iTunes library management

iTunes definitely manages its "library" in a somewhat unique way.  I have the luxury of not using iTunes for anything related to my home hi fi.  I still have an iTunes library, but use it solely to maintain my iTunes Match library, and it contains all lossy files. 

If you want to have a single library that is the target library of both iTunes AND another player, you may always have some gripes. 

How do you play files at home?

Hi. I have a macbookpro with AIFF files on an external HDD into an amplifier with integrated DAC. Library management was always in iTunes and I have used several players including A+, Amarra and now Roon. Maybe I just need to get my teeth into Roon which is the closest I've got to being happy with a player

I would say - forget iTunes and it's weird way of handling the library. I tried it in so many configurations - still ends up in a mess (we have only Macs at home, so I'm pretty good at this and still couldn't get my head around the 'logic' of this).

As soon as I installed my NAS, iTunes is only used for syncing lossy files to an iPhone.

Adam

I have everything on ITunes (mainly for historical reasons) and my filing was a bit messy when I started upnp streaming about a year ago.  The "consolidate" option certainly sorted things out for me, automatically putting everything into the iTunes media music folder.  I then was able to delete all the left-over duplicate (& now empty I seem to recall) artist & album folders from the old "messy" file structure.

  Adam Zielinski posted:

I would say - forget iTunes and it's weird way of handling the library. I tried it in so many configurations - still ends up in a mess (we have only Macs at home, so I'm pretty good at this and still couldn't get my head around the 'logic' of this).

As soon as I installed my NAS, iTunes is only used for syncing lossy files to an iPhone.

Adam

+1, its the devil's work!   I won't have it active on any of my systems and I don't like the way it interferes with my files and the weaves itself into the system.  When I use Audirvana I use its native library rather than ITunes mode which sounds better anyway.

dayjay posted:

+1, its the devil's work!   I won't have it active on any of my systems and I don't like the way it interferes with my files and the weaves itself into the system.

Another BIG PLUS ONE  .............  I thought it was me being a behind the times ol' fart & anti-social.    That all might well be true,  but its gratifying to read that others agree with me about iToons 

All righty and thank you all. I would be quite prepared to ditch it, but TBH I'm so inexperienced I thought I had to use it. Can I just copy all the files from my iTunes music library to a folder in my HDD and expect Roon or whatever to pick up all the metadata and tags etc without problems?

Mind you, BordersNick, if you found the solution easy after consolidation I just might give that a go first. It's a painless trial

I on the other hand run iTunes as not only my primary library resource but also as the main server for all my media including music.

I find it easy to use and my nas drives all have iTunes server built in so no issues there.

The main thing is on how you organise your files before putting them into iTunes.

My flacs are converted to ALAC, then into mp3 tag where I sort out the metadata and make sure its correct, I also resize my album art work (photoshop) and then replace the embedded album art work.

Once all this is done the original flags are sent to two separate external drives for archiving, the finished and sorted ALAC's are imported into iTunes.

As said my iTunes media library is held on my primary nas and played from there via my different media devices ( MBP, iPad,Revo supper connect)

24bit flacs are stored on a separate nas and served to the same devices via DNLA.

The main thing here is not mixing and matching when it comes to storing/servers for your media, I had endless nightmares using twonky and other servers as well as iTunes and lots of confusion over what was where.

By unifying and using just the one main library things are simplified and being anal over metadata tagging means the files are as they should be before getting stored so no issues there.

But as said if you look logically at what you need and set it up simply you can get good results.

The main limitations are iTunes still not working with flac's and the resolution limits on ALAC

Everyone has a different way of managing their music library. Can't say i've had problems with iTunes myself- i find it a useful way to manage my music and it works well for me and the various music playback devices that use it. As Nick suggests, using the consolidate option organises the library into one folder and this is the way i use it with my iTunes music folder held on an external NAS. I can't really see how this would be confusing to anyone as the directory structure is very simple. A bit of housekeeping when importing makes sure that artwork and tagging is correct. 

My Sonos system has no problems using the iTunes library and the Melco in my main system and my Sony portable (and a couple of USB disks) are synced with the library on the NAS with cloning software. 

Any other ways to get  music on to Apple products without using iTunes?