I screwed up my iTunes, YAY.

[The_Hawk]

iTunes sucks so I try not to use it, only for transferring music (not to organise or play it). Such a waste of time.

Some people seems to love it, some seem to hate it, although in some cases it's just a hatred for everything Apple for no apparent reason that clouds the judgement, my brother in law refuses to look at an iPhone for the blatent hatred thing

I used to manually manage all my music keeping it neatly stored in correctly named folders, a common naming convention and all that, used to clean up files before moving them to the library...

..then one day I just tried hitting the "let iTunes manage my music" button... (as well as the consolidate library button). Everything was moved to the iTunes folder, everything was organised (very similar to the way I was doing things anyway) and it did just work.

Using an iPhone (and a bunch of other iPods across the family) I don't have many options, but I gotta say iTunes is the best music management software available, again it's fair to say there isn't alot else out there that works very well, but still I think iTunes works damn well.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to convert anyone, if you don't like it and you have an alternative system that works for you, more power to you, but for me iTunes passes the Mum test, by which I mean I'd be happy installing it on my Mum's computer knowing she'd be fine using it.

[cram]

Thanks for all the info guys - I have a similar issue.

[G-rig]

Yeah, itunes is fairly idiot proof, it's just a few small things that annoy me like if I add album art or change some info it doesn't update on the player (maybe it does if you let itunes manage/sync it). I have never understood the mentality of getting the player to match everything that's in itunes, as it simply doesn't fit on once you got a decent library.

Also stumps me why some albums get separated when all the info appears to be the same. I agree with keeping the ID3 tags sorted before importing, as i use a different ripper, and saves a few headaches later.

The process is a bit more cumbersome as I use another audio type (FLAC) and have been converting that to Apple Lossless, mp3 import is dead simple though. Started using that ages ago before having an ipod/iphone and itunes for windows doesn't sound as good as on a mac, as windows kmixer stuffs around with the sound (and i use Foobar otherwise).

[maca]

It would be so much more simple if everytime you added a song to iTunes, the song was automatically added to a special iTunes only folder. So even if you mess with the original source of the song (in my case; moving everything from C to D drives), it doesn't mess up the iTunes library

[G-rig]

It would be so much more simple if everytime you added a song to iTunes, the song was automatically added to a special iTunes only folder. So even if you mess with the original source of the song (in my case; moving everything from C to D drives), it doesn't mess up the iTunes library

I got nfi where itunes keeps its library, but hopefully it isn't duplicating the files as I don't personally trust it and keep my own directories where i know where the albums are. That way you can just import them again later, but i don't have any bought songs etc.

[The_Hawk]

I used to have all the files stored on a server, iTunes would just point to where they were, so no duplicates.

NOW, I have iTunes set to auto copy everything it opens into "a special iTunes folder" so it's all stored in one place (on a laptop that isn't always connected to the network). I also manually store it on the network sorted/names etc like I want. (although I haven't needed to go back to any of those files yet).

As for iTunes slitting albums for no reason, it's usually a small anomaly in the ID3 tag, normally something around the artist or album artist fields. If you select all the songs in an album and hit "get info", then in the options you set "is part of a compilation" to yes.

[maca]

FML. It turns out that depsite restoring all the songs I soft deleted from my recycle bin, some of them have been completely wiped from my hard drive! So cut right now...

I'm thinking of buying an external HD, transferring my photos and whatever's left of my songs and reformatting my computer. That way at least I'll have the performance to compensate losing my music

[G-rig]

FML. It turns out that depsite restoring all the songs I soft deleted from my recycle bin, some of them have been completely wiped from my hard drive! So cut right now...

I'm thinking of buying an external HD, transferring my photos and whatever's left of my songs and reformatting my computer. That way at least I'll have the performance to compensate losing my music

That's why i don't like iTunes, can stuff your whole library with a click of a button.

External hard drives are great as a backup, I have a few and have a master copy of my lossless albums, dont bother backing up the converted ones as i can do that again with dBpowerAMP music converter. Perhaps have a look at the Vantec Nextstar3 external caddys, nice quality and pretty straight forward.

[maca]

That's why i don't like iTunes, can stuff your whole library with a click of a button.

External hard drives are great as a backup, I have a few and have a master copy of my lossless albums, dont bother backing up the converted ones as i can do that again with dBpowerAMP music converter. Perhaps have a look at the Vantec Nextstar3 external caddys, nice quality and pretty straight forward.

Ok thanks mate, I'll check it out.

Will defs be doing things differently once I've formatted the HDD.