2. digital
  3. 133237-74154

Using iTunes as a source library for Aurender Music servers

Don't know if this is worthy of new thread, but here goes;

I have been using a computer as my principal digital music source since I discovered Apple's lossless compression in 2006.  My iTunes library has all of my 3200 ripped CDs and about 300 downloaded albums which together comprise a total of 45,000 tracks.  3,500 of these tracks are above red-book CD resolution.

I have a new Aurender N10.  I love it.  It sounds better and is easier to use than my Mac Pro (3,1) running Amarra 3.0.3.  

I continue to use iTunes to create and curate the music library on the N10's hard drive.   Since the computer and the N10 are connected by a wired ethernet, I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to maintain a mirror image of the iTunes music file hierarchy on the N10.  A update of a few new albums will complete in as little as half an hour.  

I am good at managing my library on iTunes--I have been doing it for more than 10 years.  The album artwork and liner notes are in good (pretty good) order.  Track names, album names, comments, groupings, artists, composers, genre, ratings, are all maintained carefully and consistently.  The workflow of mirroring additions and edits of my iTunes library on the N10 is quite efficient now.  I would be glad to share anything that might be helpful to other Aurender owners using this same architecture.

So here is my first question for the community:

Has anyone had success embedding the iTunes track ratings in the track files and then getting the Aurender (conductor) app to display them correctly?  The ratings are among the most valuable ways I remember the albums I really like.  (I see that Doug-scripts has a way of finding the ratings which iTunes maintains in its proprietary database and embedding them into each track's music file.)  

John Devereux
devereux
blindjim
3,092 posts
 
Hi,

An Aurender might be on my list soon so I thought to tag this topic. Sorry, I don’t have an answer for you.

Interesting. I’ve never tagged the FAV colum as one to seek albums or songs. I’ve got about half of your library size. And nearly in every possible format and sampling rate. Sheeesh.

Would you mind cluing me in on how those 7 little stars aid in searching a library of 40K plus, quicker than a title, genre, album or artist search?

Good luck incorporating your data. I do hope it works out for ya.

devereux OP
3 posts
 
Hello blindjim,

Answering blindjim: How do the ratings help me to search.

This Christmas I had the time to listen seriously to the Berlioz L'Enfance du Christ.  I have five complete versions of this beautiful work.  Two of these I have liked enough in the past to give them five stars.  This rating means the performance and its sonics are good enough for me to devote myself for the next two hours to listening to this oratorio.  

With a 5-star rating I usually add critical comments.  In this case they said that the Herreweghe performance included a superb narrator (Paul Agnew) whose performance is good enough to expand your concept of reverence.

Incidently, Aurender owners, because you are listening with your iPad in your lap, you can put the .pdf notes into iBooks and read the libretto while you listen.  There is a very slick system that drives the librettos and the notes into the Conductor app which will hopefully be illuminated more as this thread evolves.

The "heart" marking in iTunes is new so it is not populated for most of my tracks.  I plan to use it to give me a handle that finds all the desert island recordings in my library.

Filtering:  In iTunes (and presumably in Aurender) you can select, say, all of your Christmas music that has a five star rating.  This is very powerful since many Christmas records and compilations have tracks that are awful, so this selection will only play that ones that made the cut.

I hope this is helpful.

John Devereux
devereux OP
3 posts
 
Hello Shadorne,

I have heard from others that I should be finding out more about Roon; it certainly sounds intriguing. I am guessing from your post that you are not using Roon as a source database to establish and maintain your music library on an Aurender Music player.

I have given a lot of my youth to the task of annotating new recordings in iTunes. Doing that better could be a big help. I am not jealous of my time however, because I use that time to audition the new album and hopefully to get the rating and critical comments fields populated appropriately.

I am a tiny bit nervous about automatic annotation (perhaps because what the iTunes ripper adds is so hit-or-miss). But as long as there is a slick environment to go in and make STABLE edits, a new database could be great.

Cheers,

John
shadorne's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
shadorne
7,477 posts
 
Just try Roon on a trial basis. I guarantee you will be amazed. Out of 5200 albums - less than 200 needed cleaning up (cover art etc) and most of these were super rare or bootlegs or partial albums with just one track. Roon is the biggest revolution in audio since digital began. It is fixing the biggest drawback of digital vs vinyl - the loss of the gatefold vinyl sleeve with lyrics, background info etc. Roon has all the metadata. For classical albums that you have created metadata - you can have Roon prefer your metadata over what is available at Allmusic. It can be done in one step by selecting only the albums you want and then making a preference setting change on them all.

Roon also supports tags for personal customization

https://kb.roonlabs.com/Tags

https://kb.roonlabs.com/File_Tag_Best_Practice


rinpoche
154 posts
 
Hello, I am new to this discussion but I am very interested in learning how to 1) download my iTunes library to the Aurender N10 and 2) maintaining it should I make new purchases or download new music. I am not, however, computer savvy so the discussions on line (and even yours above) are challenging for me. If you can help or know someone who can help, that would be fantastic!!!! 
More to discover