Looking for a better player

M

Mabel

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Sep 11, 2017
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7
The idea of a central storage for my music files seemed irresistable but as my library grows I find it increasingly difficult to find certain albums or musical pieces.
For instance: I ask for 'albums' and get an unsightly long list, arranged (if I'm lucky) in alfabetical order. So I set out to experiment with 'genre'. That works even worse: I now get even longer lists of individual tracks!
My question: is not there a player around which is able to combine several meta-data fields in a selection? For instance, I'd like to see the option 'keep albums together' or 'only show albums', allowing me to more usefully organise my collection in 'genres'. Also, I would like to see the option for further filters to work in an 'additive' way; I mean: 'apply the filter to the selection already made'. Alternatively (or additinally), selecting on 'tags' would be an option, but afaik 'tags' are not supported by any media-server (?).
An additional problem is that I am limited to players supporting 'casting'. So far I tried VLC and BubbleUPnP under Windows; both work fine in principle, but by now present unseemly long lists, and I hardly even started adding my CD collection.
For the time being, my only option seems to rely on the 'file-system', folders within folders, to organise my music. YES, that works: I can at least keep albums and/or symphonies together and make a tree with 'genres' subdivided in 'sub-genres' etc. The 'clients' I tried do offer the option to locate music this way. It is still not as accessible as my old CD collection, since I can't (in the stage of searching) see pictures and I can't arrange albums or symphonies in a certain way; it's all 'alfabetical order'. I can live with that, though, but it seems a bit disappointing when I think of all the extra possibilties a database-structure of my collection, making use of all available meta-data, could offer.

By the way, I am aware of the need for meta-data and the problems of these not being well standardised but that is not what I'd like to discuss here; I am just looking for a UPnP-enabled player which can use multiple meta-data fields to make a selection.
Mabel
 
Mabel - have you tried Roon? It makes file system, folders, etc. seem like dinosaurs.
 
I took a look at the Roon website; indeed it looks like a very comprehensive set of programs and apps! At $500,- it's quite expensive though, and from the glossy and unhelpful website I couldn't make out in what way it is going to make finding my music more easy. I am a bit afraid of 'vendor lock-in' (e.g. by use of custom metadata) and would prefer the freedom of choosing my media-server independently from my mediaplayer. (well, as much as possible, that is.)
But the main dealbreaker for me is lack of support for Chromecast Audio; I'm not about to spend a fortune on hardware which can be had for $40,- and I'm certainly not about to buy a 'Roon-Ready' amplifyer. (I don't believe that's the way to go at all.) Anyway, through lack of supported hardware I cannot try out with the trial free version. Like I said in my first posting: I am limited to players supporting the Chromecast.
 
Mabel - Roon offers a 14 day free trial. You don't need a Roon ready amplifier, you do need a device that is a Roon endpoint however. What the heck is Chromecast? Sounds like some Google concoction.

As a side, have you tried JRiver?
 
Actually chromecast audio for $35, and using the optical output of it to a dac has a decent sound to it. I use this configuration with BubbleUpnp in small HT system. I was quite surprised of the sound it produced. For a $35 piece, and a quality optical cord, it plays way above it's price. As Mike suggested, Roon and Jriver are both darn good. What is the rest of the system like? Are you using a NAS to a chromecast or something that is a streamer or just a laptop? From there, what is the rest of the chain? Laptop to a dac or receiver?
 
Mike said:
Mabel - Roon offers a 14 day free trial. You don't need a Roon ready amplifier, you do need a device that is a Roon endpoint however. What the heck is Chromecast? Sounds like some Google concoction.
Click to expand...
Chromecast is indeed a 'Google concoction'. Much as I share your distrust of the Behemoth, I think the Chromecast, and the Chromecast Audio which I use, are nifty pieces of hardware; from a technological standpoint I'd say 'this is the way to go'.
The Chromecast, connected to the home network by WiFi, takes the URL of a music file as input, then fetches it and feeds it as a bitstream to a (s/pdif compatible) optical output. It works with mp3, aac, flac, wma and supports 'pass-through' for Dolby and other surround-sound encodings. (It also has built-in DACs and analogue output, but let's forget about that.) The Chromecast is controlled by media-players connected to the network and capable of 'casting': you use the media-player to find the music; it then passes the URL of the file to the Chromecast which starts playing it. It supports up till 96KHz/24bits, so there can be hardly discussion about 'sound quality'.
I've always disliked audio applifyers with built-in network capabilities; that's like tv's with built-in dvd-player: after a year you discover it can't play BlueRay disks. Separating the functions of 'network connectivity' from 'audio decoding & amplifying' seems logical to me. The Chromecast can be dirt-cheap because it is so popular and it is so popular because it's so universally applicable. This in contrast to for example systems like Roon.
I.m.o the Chromecast and other devices in the same vein are the way forward.
Mabel
 
Mabel - it looks like Chromecast is a big step up in sound over Bluetooth. But back to your question about a player, if you can, try Roon. Just not that you will need a proper Roon end point.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
erniejade said:
Actually chromecast audio for $35, and using the optical output of it to a dac has a decent sound to it. [...] I was quite surprised of the sound it produced. [...] What is the rest of the system like?
Click to expand...
I'm glad you have a positive experience with the chromecast too. You wrote "I was quite surprised of the sound it produced" but you need not have been: the chromecast does not 'produce sound'; it fetches and decodes the audio file and feeds it as a bitstream to to the output. NO degrees of audio quality come into play here; it either does the job or it doesn't. The resulting audio quality is solely up to the Digital-to-Analogue (DAC) converters in the amplifyer or (in case of very old amps) in a seperate DAC-box. And further, of course, to the quality of the (analogue part of) the amplifyer and the loudspeakers.
As for my system: A windows10 computer for media-server (so far I only tried WMP and VLC as servers). Chromecast Audio to connect (optically) to my HiFi chain. For control, I now use (after some experimenting) VLC-player on windows notebooks and BubbleUPnP on my Android tablet.
It all works fine together, except for the problems I posed in my original question. I've seen little advice on that, so far...:-)
 
As Mike pointed out, Roon and JRiver. JRiver is cheap, easy to use but lacking a bit sonically compared to other players.
Another program is HySolid, it is free and more rudimentary. You can find music by artist or album I believe.

http://www.hysolid.com/
 
I apologise for the long delay but I had many suggestions to try out.
So far, none of them solved my problem. There is a lot of attention for 'sound quality' but that is another discussion altogether; I am merely talking about an interface which allows me to locate the music I want to play. Searching 'by album' is i.m.o. ludicrously insufficient: a very long list of album titles from Bach to Beatles, arranged in alphabetical order of 'album title' (with titles like 'The Vienna Concert') completely relies on my (fading) memory.
Like I said: for the time being, my only option seems to rely on the 'file-system', folders within folders, to organise my music. I find this disappointing as a database of metadata could potentially deliver many more options to for searching.
 
Mabel said:
I apologise for the long delay but I had many suggestions to try out.
So far, none of them solved my problem. There is a lot of attention for 'sound quality' but that is another discussion altogether; I am merely talking about an interface which allows me to locate the music I want to play. Searching 'by album' is i.m.o. ludicrously insufficient: a very long list of album titles from Bach to Beatles, arranged in alphabetical order of 'album title' (with titles like 'The Vienna Concert') completely relies on my (fading) memory.
Like I said: for the time being, my only option seems to rely on the 'file-system', folders within folders, to organise my music. I find this disappointing as a database of metadata could potentially deliver many more options to for searching.
Click to expand...
You should give a try to MUSIChi Suite.

It rocks when it comes to music management. I have 200.000+ songs library and navigating through it with this software has never been quicker or easier.

Definitely a game changer in the field.

Wwwmusichieu

Στάλθηκε από το ALE-L21 μου χρησιμοποιώντας Tapatalk
 
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