We are currently running a collection with over a millions tracks(I,200,000) most of the tracks are FLACs, and left iTunes probably 7+ years ago as it became so sluggish to search for anything once a collection got close to 200,000 tracks and spiraled downhill exponentially as the collection grew.
We tried a lot of options and settled on JRivers media center (we are on a mac) and it is a cross platform app. Window/OSX. Its not as intuitive as a purely developed OSX app but once you get use to it you can create so many ways to look and manage your collection its hard to ever go back. It has it quirks/bugs but they are constantly fixing it weekly or bi-monthly. JRiver will let you organize and convert formats and allows you to add custom scripts and fields, it has all the tools you motioned and way more.
Just looked at Swinsian as it was not an option when we switched and it looks really simple with some cool features but doesn’t look nearly as powerful as JRivers. If you are in need of endless ways to see and manage your library I would def go JRivers but if you want to keep it simple and your needs are basic def try Swinsian. I assume both have free trials. Also if you have a lot of advance needs you can reach out directly to me.
It really depends on what kind of user you are. We use lots of deep metadata and we are able to create custom fields and dozen of other of hacks
JRivers is incredible deep in all ways.
Swinsian is basic and simple
I don’t use Swinsian. I just checked it out. I run hundreds of programs and it doesn’t take me long to get a sense of the maturity or capabilities of a program.
We use Yate for metadata I think its an OSX only app. Yate is amazing and the developer only deals with metadata. He will fix any issues immediately sometimes even the same day and has added features that we requested.
Thanks. Yate looks very interesting and a much better UX than JRiver. Do you work on metadata for 1.2 M tracks loaded into Yate at the same time? Does it perform well with that load?
Before I had my iTunes/Roon shared library on the Nucleus, using iTunes for managing and letting it take control of the structure (file and folder naming and creation) and tagging.
Occasionally iTunes lost some tracks and having iTunes Match on was tricky to say the least. I once let Roon Manage my library and lost a few hundred tracks, not accessible by iTunes or Roon anymore. Luckily that function was removed from Roon.
I’m in the same process as Craig and Krutsch now.
First of all I am polishing up the structure of my library (file/folder naming and arranging) since I’m not completely happy with the way iTunes did it. While doing so I am polishing up the tagging with Metadatics which I believe is pretty similar to Yate.
The end result will come into one folder which will be the library where Roon, Swinsian and Music point to. Both Swinsian and Music will have all options off so they can’t mess with the files and folders or automatically change tags.
Swinsian will be used to view my library in a different way (column browser which should really be a part of Roon so we don’t need other apps anymore) and light tag adjusting.
“Music” will be used to make the bridge with Finder to put music on my IOS devices while auto-transcoding to AAC256.
I will make an AAC256 copy of my library with dBpoweramp to sync music to a USB stick for in my car. I am doubting if I should point “Music” to that AAC library version instead of my original library where Swinsian and Roon will point to.
Do you think there’s much difference between Yate and Mertadatics Peter?
I did a long search before getting that app and had it for over a year now. I see Krutsch is using it as well.
For what I will use Swinsian for (mainly viewer, light tag adjusting) I think it should suffice. I would take MusicBee as an equivalent on my Windows PC then.
Of course, JRiver, being universal would be nice as well but I’m worried it will be too complicated for what I want. Also, I’d rather not have the video and media-center functions it has and just like Swisnian I wouldn’t use it as a player either, I only use Roon to play my music, that’s the whole point of my Roon/Nucleus setup.
Am I making a good choice here or am I being scared (of the complexity) and/or stubburn?
Still need to work on how I’ll manage/organise classical music. I have mostly compilation boxes. Any good thread on that?
I have a question for everyone here: do people really not mind using another software to organise their library? I’m asking because I genuinely expected Roon to do this for me, and I’m wondering if I just misunderstood the software’s intent.
Roon does nothing with your files or file structure, it builds and uses its own database based on metadata (from a number of sources), pointing to your music files/albums - wherever they may be stored. The music files can all be in one huge folder, or neatly organized in /genre/artist/album, or whatever. Roon doesn’t mind. This works great, but it doesn’t do anything for other music apps.
Therefore, if you use any other music software, you may want to organize your files to some meaningful (to you) directory structure, and manually edit the metadata using external apps (metadatics or yate).
Or, use iTunes to organize and tag edit your music collection, and point Roon to the Media folder. Both programs can happily co-exist. Note that iTunes does not support FLAC.
I don’t mind. I value Roon for its ability to help me discover new music, give me a beautiful, information-rich environment while I listen, and communicate to my other music devices. Also like its ability to do things like DSP, etc.
I still use JRiver from time to time to do things I can’t do easily in Roon. JRiver is great at some things, but is no fun for the user experience.
Personally, I don’t mind using the right tool for the job. I use different knives and kitchenware to cook, depending on what I need to do. So no problem with other utilities I use, including music.
I would never change metadata on 1.2 million tracks at once ever!
That being said we have loaded hundreds of tracks at a time and done some bulk changes on them. Maybe even a few thousand in the early days.
Its def a better UI than JRivers for metadata.
JRivers how’s an option to send file/files to a an external program from inside the open app. You can do metadata in JRivers but its not as easy as Yate.
Yate is more mature and has been around way longer than Metadatics. Of course, I tested Metadatics when it first arrived and was nowhere as flexible and capable as Yate
Barry who’s baby it is a wizard :~) He is accessible and will listen to an issue and give you some Yate script to process it or add it to the next build if he sees that it will be useful.
I think if you have ways you want to organize and tag your music JRivers and Yate are a winning combination. They both allow custom fields that can be recognized by each other. I especially think classical music lovers will enjoy the abilities and ease of use in YATE. (We have about 2,300 classical albums)
We use the powerful features in JRIvers to organize the files on the finder level too. That’s been a great time saver as Apple has never been versatile at that.
JRivers def has some issues (UI resizing issues is prob my biggest complaint) but the flexibility on how and what you want it to display is endless!
I am headed in this direction. I am watching for updates to Doug's AppleScripts » dougscripts.com, as he seems to be on top of what works and what doesn’t, with Catalina. I have a 1/2 dozen of his scripts that I use for my “music collector” workflow, the most import being for batch editing Work & Movement tags, as well as exporting tracks for car use.
For now, I am waiting for Catalina to settle down before upgrading.
I was only slightly facetious in claiming that the main difference between MusicBee and JRiver was cost, but I do think that’s important for a program that one is going to use just to organise files. I have found that MusicBee is much simpler to use than JRiver to do that chore. But even simpler is Media Monkey (Version 4, not 5), whose Auto-organize has long been my goto for organizing music files. Not all that great at metadata in my view (one reason we use roon after all), but for simplicity of file management, I doubt it can be beat.
ADDED: I neglected to point out that the free version of Media Monkey includes the auto-organize function so it costs just as much as MusicBee.
I will certainly get Yate as well if it’s good for classical organization.
I really have to learn some more about folder structure and tagging of classical music and how that fits into a structure of modern music.
Have always hated iTunes and seeing as my music is flac encoded couldn’t get much use out of it anyhow. In any event, I’ve taken to using a SQLite database originally populated from my underlying music files. This has allowed me to find and sort anomalies across a huge library and standardise track titles, artist, performer and composer names, genres, albumartists etc. and fill in the blanks where composers are concerned.
Over time as I sort out anomalies that have crept in through tagging over the years I’ll get to a point where I’ll be satisfied that all my files are tagged with the correct canonical artist name etc. (I’m pretty close now). At that point I’ll create a few extra tables having an entry for every artist/performer and composer. Any new music added after that point will pass through a script that identifies and flags anomalies to ensure as far as possible crud stays out of my library. Despite having a fairly rigorous, semi-automated tagging regime I’ve been surprised how much crap/inconsistency has found its way into my metadata over the years - I’m looking at you allmusic.
I may soon resort to some Power BI for visualisation to aid with catching further anomalies.
I use a very basic directory structure for my music files. I have two main directories. One with lossless files and the other with purchased from iTunes lossy files. Then, I use the “artist/album” structure.
Generally, the only time I use another program other than Roon to manage metadata is when ripping CDs. I let dBpoweramp populate the metadata for the albums using MusicBrainz and Discogs. I also use it to get album art. I have dBpoweramp add one custom tag called “ROONRADIOBAN” and set it to zero (which is the boolean “OFF”).
When I rip SACDs, the program I use does not retrieve any metadata from online databases. The album and track information comes from the SACD and I usually rename the albums and the tracks to match the format I setup dBpoweramp to use with CDs. I don’t even add the “ROONRADIOBAN” tag which I really should do. I will often provide my own album cover art image for SACDs especially if it is a Japanese release with an OBI.
Basically, I rely on Roon completely for metadata for SACDs. For CDs, Roon gets some information from the metadata included. But, I find that generally Roon’s metadata is just as good. For my music library, I think I would be just fine with Roon managing the metadata. I have stopped using Roon Radio so the “ROONRADIOBAN” tag has gone unused by me and I could live with Roon’s album art choices. I certainly don’t have a need to manage my music library outside of Roon with anything like JRiver or even Yate.
Indeed.
And even though it’s not necessary for Roon I can imagine a lot of people want to have their music files organized in a folder structure and at least have some basic tagging and art embedded in their files.
iTunes wasn’t too bad at that but Music is since it ditched the column browser and mainly promotes integration with Apple Music and syncs your Music through iCloud which can mess up your fragile iTunes library.
I think many here in this thread use Roon only for listening and discovering, it’s rather cumbersome to organize and tag and as far as I understood does not tag into the file.
If you want to get the most out of Roon some tagging is still a necessity. TiVo has too many holes and errors in its metadata to be able to get the most out of Roon.