

Baron Scarpia said:


> I don't care about tagging, organization. My music files are organized by folder in a way that allows me to find whatever I want by browsing the directory structure.


The problem with tags most matters when transferring files to a portable device. Until I found out about tags, I assumed the software (WM Player for example) was messing up my elaborately organsied folder system.

It's still a faff, occasionally. iTunes is fine for ripping and storing on the PC, but when I went to look for Max Richter/Blue Notebooks on the MP3 player in my car, linked to my iPod Touch, I could only find 5 of the 12 tracks! That's because whilst he was the Album Artist, he was not the Artist on every track...according to my ripped tags.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blue-Noteb...1537601367&sr=1-3&keywords=the+blue+notebooks


----------



## jegreenwood

MacLeod said:


> The problem with tags most matters when transferring files to a portable device. Until I found out about tags, I assumed the software (WM Player for example) was messing up my elaborately organsied folder system.
> 
> It's still a faff, occasionally. iTunes is fine for ripping and storing on the PC, but when I went to look for Max Richter/Blue Notebooks on the MP3 player in my car, linked to my iPod Touch, I could only find 5 of the 12 tracks! That's because whilst he was the Album Artist, he was not the Artist on every track...according to my ripped tags.
> 
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blue-Noteb...1537601367&sr=1-3&keywords=the+blue+notebooks


In my experience, the problem is somewhat broader than that. In recent years, I have done my ripping and tagging with JRiver (plus dedicated software for SACDs). Playback is most often through Squeezebox/Logitech Media Server. But the Squeezebox/LMS indexing software has its own set of rules for determining what constitutes a compilation. I had to learn how to make JRiver tag in a manner that Squeezebox understands.

p.s. I don't find iTunes for Windows satisfactory for ripping. Too many errors even with error correction on. And worse, the errors are not reported, so you don't discover them until you listen to the ripped recording.


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> The problem with tags most matters when transferring files to a portable device. Until I found out about tags, I assumed the software (WM Player for example) was messing up my elaborately organsied folder system.
> 
> It's still a faff, occasionally. iTunes is fine for ripping and storing on the PC, but when I went to look for Max Richter/Blue Notebooks on the MP3 player in my car, linked to my iPod Touch, I could only find 5 of the 12 tracks! That's because whilst he was the Album Artist, he was not the Artist on every track...according to my ripped tags.
> 
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blue-Noteb...1537601367&sr=1-3&keywords=the+blue+notebooks


I understand the issue, but I don't listen to classical using a mobile device. I use iTunes to manage my pop/jazz library, which works just fine. My classical is totally separate and only accessed from a computer attached to my main stereo.

I tried Swinsian and it is just what I need. The big nuisance with trying to play my classical stuff with iTunes was that it insisted on adding anything I played to the iTunes library, then I'd have to remove it again to avoid cluttering up my pop/jazz library. Swinsian plays cue+flac and allows me to play things by adding to a playlist without adding to the library. It also allows me to output in native 44.1 kHz (instead of the iMac's preferred common time base).

Anyway, I have 29 days left until I have to pony up the $19.99 subscription fee.

For ripping I've been using XLD. The Swinsian web site recommends a program called MAX. Any thoughts on MAX vs XLD?


----------



## bigshot

It's important to inspect the tags when you rip and correct them at that point. Once they get buried in the library, it can be a bit of work to correct them. I've been told there are tag correction apps that are classical savvy, but I haven't used them because I rip joining movements, so it would probably confuse them.


----------



## Triplets

ptr said:


> I'm sorry to say that in this case you're wrong, I've been a Mac user since 1989 and there has been no Mac software since that has sucked as much as iTunes! Currently I'm running JRiver Media Center on both the Mac's and Windows machines in my household and it is generations more intuitive than iTunes.
> 
> I tried "MusiCHI " that Nereffid suggests above for a few days, but it is very French and quite counter intuitive and has very a uninviting "technophile" user interface!
> 
> /ptr


 I have just bought MusiChi, and also purposely bought a Windows Computer (I normally use Macs) to run it, since it is a Windows based program. I wasn't interested in splitting a Mac screen with a program such as Bootcamp, since I had a really bad experience with this in the past If anyone else is running it, any help would be appreciated. The program doesn't want to seem to recognize the Library on my NAS and I can't get the first thing don e on it. MusiChi support told me to watch some videos on their website, which I have done, but it didn't help me at all. I am admittedly and unashamedly a technoboob, but I didn't realize that this program would be this inscrutable.


----------



## SixFootScowl

I don't even know what tags are, and he conversations above make me dlad I don't. My Sansa Clip works great on folders. I rip to folders and play folders. Every audio player should offer that simple, straightforward option.


----------



## Triplets

Fritz Kobus said:


> I don't even know what tags are, and he conversations above make me dlad I don't. My Sansa Clip works great on folders. I rip to folders and play folders. Every audio player should offer that simple, straightforward option.


I played tag with with my grandchildren yesterday. They are 5 and 3 years old and ran rings around me. I was "It" all day 
We are referring to the written script that accompanies the file. If you rip a recording and the label is , for example,Beethoven Hamerklavier Piano Sonata, and Murray Perahia is the Artist" that is useful. If on the other hand it only lists Murray Perahia as the Composer, which most pop oriented tagging services are likely to do, that is less useful, especially as I may have 20 recordings of M.P. by 6 different Composers.


----------



## jegreenwood

Over the years I have only used two programs to rip discs and manage libraries: iTunes and JRiver.* Neither does well tagging classical. I have yet to see a substantial body of support for any classical music tagging by ripping software. Even the highly touted Roon gets bad marks in this respect. 

And it wouldn't matter for me in any case. Over the years and with a range of hardware from Apple Music on an iPhone to Squeezebox to JRiver for Windows to an Aries Mini, I have developed my own tagging protocol which allows me to find what I want in each system. The advantage of JRiver is that it offers a variety of tools to simplify large tagging jobs.

*Plus the special ripping/extracting programs for SACDs.


----------



## Guest

It's the variability of the online tagging sources that bugs me. Mp3Tag was very good until it lost permission to use the Amazon database. Gracenote seemed to work well with my Creative Zen M software, but not with subsequent players. Winamp' s interface was too tiny, Music Bee's poor at album art, MusicMonkey too unpredictable.

Bigshot is right about fixing tags at the time of ripping and iTunes lets you do this quite well, IMO. YMMV.


----------



## SixFootScowl

jegreenwood said:


> *Plus the special ripping/extracting programs for SACDs.


Tell me about these. There is a recording I want but it is only on SACD and I am not sure I can rip tracks with my Linux OS. Other option is that I see most if not all tracks are on You Tube and I can rip them one at a time for my MP3 player and keep the disk for the documentation.


----------



## bigshot

It's easy to rip SACDs if you have an Oppo BDP-103 or 105. It's more difficult, but it's possible to do with an early generation Playstation too.


----------



## bigshot

The problem isn't that there isn't a good app to tag rips. The problem is that classical music listeners don't follow the established format for tagging, yet they upload their tags to the database anyway. That's why we end up with such a mess. There's no solution for the problem, because the people who tag incorrectly will argue up and down that THEY are doing it right and EVERYONE ELSE is wrong.


----------



## Kiki

Fritz Kobus said:


> Tell me about these. There is a recording I want but it is only on SACD and I am not sure I can rip tracks with my Linux OS. Other option is that I see most if not all tracks are on You Tube and I can rip them one at a time for my MP3 player and keep the disk for the documentation.





bigshot said:


> It's easy to rip SACDs if you have an Oppo BDP-103 or 105. It's more difficult, but it's possible to do with an early generation Playstation too.


Is that a hybrid SACD? If so, you can rip the CD layer. If not, you will need the PS3/Oppo/Pioneer trick.

BTW no computer drive can read the SACD layer. It's a restriction due to licensing, rather than technology.


----------



## jegreenwood

Am I allowed to link to threads on other audio forums? I got the following from one of them.

"Thanks to some very ingenious folks on other forums around the world, Mr Wicked's sacd_extract.exe has been found to be effective in ripping SACDS in those players that:

1) have Mediatek chips MT8580 (like Oppo 103/105, Cambridge Audio 752bd/cxu, Pioneer bdp-lx58/88 ) or MT8560 (like Pioneer BDP-160, 170 and BDP-80FD)

2) have an ethernet connection

3) have normal factory firmwares (meaning no mods)"

This is from 2016, and I do not know whether firmware updates killed this capacity for any or all of the above machines.

I used an old PS3 (and it has to be very old without firmware updates). This was the first process discovered. At this point working ones are a rare commodity.

All in all not worth the bother for one SACD (IMO) unless you have one of the above machines already.


----------



## Guest

I've been ripping CDs to cue+flac using XLD on a 2 year old iMac, and it has been working just fine. But on about the 50th disc, it freezes while "detecting pregaps". A couple of minutes later I get a message from MacOS that XLD closed unexpectedly. I tried it several times, rebooted to computer to make sure it wasn't a driver crash or some such. It consistently fails on "detect pregaps" using this one particular disc. Another annoyance is that if I go into XLD preferences and select "do not detect pregaps" it sill does and crashes anyway. The disc is brand new, and rips perfectly under iTunes. It is part of a large box set, and all the other discs from the set rip just fine (Weinberger's completely Bach Organ Works).

Googling the problem, it seems that XLD users have been reporting this problem for almost a decade. Anyone have a similar experience?

I'm close to switching to iTunes and apple lossless format.


----------



## Guest

Found the answer. Volume title for the disc was too long. Used iTunes to shorten the volume title and it works fine.

Now I'm worried about using a program with such a brain-damaged bug, but it seems to work fine otherwise.


----------



## Guest

bigshot said:


> The problem isn't that there isn't a good app to tag rips. The problem is that


I think it's both.


----------



## Merl

Correcting tags is a nightmare . I use Tag and Rename but that has its limitations too. The biggest problem i have is when i drag stuf over to my phone and it splits albums up due to issues in the 'composer' part of the tag and ive not addressed it. It annoys me to death.


----------



## Triplets

Baron Scarpia said:


> I've been ripping CDs to cue+flac using XLD on a 2 year old iMac, and it has been working just fine. But on about the 50th disc, it freezes while "detecting pregaps". A couple of minutes later I get a message from MacOS that XLD closed unexpectedly. I tried it several times, rebooted to computer to make sure it wasn't a driver crash or some such. It consistently fails on "detect pregaps" using this one particular disc. Another annoyance is that if I go into XLD preferences and select "do not detect pregaps" it sill does and crashes anyway. The disc is brand new, and rips perfectly under iTunes. It is part of a large box set, and all the other discs from the set rip just fine (Weinberger's completely Bach Organ Works).
> 
> Googling the problem, it seems that XLD users have been reporting this problem for almost a decade. Anyone have a similar experience?
> 
> I'm close to switching to iTunes and apple lossless format.


I had that issue with XLD as well. I use dbPoweramp as a ripper. It sounds better than iTunes and ALAC


----------



## jegreenwood

bigshot said:


> The problem isn't that there isn't a good app to tag rips. The problem is that classical music listeners don't follow the established format for tagging, yet they upload their tags to the database anyway. That's why we end up with such a mess. There's no solution for the problem, because the people who tag incorrectly will argue up and down that THEY are doing it right and EVERYONE ELSE is wrong.


Exactly why I never upload mine.


----------



## jegreenwood

Baron Scarpia said:


> Found the answer. Volume title for the disc was too long. Used iTunes to shorten the volume title and it works fine.
> 
> Now I'm worried about using a program with such a brain-damaged bug, but it seems to work fine otherwise.


This can be an issue on occasion when ripping SACDs (where the ripping is done by some form of player, not a computer). The advice given is to make sure the directory to which you are ripping is as short as possible. e.g. c:\sacd. You can then edit the name and move the file with your tagging software .

JRiver alerts you when it needs to change a name.

(Referring to Windows)


----------



## Kiki

Tags..... apart from not having a widely accepted standard for classical music, as long as human beings are involved, which tags to use and the contents of tags will never be consistent.

--

Leaving aside the question of which tags to use... I particularly don't think tags will work from a content point of view.

The content itself does not have the "uniqueness" characteristic to ensure consistency. E.g.

Do you enter into a PERFORMER or whatever tag "Berliner Philharmoniker" or "Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra"? 

Use your native language? If so what about "Les Siècles" (unless French is your native language)? Use the orchestra's regional language? Then what about a Russian orchestra or a Japanese orchestra?

One may then end up defining a rule like - if the orchestra's regional language uses Roman letters then use the regional language, e.g. "Les Siècles". If not, use the English name, e.g. "Saito Kinen Orchestra"

OK, how about "New York Philharmonic Orchestra" or "New York Philharmonic"? Same language you see! 

Another one. "St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra" or "Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra"? Need another rule for using different names to refer to the same orchestra depending on, um, the recording date? Or just use the latest name? Whatever the choice, there will always be more rules to deal with new situations.

Eventually one may end up with a complex set of rules. And if this set of rules is shown to ten persons, most likely all ten will disagree on some parts of the rules. Therefore when these folks upload their tags based on their own rules, even assuming they all use the "correct" tags to store the contents, you will still see inconsistencies in the contents.

--

Having said that, I think the concept of using tags is OK as long as the problem domain covers MY library and for MY own display/search purposes only. Of course one will still need to be extremely disciplined when defining the contents in order to stay consistent.

On the other hand, sharing tags and the tag contents from global databases will never be good enough, unless you are willing to live with the inconsistency.

But of course not everybody cares. I know people who don't mind seeing a mix of "Herbert von Karajan", "Herbert v. Karajan", "Karajan", "von Karajan" or "The K man" in their library. In fact, I think these are the happy folks, because they are not bothered by the inconsistency shown on their audio players, nor a search using "Herbert" will never give them "Karajan", or "Shostakovich" will never find "Schostakowitsch". Blah!

For me, I do have a set of rules for defining the contents, and it does take a lot of effort to maintain the consistency. Occasionally I will still stumble on something in my library that is inconsistent. It's annoying, but since I maintain all contents manually at least I can correct it.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Kiki said:


> Is that a hybrid SACD? If so, you can rip the CD layer. If not, you will need the PS3/Oppo/Pioneer trick.
> 
> BTW no computer drive can read the SACD layer. It's a restriction due to licensing, rather than technology.


The cover says Hybrid Multichannel Super Audio CD. Back says it can be played on a regular CD player but only in stereo. So I guess it should work since I see the word hybrid. Thanks for clarifying. Now I can order it.


----------



## Kiki

jegreenwood said:


> Baron Scarpia said:
> 
> 
> 
> Found the answer. Volume title for the disc was too long. Used iTunes to shorten the volume title and it works fine.
> 
> Now I'm worried about using a program with such a brain-damaged bug, but it seems to work fine otherwise.
> 
> 
> 
> This can be an issue on occasion when ripping SACDs (where the ripping is done by some form of player, not a computer). The advice given is to make sure the directory to which you are ripping is as short as possible. e.g. c:\sacd. You can then edit the name and move the file with your tagging software .
> 
> JRiver alerts you when it needs to change a name.
> 
> (Referring to Windows)
Click to expand...

Oh I empathize with what you said! The Windows NTFS file system, by default, has a pathname limit of 260 chars. I use an Oppo instead of an old PS3, so this 260-char limit is especially applicable as sacd_extract will write the image read by the Oppo directly onto the PC hard drive.

And I'd been caught out by this many times in the past with other tools, so it's always a good habit to use a shallow path name when ripping CD/DVD/SACD/blu-ray. One simply cannot be too careful!


----------



## Kiki

Fritz Kobus said:


> The cover says Hybrid Multichannel Super Audio CD. Back says it can be played on a regular CD player but only in stereo. So I guess it should work since I see the word hybrid. Thanks for clarifying. Now I can order it.


Congratulations! Happy CD purchase is wonderful. Happy CD ripping is even better!


----------



## SixFootScowl

Kiki said:


> Congratulations! Happy CD purchase is wonderful. Happy CD ripping is even better!


I am so happy I am stupid happy and just bought two more operas, this Hybrid SACD included! :lol:


----------



## Kiki

Fritz Kobus said:


> I am so happy I am stupid happy and just bought two more operas, this Hybrid SACD included! :lol:


Wow that's even happier! Better still, you are driving the economy! Hurray!


----------



## jegreenwood

Kiki said:


> Oh I empathize with what you said! The Windows NTFS file system, by default, has a pathname limit of 260 chars. I use an Oppo instead of an old PS3, so this 260-char limit is especially applicable as sacd_extract will write the image read by the Oppo directly onto the PC hard drive.
> 
> And I'd been caught out by this many times in the past with other tools, so it's always a good habit to use a shallow path name when ripping CD/DVD/SACD/blu-ray. One simply cannot be too careful!


I have an Oppo 105, but the ripping technique was discovered after I had done the lion's share of the work with a PS3, and I have continued to use that (old dog/new tricks). However the PS3 (or maybe just the controller) is getting cranky. Have you had any problems using the Oppo?


----------



## CDs

RaphTeller said:


> Does anyone have a good experience of another media player to share?
> 
> Also I've found my online buying experience at the iTunes and Amazon stores to be frustrating as well. Is there a better place to search and buy classical music?
> 
> All thoughts welcome!


Since all thoughts are welcome.

1. Best media player is a cd player. I own a Marantz and love it.

2. I agree buying online is frustrating. I don't know where you live but maybe try buying a CD from a local record store? 
If you play them on your new CD player you'll have zero issues.

3. If these solutions won't work for you maybe try vinyl?


----------



## Kiki

jegreenwood said:


> I have an Oppo 105, but the ripping technique was discovered after I had done the lion's share of the work with a PS3, and I have continued to use that (old dog/new tricks). However the PS3 (or maybe just the controller) is getting cranky. Have you had any problems using the Oppo?


Ripping is smooth as silk. Never had any hiccup. And the procedures are really simple. I use an 103D. I'd assume the same ripping experience using an 105.

I had a first gen PS3 in the past. Unfortunately when I learnt about the SACD trick, my PS3 was already updated to a newer firmware that had "removed the feature"! But then my PS3 was a workhorse so it didn't live long anyway……. Since Oppo don't produce 103/105 any more while Pioneer/Sony probably will not have this "feature" in future models, it's better not to overwork the Oppo! :lol:


----------



## jegreenwood

Kiki said:


> Ripping is smooth as silk. Never had any hiccup. And the procedures are really simple. I use an 103D. I'd assume the same ripping experience using an 105.
> 
> I had a first gen PS3 in the past. Unfortunately when I learnt about the SACD trick, my PS3 was already updated to a newer firmware that had "removed the feature"! But then my PS3 was a workhorse so it didn't live long anyway……. Since Oppo don't produce 103/105 any more while Pioneer/Sony probably will not have this "feature" in future models, it's better not to overwork the Oppo! :lol:


Actually, I have two Oppo 105s.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Kiki said:


> Wow that's even happier! Better still, you are driving the economy! Hurray!


The Amazon economy! Oh, but I did buy an opera CD set at a brick and mortar store yesterday, so that economy too. :lol:


----------



## Guest

Kiki said:


> Oh I empathize with what you said! The Windows NTFS file system, by default, has a pathname limit of 260 chars. I use an Oppo instead of an old PS3, so this 260-char limit is especially applicable as sacd_extract will write the image read by the Oppo directly onto the PC hard drive.
> 
> And I'd been caught out by this many times in the past with other tools, so it's always a good habit to use a shallow path name when ripping CD/DVD/SACD/blu-ray. One simply cannot be too careful!


I've had that problem, but the XLD issue was something different. Apparently the program assumes a maximum length for the CD volume label and crashes if it is bigger, before the CD is actually read, and before the output file is specified.


----------



## Kiki

jegreenwood said:


> Actually, I have two Oppo 105s.


I salute you, sir!


----------



## Kiki

Baron Scarpia said:


> I've had that problem, but the XLD issue was something different. Apparently the program assumes a maximum length for the CD volume label and crashes if it is bigger, before the CD is actually read, and before the output file is specified.


I think you said the symptom was XLD freezing during pre-gap detection and then crashed? If I may speculate, that sounds like a classic "buffer overflow" type of programming defect in XLD where, the cause (max vol length that XLD can handle is too small) leads to an error manifested in something seemingly unrelated (freezing at pre-gap detection and then crashed).

I have no idea about other CD rippers on Mac OS... but just wondering, apart from this issue, which you can work around, does XLD work well for you? I saw you mentioned iTune. iTune was, um, not very good at ripping in the early days, but no doubt it has come a long way since then. Just wondering how iTune would compare to XLD in terms of accuracy/robustness.

Just to share... I use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) on Windows. It's a free tool (but no ads), offers a comprehensive set of settings for controlling the rip and dealing with read errors, but it does require a lot of effort to set it up for the most accurate rip, and also needs to be calibrated using good and bad CDs according to your drive's characteristics. Learning curve is steep, but once set up, it is accurate and robust. But if you're not interested in ripping on Windows, then it may not be meaningful to you.


----------



## Guest

Kiki said:


> I think you said the symptom was XLD freezing during pre-gap detection and then crashed? If I may speculate, that sounds like a classic "buffer overflow" type of programming defect in XLD where, the cause (max vol length that XLD can handle is too small) leads to an error manifested in something seemingly unrelated (freezing at pre-gap detection and then crashed).
> 
> I have no idea about other CD rippers on Mac OS... but just wondering, apart from this issue, which you can work around, does XLD work well for you? I saw you mentioned iTune. iTune was, um, not very good at ripping in the early days, but no doubt it has come a long way since then. Just wondering how iTune would compare to XLD in terms of accuracy/robustness.
> 
> Just to share... I use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) on Windows. It's a free tool (but no ads), offers a comprehensive set of settings for controlling the rip and dealing with read errors, but it does require a lot of effort to set it up for the most accurate rip, and also needs to be calibrated using good and bad CDs according to your drive's characteristics. Learning curve is steep, but once set up, it is accurate and robust. But if you're not interested in ripping on Windows, then it may not be meaningful to you.


As I think I mentioned somewhere above, I am switching form Windows to Mac (last windows computer died) and used to use EAC. I always hated EAC. I had experiences where ripping with all of the secure features slowed the thing to a crawl, but still ended up producing a file with the same data errors. I liked the cue+flac format.

I like XLD. I started using it to convert my cue+flac rips to apple lossless so they could be played in iTunes. When the PC died, I realized it does rips too. I use it because it also can produce cue+flac rips on Mac.

Aside from the brain-damaged buffer overflow when reading the volume label, it works flawlessly. I think it uses the same accuread system for checking read accuracy. It is much better with tagging. I put the disc in and iTunes recognizes it and retrieves tags from the real tag library. When I tell XLD to subsequently load the disc it somehow finds the tags the iTunes retrieved. That is much, much, much better than the crappy free library that you are stuck with in EAC, which sometimes can't find the disc and usually retrieves tags loaded by some idiot who doesn't know how to format them correctly.


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## bigshot

I've never had any problems ripping with iTunes with the verify read box checked.


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## Kiki

Baron Scarpia said:


> As I think I mentioned somewhere above, I am switching form Windows to Mac (last windows computer died) and used to use EAC. I always hated EAC. I had experiences where ripping with all of the secure features slowed the thing to a crawl, but still ended up producing a file with the same data errors. I liked the cue+flac format.
> 
> I like XLD. I started using it to convert my cue+flac rips to apple lossless so they could be played in iTunes. When the PC died, I realized it does rips too. I use it because it also can produce cue+flac rips on Mac.
> 
> Aside from the brain-damaged buffer overflow when reading the volume label, it works flawlessly. I think it uses the same accuread system for checking read accuracy. It is much better with tagging. I put the disc in and iTunes recognizes it and retrieves tags from the real tag library. When I tell XLD to subsequently load the disc it somehow finds the tags the iTunes retrieved. That is much, much, much better than the crappy free library that you are stuck with in EAC, which sometimes can't find the disc and usually retrieves tags loaded by some idiot who doesn't know how to format them correctly.


Sorry to hear about the bad experience you had with EAC. But then I suppose the important thing is that XLD/iTunes work for you. You should be happy about that, sir! 

As for tag databases, IMHO the tag contents will never be perfectly consistent. I suppose I am fussy about this so I have gone down the unusual path of maintaining my tags manually to make them as consistent as possible across my library, but I appreciate most people will not want to do this.


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## Guest

Kiki said:


> Sorry to hear about the bad experience you had with EAC. But then I suppose the important thing is that XLD/iTunes work for you. You should be happy about that, sir!


I am happy!

EAC wasn't _too_ bad, I turned off the secure rip features, and it worked fine. I just came to believe that all of the error checking didn't do much useful. I started out with an older drive that worked just fine with iTunes (an LG) and EAC announced that it found it in its database and set the various settings right. Then I noticed that left and right channels were reversed. It got the offset wrong by one sample, and that swapped the channels. Accurrip was telling me that there were no errors, all the while.



> As for tag databases, IMHO the tag contents will never be perfectly consistent. I suppose I am fussy about this so I have gone down the unusual path of maintaining my tags manually to make them as consistent as possible across my library, but I appreciate most people will not want to do this.


I just want to be able to tell what track is what when I load it into whatever software is playing it. I have the content indexed using the folder structure and my own database of what is on each release. The metadata the iTunes has access to is much, much better than that free database.


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## Kiki

Baron Scarpia said:


> Then I noticed that left and right channels were reversed. It got the offset wrong by one sample, and that swapped the channels. Accurrip was telling me that there were no errors, all the while.


Is that a plot that came right out of a bestselling thriller of le Carré or Grisham? This is brilliant!

Does that LG drive by any chance have a cache? Just wondering about the cause of EAC slowing down.



Baron Scarpia said:


> I just came to believe that all of the error checking didn't do much useful.


I also have doubts about the benefit of error checking. Error detection leads to retries. But will any retry succeed if the first read has failed?

It happened to me I think only once where, A "marginally readable" CD could be ripped correctly after a relentless number of retries.

A cranky drive living on borrowed time may retry successfully after a failure. This happened to my cherished, antique Sony Optiarc drive not too long ago, but honestly, the only right thing to do was to replace the drive!



Baron Scarpia said:


> I just want to be able to tell what track is what when I load it into whatever software is playing it. I have the content indexed using the folder structure and my own database of what is on each release. The metadata the iTunes has access to is much, much better than that free database.


A very reasonable scheme.

Just to share -

I have one directory tree structure organized by albums. In each album directory, I have a cue sheet that defines what my player should display for each track (I use the only TITLE tag). I define the contents of TITLE manually. No online databases is good enough for me. They are certainly no way as consistent as me entering the text manually.

I have another directory tree structure organized by composers. In each composer directory, I have a playlist for each performance, which points to the appropriate cue sheet in the other directory tree. When I look for music to play, I only need to use basic Windows Search for work/performance in this tree.


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## Guest

Kiki said:


> Just to share -
> 
> I have one directory tree structure organized by albums. In each album directory, I have a cue sheet that defines what my player should display for each track (I use the only TITLE tag). I define the contents of TITLE manually. No online databases is good enough for me. They are certainly no way as consistent as me entering the text manually.
> 
> I have another directory tree structure organized by composers. In each composer directory, I have a playlist for each performance, which points to the appropriate cue sheet in the other directory tree. When I look for music to play, I only need to use basic Windows Search for work/performance in this tree.


Sounds similar to my methodology. Every release gets its own folder, and each folder has a file 'contents.txt' where I enter tags of my own devising (label, catalog number, composer, conductor, ensemble, performers, compositions). Then I run a c-code which opens every contents.txt file it finds and compiles a list that I can refer to. This dates to an era when I had more time and could tinker with c-codes as a hobby.


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## SixFootScowl

Fritz Kobus said:


> The cover says Hybrid Multichannel Super Audio CD. Back says it can be played on a regular CD player but only in stereo. So I guess it should work since I see the word hybrid. Thanks for clarifying. Now I can order it.


It ripped fine, just like a regular CD. FYI, This is what I got.


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