iTunes - how do you have your albums sorted??? Seperate playlists? Help

[gordonmenninger]

I am trying to organize my iTunes music better since I listen to 99% of my ripped cd's streamed through my squeezebox and Krell preamp / processor. My question is: How do you guys have your music organized? I have a bunch of playlists for various genres and the list is getting pretty long. How do you guys organize your Albums for a particular artist? Do you just do a seperate playlist for each album?

thanks
gordon

 

[zaphod]

i sort by artist and then title within artist.

i have a playlist "video4iPhone" and "music4iPhone" for syncing. and i have a few playlists for party's i've had, or events - right now i'm building one for the baby delivery... sort of a combination of NIN (for the emotion at the time) and Sade (who got us into this situation).

 

[timm]

hmmm ... I am hoping this is related.... I just got a squeezebox ... just set it up.... couple of things that I am having issues with ...
1) I have lossless files in a directory M:\Music_Lossless ... and MP3s in M:\MP3 .. I point the squeezebox to the Lossless dir -- and I get both the MP3 and the lossless version...which I do not want.... Any suggestions?...
2) I can't seem to get the album artwork... I have the artwork in itunes... have the squeezebox server set to 'use itunes'... still no artwork... I shut down the server ... clicked off itunes - re-scanned for 'new or changed music' - no luck ... so clicked 'use itunes' back on....

So - any help here would be appreciated as well... I thought of creating my own thread - but, thought that the playlist issue could be related in some way - or could be utilized for my mp3 issue... All help is very much appreciated... thanks tim

 

[churchill]

hmmm ... I am hoping this is related.... I just got a squeezebox ... just set it up.... couple of things that I am having issues with ...
1) I have lossless files in a directory M:\Music_Lossless ... and MP3s in M:\MP3 .. I point the squeezebox to the Lossless dir -- and I get both the MP3 and the lossless version...which I do not want.... Any suggestions?...
2) I can't seem to get the album artwork... I have the artwork in itunes... have the squeezebox server set to 'use itunes'... still no artwork... I shut down the server ... clicked off itunes - re-scanned for 'new or changed music' - no luck ... so clicked 'use itunes' back on....

So - any help here would be appreciated as well... I thought of creating my own thread - but, thought that the playlist issue could be related in some way - or could be utilized for my mp3 issue... All help is very much appreciated... thanks tim

Timm, check out this link, as the latest release of SB is problematic with artwork:http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=89045

I had to revert back to a prior release 7.5.5 and my artwork is fine, not sure about the other issues, but check out this forum:http://forums.slimdevices.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34

 

[timm]

Churchill --

I have not done anything special with my artwork... I just downloaded it all from itunes... (i.e. 'Get Album Artwork') - and it showed it in itunes so I figured it would show it on the Squeezebox Touch as well... Not sure if I should revert back to a prior version of the server software or not... Did you do anything 'special' to get your artwork to appear using a prior version of the server such as creating a 'cover.jpg' file in each directory/album? Or - did the prior version seem to handle things?

The other issues with the duplicate files is frustrating... I point it to a music directory - yet it still seems to search everything on my hard disc....

If I wanted to revert back... where do you get the prior version? grrrrrrr.....

 

[churchill]

Sorry Timm, I did forget a thread that I started; you have to embed the artwork, more info here:http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=87199

Here is a link to older release:http://downloads.slimdevices.com/SqueezeboxServer_v7.5.5/

 

[timm]

thanks a lot churchill.... I'll check into it... it looks like there seems to be a need to actually put a cover.jpg in the directory or something of that nature? I saw some folks talking about 'embedded artwork' as well... what a pain... I would have thought someone would have had all this figured out by now!! even I could program to look for a static naming convention within a directory structure!! If there is a setting to 'use itunes' on the server - I'm not exactly sure what that does then... I thought maybe it would help out with the artwork.... Then I figured maybe it had something to do with the path for the music...but - it doesn't seem to use it for that either since I give it my M:\lossless directory - yet it just finds EVERYTHING... including my kids screamo music!!

 

[papageno]

tagging

If you listen to a lot of classical music, then you will see that the tagging function of iTunes is miserable. A single composer will come up with 10 different variations of the same name. One software I have heard organizes iTunes well is TAGALICIOUS, available from the App store. Also you could organize by highlighting all tracks by one artist or composer and then changing the metadata (right click)..just have to be careful as all the metadata on all the highlighted tracks will change.

 

[timm]

just thought I would follow up... I have the 7.6.1 version of the server and here is what I did to solve the jpg issue for the album art.... and this seems to be the only thing that I could figure would fix it...

I put some 'cover.jpg' files in the directories of the albums by downloading them from amazon.... I went and the 'gizmo' wouldn't recognize the existence of the new files... so I tried 'refresh new files and changed files'... didn't work... so i then tried 'clear files and refresh all files'.... STILL didn't recognize the new files... so... to me in my computer experience.... this says 'cache'... I unplugged the touch from the power.... and plugged it back in after about 10 sec.... and BINGO.... all new cover.jpgs are seen etc....

So - it looks like the formula is :

1) - Put the cover.jpg in the directory.
2) - clear files and refresh all files
3) - cut power to Touch.
4) - restore power to Touch.

The logic behind this is - that we refresh the cache on the server software... and then force any cache on the Touch to refresh as well....

It just seems like cache does not refresh as it should - which is a typical in a lot of software applications... Just my 2 cents.... now if I can figure out how to get it to ignore some music I do not want - but need in mp3 version for our mini-mp3 players....

 

[gordonmenninger]

ok, this thread got kind of hijacked... Does anyone else want to share his/her idea on the best way to treat albums in itunes? I have just been putting them in different playlists so far but wondering if there is a better way???

 

[timm]

Hi Gordon. Sorry about that. I also just handle things via artist/album/ genre which is more or less the default way of handling things in itunes. But I am a rookie when it comes to this junk . I don't even use playlists ...