Maintaining a Digital Music Collection

I moved overseas three years ago and we sold everything we'd had stateside, including all 3000 cds or so. We just went with an auction house and I have no idea how much we got and I never want to know. I'd ripped them all so the music never stops but it was a stark moment.

nothing more 2002 than a CD binder full of CD-Rs

Still got several of those. Backed up a lot of early mp3s I got that way and when I finally imported them into my HD, they all held up.

mp3 CD-Rs have had long lives for me, but mp3 DVD-Rs have definitely not. A lot of those became unreadable within 5-6 years.

I don't have any binders, but I do have several spindles of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs full of music. Long since imported to the external hard drive, so I should probably just get rid of them.

Still have my 2 giant CD binders with my old collection (need to rerip, last time I ripped them I went straight to 320kbps and I need lossless to truly make them obsolete)

BTW my burned CDs are now to a point where they're beyond their life cycle and degraded to the point where the first couple tracks are all glitched. Like all of them.

Still got several of those. Backed up a lot of early mp3s I got that way and when I finally imported them into my HD, they all held up.

That's how I stored my why ess I treasures from back in the day.

I'm at... four binders, five, something like that? the real answer is I'm at something like four binders and then a giant-ass box that never seems to get emptier no matter how much I rip

Stuff on my wishlist that is only available or affordable on digital: some Art Zoyd/Zaboitzeff, some Foetus albums, some Jarboe albums, some Trance To The Sun albums, a Fauns album, most Silvania albums, most Jute Gyte and a bunch of dungeon synth (which is mostly on cassette as their only physical media).
There's probably going to be a lot more.

― Robert Adam Gilmour

what art zoyd are you looking for

The Phase/Inquiets disc and maybe a few others.

ok, yeah, the only one i have is the 2cd of the first three.

Nativ Vita

This is a tablet designed specifically for audio library management/playback. Up to 4TB of storage, mutli-format (inc. 24-bit) playback and output, multi-room management, etc.

$1,600 and no on-board DAC ???

A swing and a miss, unless you're a rich bitch.

tablet/brick, rather

I don't have a smartphone and my 160 gb ipod classic only has about 10gb of space left. I was thinking of getting a 128gb ipod touch. I've spent years building up playlists in itunes so I'd rather just use a device that's compatible with that database.

My question is: how much of a pain in the ass is it to manage your music library across two devices? For anyone that already does it, how did you decide to split your library? Do you just split the music up alphabetically, A-M on one, N-Z on the other? I was thinking of putting podcasts and audiobooks on one and having one strictly music, but that'll probably only save me about 25gb.

Another thought I had was splitting up my library by year of release, but then I'd run the risk of splitting artists with vast catalogs across two devices.

I started using the HTC 10 as an mp3 player a while back (it doesn't need a sim to run, it works just like a very handy tablet) since it has a great sounding 24 bit dac.

Anyway, should you at some point want to exit the Apple eco system, the HTC 10 supports up to 2 TB (!) of external storage, and perhaps there'd be advantages in having your collection on micro sd cards instead of built-in iPod memory

plenty of decent music player apps, also it ofc supports Spotify or your streaming service of choice

after experimenting with having my ipod classic modded (bad idea) i got a cheap laptop i lug around for my music library. it's working out well for me so far.

yeah that's what I do these days for DJ stuff, along with a 3 TB external. I have a Cowon O2 for headphone/bike/jog, all I really need now is a car stereo that can play FLAC via USB

Rusho please expound on what went wrong with the modding? I was waiting to hear how it went as I'm contemplating the same.

Germane to this revive: I've read about an adaptor that lets iPhone/iPad read from micro sd cards via the lightning port. Does anyone know if it's possible to play audio files from a micro sd WITHOUT bringing them into the iPhone/iPad's actual storage? Or: can something like iOS VLC bring files over and play them and then delete them from device storage when done? Using my iPhone as a music player has been out of the question because of storage constraints but I'm wondering if micro sd access can work around that

Rusho please expound on what went wrong with the modding? I was waiting to hear how it went as I'm contemplating the same.

― harbinger of failure (Jon not Jon)

ipods weren't actually built to sync 50,000 songs and tend to freak out when you try to do it

Is that using rockbox firmware or...?

Problem with most Android/iOS music players is that they aren't really built for 50.000+ song libraries, and nobody seems to test this use case.

I've tried most players around, and there's performance problems everywhere, shoddy management of compilations and 'album artist', lots of players can't quick-scroll by first letter which means endless manual scrolling etc.

I'm still looking for a good player where all the library browsing is text-only, so no thumbnail caching that slows down scrolling, wastes screen space, and eats up multiple GBs in cache space. I mean, album art is nice to have in the Now Playing screen, but just parse it when it's queued please.

But the pickings are slim, large-scale local media management is a dead end it seems.

My iPod Classic (80GB) is in the process of dying, and I don't really know what to do next - simply get another one, or try and adopt the phone model. I use it mainly in the car these days, with a Monster cable that allows me to play through the radio. Is there a similar setup for Android?

I use iSyncr+Rocket Player on Android

But the pickings are slim, large-scale local media management is a dead end it seems.

i refer you to the sonos thread and my ongoing issues re their 65K track limit a limit set by hardware not software.
i.e. sonos have decided to dump local media management for streaming.
apparently people are not meant to have large local archives anymore in this age of spotify.

How much of a pain in the ass is it to manage your music library across two devices? For anyone that already does it, how did you decide to split your library?

It's a pain shuffling things between two devices, for sure, but not terrible depending on the paradigm you choose. I used to do it with an iPod and a small Sansa player. I couldn't fit everything on them so I had to make some choices - I kept my favorite stuff on the iPod and a combination of the past years acquisitions and compilations on the Sansa. The pain was migrating stuff from one to the other, it was a constant chore deciding what to take off the iPod in favor of something new to add. On the other hand, it did force a rigorous approach to pruning your library, focusing on the very best and avoiding the hoarding that so easily comes to maintaining a digital library.

That approach ended when I embraced a single device solution (Android phone) and set up my own streaming solution (BubbleUPnP).

Tell me more about this HTC 10

How does it support up to 2TB of external storage? There are no cards larger than 500GB are there? Or do you mean you can hook it up to a USB hard drive?

Also it seems like it's not actually in production anymore. I see used listings and alibaba.com which, no.

Yeah, iSyncr and Rocket Player here too.

I'm writing this on an HTC 10 since I ended up using it as a phone, bought it for cheap with a crack in the screen, but it's a fairly expensive phone (settled on it after endless net searching trying to find out which phone had the better DAC)

It's very much for sale in Denmark so I'm surprised if it's not readily available on the American market. You can find threads about it on some audiophile forums.

Anyway, the 2tb thing is apparently the max capacity - but no, you cannot at the moment get an SD card that size

I don't have 65000 mp3s but for the sake of ilxors I would be willing to download a lot of music and test indexing

It really sounds great (DAC wise), and even before I put in a sim it was great to be able to dl Spotify albums and listen on the go

I seem to recall Marshall did a killer DAC phone too

...been using sansa clip + for some time now but looking for something to handle flacs into the hi-fi -- thinking fiio X3, cowen and onkyo look interesting....

I love my Cowon but get the O2 model, the interface/touchscreen is much better than the smaller ones

O2 is old model -- Plenue, maybe?

no, something with a rectangle screen like the M2, not a square screen:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NJG61D2/ref=psdc_1264866011_t3_B00N7A9U5Q

ok - probably more versatile than the FiiO, probably better alltogether...

Can that thing take high capacity micro sd cards (128, 200)? And can it browse via folders without relying on metadata?

dunno about the former but any folder structures I drag and drop into my O2 are navigable, tags are displayed but you see folder icons as well.

I've absolutely loved my Pioneer XDP-100R, a dedicated Android-based music player with very high-quality components for excellent sound--and the most important factor to me, two MicroSD slots. It sounds amazing playing FLACs, so I keep a few dozen albums on the inboard 32GB. But with (2x)256GB MicroSD, I'm able to keep several thousand of my albums with me at all times at VBR V-0 or CBR-320kbps mp3, which sounds good enough to my ears. The Pioneer player is good for playing FLACs and high-end files like that. I then use the GoneMad player app for everything else, and it's excellent--a lot of customization, browse by folder and/or by metadata, etc.

The player looks like what a stylish small smartphone would've looked like if they had existed in 1986. So it's a bit thick, compared to a modern phone, but it's actually quite comfortable to use, and has dedicated hard controls and an analogue volume dial so you don't have to turn the screen on to use it. I got it at $300 and found it a steal, and it's now at it's now at $270 on Amazon.70 on Amazon.

https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/StaticFiles/PUSA/V5/Home/High-Resolution%20Audio/xdp-100r_360.jpg(I got and prefer the raw aluminum version)

For phones that work as great music players, I'd highly recommend you pick up an LG V10. It has a dedicated (and reputable) DAC, it takes MicroSD, has a replaceable battery, and it's built like a tank, with steel rails down the sides and a rubber back. I've used one every day for two years and it looks brand-new.

That looks like Deckard would use it.

Ha! That's it exactly--it's a smartphone released by Atari in Los Angeles in November, 2019 to take to the off-world colonies. . .

soundslike, what is the battery life like on that pioneer thing? You had me at 2x micro sd

It seems great. I've never run it down, because I recharge it like a phone ever night, or often keep it plugged in at my office. It doesn't have a lot of apps, but I stripped it of everything I could uninstall except the stock software player. I mostly turn off wi-fi, keep the screen off when not needed, play mp3s per the above, not flacs, but I'd guess from use on travel I get 15+ hours? Maybe it can do more--I've never worn it down. It's not going to get the time that a Cowon or whatever gets, because of the big screen, can do Bluetooth, etc. but much longer than a phone.

Damn that sounds kind of ideal for me

the picture makes it look bigger and heavier than it is ... but yeah, totally portable and would fit in my purse.

Yeah, it's totally pocketable--much smaller than most modern phones in footprint, just thicker. I even like the little "bumpers" on the top and bottom, which I assumed I'd remove--they help make pulling it out of a pocket easier, and I use the top one to hang it on a hook at my office when I'm using Bluetooth.

so i got a computer to keep my library with me on the go. "should be fine", says i. "512 gb ought to be enough for anybody". i'm now up to 50,000 songs, 338 gb, windows keeps wanting to install massive updates whenever i connect it to the internet, and soundslike just posted a gigabyte worth of 2000s post-punk revival. itunes used to have this great thing where you could convert your files down to 128 aac to save space, and i'm seriously wondering if i can do that with my whole library for portable purposes. suggestions?

you can get a 4TB external drive for $100

i could but then i'd be lugging around even more stuff with me

oic -- a laptop rather than a computer to stream from? then yeah, downsampling seems reasonable as long as you're keeping the originals somewhere (and aren't all hydrogenaudio about the quality)

338 + 1 = 339

That's still way less than 512. I don't see a problem.

Will the laptop support a second internal drive? Some will. Or you can swap out the 512 for 1tb.

yes, i know there are a lot of ways to add more storage space. i don't particularly want to open up the laptop and mess around with the innards. i could get a usb drive and expand the space i have that way, if i wanted. i know 128 aac doesn't sound as good as 320 mp3, but it's good enough for portable listening, even with the dragonfly in. i figure mass transcoding could recover a lot of space for future growth and ought to be possible!