Help with storage? Moving away from iTunes

Roon Software Discussion
1

I am a Mac user finding iTunes increasingly unusable for my main listening area due to countless duplications (mp3s, m4a, alacs, etc). I haven’t figured out how to get roon to play the “best” version and ignore other duplicates.

I THINK what I want to do is:

  1. move all my audio files to one big folder (Working folder) and remove all duplicates saving only the least compressed files somehow
    2)sort out all the lossless versions somehow - preferably not manually
    (Is there metadata that distinguishes lossless from lossy m4a’s?)
    3)Move lossless to another folder (ALAC folder)
  2. Point Roon to the ALAC folder and altered Working folder
  3. Erase old iTunes XML and drop both new folders into iTunes without moving files so mobile devices can take advantage of iTunes match.
  4. All new music is ripped or imported lossless with something other than iTunes.
  5. New lossless is placed in ALAC folder and also dropped onto iTunes for lossy conversion
  6. Older lossy dupes are manually removed from iTunes as reripped replacement ALAC files are generated.

There are a lot of somehows in here. Any ideas?

David - Dallas

2

Does Roon not do this for you? See this.

https://kb.roonlabs.com/FAQ:_I_have_multiple_versions_of_the_same_album%2C_but_I_only_see_one_album_cover._Where_are_the_other_versions%3F

3

Might be worth looking at this:

http://dougscripts.com/apps/dupinapp.php

4

I’d do as much de-duping on a file level as you can. In my experience that more effective and transparent than just letting Roon sort out the mess and going from there.

I use Gemini 2 but I don’t know how it is with detecting similar audio data. (It manages well with deducing compressed photos, so I’d hope it does also with audio.)

5

You can make iTunes do a lot of the work for you.

For example, to get a list of all your ALAC files, make a new Smart Playlist where Kind contains Apple Lossless.

Then, with that new playlist selected, you can either export a list of the files to a text file (File > Library > Export Playlist) - or move the files themselves by selecting them all and dragging them to a new folder, e.g. on your Desktop.

You’d then have a folder of all your ALAC files, which you could put somewhere and point Roon to.