i-tunes fXXcks it up...Grrr

That is why, for all their chic and innovation, I am going to someday be in a position where I do not do business with Apple any longer - too much proprietary BS, and too much "we think this is how you should want it so this is how it will be...after all, we know what's best for you."  (Hmmm...come to think of it, sounds a lot like the US government.)

I've been using the automatic library organizing function since getting my most recent Mini. I find it works very well, but admittedly I do most things with iTunes and use iTunes-friendly file formats. (I use XLD for FLAC conversion and BitPerfect for playback.)

Hi Geoff -

Could not agree more about iTunes.  What a sneaky design decision, and what a terrible trap it laid for you!  Sorry this happened, but thanks a lot for sharing this cautionary tale.

Hook

I guess thats the crux of the matter Winky.

dBPoweranmp adds tags and Album art to WAV which independent media servers such as Asset UPnp recognise and give you search options such as 'Folders & Filenames', 'Album/Artist' and so on to use with them.

I-tunes is 'my way or the highway' and you better rip in an apple format (OK it might consider FLAC) 'but don't even dare to offer me WAV and expect me to be intelligent with it.'

Thanks for the sympathy Hook.

Painful finding out. Just shows why at least one full backup that is up to date is absolutely necessary.

Geoff

I feel very sorry for you Geoff. Having read over the years the testimony of all the carefulness you put into this hobby, this incident is really unfortunate. I hope you haven't lost anything in the process. At least you had backups !

I use iTunes for iDevices syncing, but I have a MP3 transcoded copy of my rips and that is the only files I'll let iTunes ever touch ! I've learned over the years that with all things Apple it's easier to fully do it their way, or not at all. Any way in between can be way more tedious and is mostly assured to lead to tears, or at least compulsive teeth grinning. I see this coming with their iCloud which I'm trying to avoid by all means, and when I'm fed up trying, I'll go back to Linux. But I'll miss the Apple polish.

I've never tried what you're attempting to do. Maybe you could share your NAS read-only to your bedroom device, untick the dreaded box and try again ? Normally iTunes keeps its own indexes in the iTunes folder, so it shouldn't be necessary for it to pollute the library folder (unless you tick the...), but a read-only share can be handy just in case, because sometimes, if you mess up with metadata within the iTunes interface, it writes some tags back to the original files.

My best wishes for a speedy recovery of your beloved music. Hope everything is going to be all right soon.

Maurice

I am really sorry to hear of this incident Geoff. Good to hear that tha you had a backup and hope it is not too much of a pain. completely understand the "GRRRRR....@#*%#!!".

I agree with m0omo0 try sharing your iTunes database as "read only" then you should be able to get your music bedroom DAC up and running.

Unfortunately this kind of incident serves to highlight a couple of things, both of which are important.

1. Backup, backup, backup

2. Use only one method/application/program to update or manage your music library. It's a database and any database no matter who it's developer is does not like being messed about with by other programmes.

@DrMark and others,  it's nothing to do with Apple this or Apple that.... or "proprietaryBS", it's about database management. and as for "sounds like the US government", perhaps it sounds also a bit like Naim and their ripping methodology.... see the long thread on this subject.

Dear leader of the slaves, let's rise up and free the rips !

Oh but it IS proprietary ways of doing things - like when I need a new battery in the iPhone; you have to let them do it, and be without a phone for a few days, or rent one from them (how sporting), and for the few tunes I have bought from iTunes, I find I have restrictions placed on me when I try to do certain things with them (e.g., burn them in mp3 format to CD for car use - geeze, did I buy the tune or only rent it?)  And the fact that I am forced to have certain app icons on the iPhone, even though I will NEVER play "games" (or use sundry other things that cannot be removed from the desktop.) 

And their products cost more too - a high price for being "tragically hip"...at one time I was taken in by the mystique, and they were the cutting edge, but now there are other products that do as much, as well (or even better), and more cheaply.  So as replacement time comes, it will be Droid time for this guy.

F-bomb 'em.

Ok so you don't like Apple that choice is yours to make but the subject here is music streaming and the management of the database to give the desired access. I'll stick to the topic....

Just don't buy them.

Guys thanks for the sympathy.

As mentioned it is not the end of the world thanks to the Backups which I instituted a couple of years ago and have religiously updated ever since.

I now agree that a Database should be left alone and only updated by the exact method used to create it  (being wise after the event  .

The slightly sad thing is I can play the music off my NAS into the USB DAC using a nifty little program that Mr Spoon ( of dB Poweramp) offers which turns a WINDOWS PC into a UPnP renderer that can then be seen on your network and used to give a USB digital out. I have used this successfully already using both Kinsky on i-pod and Bubble DS on Android phone as control points.

I just fancied trying the MAC with 'Bit Perfect' and since I don't know of a Mac OSX program that turns a MAC into a network discoverable UPnP renderer had to use i-tunes to serve music from my NAS.

I did push a few tracks across from the NAS using 'read only' in i-tunes but then of course being silly I just thought I would create an i-tunes listing of all my music rather than just a few tracks and foolishly ticked the wrong box.

Geoff

It would be great if everybody standardised on the same standard, but everybody uses their own standard. I guess standards are good so everybody invents their own because you can't have too much of a good thing. 

WAV is a problem format for lots of applications and iTunes is certainly one of those. I wish everybody would just use AIFF or FLAC, but that would be too simple. 

I'm sorry to hear you had the problem Geoff. I have my library in a Vortexbox in FLAC and in the Apple world in ALAC. One effectively backs up the other. I embed the album art as that seems safer. Over the years I have learned by bitter experience not to let a piece of software organise things ... I hope you are able to restore your music to how you want it and if it is any consolation then you'll be safe in the knowledge that your backup strategy works. 

All the best, Guy 

I won't - like I said, as replacement time comes, I will leave the Apple religion.

Which if iTunes were not involved, he might not be suffering this problem, because it functions best trying to keep you in a the "Apple only" world.  So it is at least peripherally on topic...maybe another music database management system is a good choice.

I don't buy MS products - they probably don't care or notice, but it makes me fell better 

I can never understand people moaning about iTunes doing this kind of stuff.  If you are going to get iTunes to organise your music library wouldn't it be a good idea to actually understand what it is going to do first?  Would you download any other computer program, blindly tick a number of options and then just wait to see what it does?  No, of course you wouldn't.

Gee thanks Rich

Your comment would be sensible if the information provided by i-tunes in preferences were not so ambiguous.

Under the window where you specify the path to your music library there is a tick box which asks:

Keep iTunes Media folder organised

and underneath it is the information:

Places files into album and artist folders and names the files based on the disc number track numbers and the song title.

I-tunes did nothing of the kind with my Music folder.

For a start there were no album folders, it placed all tracks in a folder called 'Unknown' which I did not find out it was doing until the end when I tried to find the music tracks in my original album folders

Secondly it didn't use individual artist folders they all went in the giant 'Unknown Artist' sub folder under "Unknown'

It also consolidated all the track 1's before then listing all the track 2s and so on so for the substantial quantity of artists for which I have multiple CD's this also is useless. Try choosing to listen to track 1 thru' 10 of an album from a giant list of track 1s, 2s etc.

NOTE also i-Tunes help has no usefull extra information that would explain something like this would happen and there is no warning anywhere that says this will happen with WAV files which have been fully tagged by dB Poweramp.

Geoff

Hi Geoff,

Sorry this happened to you. Regarding the exact things iTunes does ticking the boxes you mentioned, please go to the website of iLounge and search the help section. There is 2 or 3 excellent documents that exactluy tell you what happens, how to prepare and how to organize

VCheers,

Iver

This is exactly why I would never entertain using WAV files for rips. They are not bullet-proof tag carriers, and sometime horrible things can happen if the tagging gets detached somehow.

Geoff, you have my sympathy for the work that is going to be involved cleaning up and re-instating.

But please don't put all the blame on iTunes either. I have been using it for three years now with nerr'y even a glitch, but I am very cautious of the limits of my own knowledge. I am hopeless with computers and I know it.Thus I don't make mistakes, because I never do anything out of the ordinary.

Best of luck sorting out the system,

ATB from George

Hi George

Thanks for the sympathy and good wishes

I can't agree about WAV tagging problems. I have ripped to WAV for approximately 2 years now  and as has been confirmed by quite a selection of folk on here dB Poweramp does tag WAV ffiles successfully and consistently. It also has the flexibility to adjust tags which as you know is particularly important for Classical music for example. Using Asset UPnP as a media server which is excellent I have all the album art, track listings and composer details with no problems.

I chose to rip to WAV right back when I started because in just the same way that you reported recently that you hear subtle improvments with AIFF vs ALAC I have formed the same conclusion for WAV vs FLAC and since I used dB Poweramp from day 1 have never had any tagging problems.

I also use a NAS that runs under Windows Home Sever on which I can run Asset UPnP so I don't need a computer up and running to access my music ( the NAS is out in the kitchen).

As for doing something out of the ordinary I hear what you are saying George but I would hardly view scanning my Music folder in i-tunes as an out of the ordinary thing for i-tunes to be called on to do.

BTW It was only as a temporary thing that I tried to use i-Tunes so I could try out Mac USB vs PC USB delivery of Audio to see if teh Mac does a better jiob. For long term use I will no doubt continue with Asset.

Regards

Geoff

Dear Geoff,

I suppose that as I run the system round iTunes, and keep it simple without any extra improving software like "Bit Perfect," I am next to guaranteed not to run into a problem.

The AIFF thing is very subtle, but I am trying to do about twenty tracks a day - one at a time! Of course it is also good for me to review just what I did rip. That which has not been played in three years is being deleted! This means that I can get my files into the existing half TB drive. Economics and fiddle are at play with this deletion process! I still have the original CDs if the desire ever took me to revisit.

I am going to try to get the iTunes computer eventually to be entirely discrete - only connected to the internet for streaming radio - and run something else for everything else. As it is my one and only system, I would be a bit done in if it broke down seriously!

Anyway, once you have cleared the mess, reloading should be an overnight job, so hopefully you should be back in service in a day.

ATB from George

You know Guy - I don't imagine either of these behemoths miss either one of us!

And best of luck to Geoff in his data recovery!

Geoff, you have my apologies that was rather abrupt and you do have my sympathy.  It is the Apple naysayers who jumped on the bandwagon who were winding me up with the same old rubbish spouted about iTunes.

The iLounge articles referenced above are an excellent introduction to iTunes and what it does and doesn't do.

Geoff, not sure but I think XBMC can discover UPnP servers on the network and play from them. It runs on the Mac but may be a bit overkill for what you're trying to do. See xbmc dot org.

Guys

Restore still in progress, about 2/3rds done, left overnight probably will finish and also have time for Asset to complete re-cataloguing ready to serve as normal tomorrow.

Rich no problem.

iLounge  is apparently a useful resource. Pity it doesn't show up in the help menu on i-tunes so newcomers get to know about it.

Maurice

I actually checked out XBMC and put it on my to do list for a rainy day a while ago but never got round to delving into it. Will have to go in a see whats what.

Geoff