Dreaded Itunes/music song cutoff - Alternatives for iTunes?

[Jajh]

Hi Team,

So my library of 47k songs has hit the dreaded "song cutting off early" blight that seems to effects some of us over the last few years.

I know there are various fixes to this but this is the 2nd time its happened and I really don't want to start from scratch by deleting and re-importing my whole library!

Apparently the issue is with importing songs at 320kbps but I like to keep my music high res.

My questions is either:

1) Can anyone recommend an alternative to storing my music in iTunes/music
or
2) has anyone fixed this easily and so that it doesn't continue to happen?

Wish apple would just fix it :-(

 

[Jajh]

I should also mention that I am looking for an alternative to manage and organise my library not just a music player

 

[allan.nyholm]

I think that there's really only Swinsian

and perhaps a bit of an outlier called Dopamine expand the Assets arrow for viewing all the files.
Direct link to the Preview 7 that works on a Mac

I am fond of Dopamine when on Windows and it appears that the author has moved his version 3 over to all desktop platforms such as the Mac, Linux and Windows of course too.

The author originally posted his work on Neowin thread on Neowin Forums - a tech site that focuses mostly on Windows and PCs. But other things too.

 

[HDFan]

So my library of 47k songs has hit the dreaded "song cutting off early" blight

What is that?

Can anyone recommend an alternative to storing my music in iTunes/music

The Rolls Royce of music catalogue programs is Roon which has a Rolls Royce price.

 

[Jajh]

So basically iTunes/music has an issue with importing 320kbps music and when playing back tracks it can cut off the last 25 seconds of each track or skip them half way through.

There have been many issues over the last 6 years which apple have not addressed. The only work around is to delete your music and re-add it which messes up the playlists, meta data, play counts etc.

Apparently the only way to avoid it is to add new tracks singularly which is a pain when you have a discography to add.

 

[HDFan]

iTunes/music has an issue with importing 320kbps music

Importing from where? Which codec?

Apparently the issue is with importing songs at 320kbps but I like to keep my music high res.

If you want the best resolution, and the source is CD or better quality (800 Kbps or higher) then you just import in apple lossless.

 

[verm]

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but I'm looking for an alternative to Apple Music after upgrading to Catalina and losing iTunes. I will be moving to Apple Silicon soon so I want to "future proof" time spent on organising my library with a new music management program... Does anyone know if Swinsian or Quod Libet are compatible with Apple SOCs / M1 chips? I can't seem to find any info online. Thanks in advance!

 

[HDFan]

The Ferrari of Music problems is the very expensive Roon.

 

[verm]

The Ferrari of Music problems is the very expensive Roon.

I like the look of Roon, but I'm quite fed up with subscriptions... So I went for Swinsian. Very happy with it, it seems much smarter than iTunes and way less clunky. I already paid for a licence after I found out it can be run on Apple Silicon this afternoon! Edit: I tried Quod Libet first but it was a bit buggy on my 2012 MBA on Catalina.

 

[phrehdd]

I like the look of Roon, but I'm quite fed up with subscriptions... So I went for Swinsian. Very happy with it, it seems much smarter than iTunes and way less clunky. I already paid for a licence after I found out it can be run on Apple Silicon this afternoon! Edit: I tried Quod Libet first but it was a bit buggy on my 2012 MBA on Catalina.

While you may have opted for Swinsian, if you have some time to play, check out a trial of JRiver.com 's Media Center. I would be curious to know your opinion of this vs Swinsian. For music they seem a bit similar.

 

[allan.nyholm]

While you may have opted for Swinsian, if you have some time to play, check out a trial of JRiver.com 's Media Center. I would be curious to know your opinion of this vs Swinsian. For music they seem a bit similar.

JRiver Media looks OK with its skins - I don't like that it doesn't have an overall Mac feel as the menus in the supposed menu bar are some sort of hybrid.

It's the first music player available for macOS Monterey that has any skin/theme support like this has.

It's at times heavy to navigate - too many unfamiliar terms and settings. I do like that there's live manipulation of pitch and tempo of music. It was quite fun to play around with.

It's not a player that I'll continue to use unless I can see a way to help out getting skins to be less crude looking. Like the corners on the player window.

PixOS returns to macOS in JRiver Media Player 29. What a sight to behold. Loved using this system theme on Windows way back when.

Thank you for leading me to their website - I don't think I would have gone there if I wasn't suggested it as part of this conversation.

I hope the Z theme doesn't stand for Victory in a Russian sense. I might just boycut all the things.

 

[arw]

The only work around is to delete your music and re-add it which messes up the playlists, meta data, play counts etc.

Just a recommendation IF you should use iTunes again: If you use smart playlists and properly tag your music, you can store everything in the files themselves. This way you can also “sync“ different iTunes libraries by simply refreshing the metadata from the same source files.
A.e. my ratings or playlist-“flags“ are saved in the comments field and therefore in-file.
With AppleScripts this can be automated and refined.
The only thing not possible to modify is the “added date“ but even play counts can be ex-/imported.

 

[phrehdd]

JRiver Media looks OK with its skins - I don't like that it doesn't have an overall Mac feel as the menus in the supposed menu bar are some sort of hybrid.

It's the first music player available for macOS Monterey that has any skin/theme support like this has.

It's at times heavy to navigate - too many unfamiliar terms and settings. I do like that there's live manipulation of pitch and tempo of music. It was quite fun to play around with.

It's not a player that I'll continue to use unless I can see a way to help out getting skins to be less crude looking. Like the corners on the player window.

PixOS returns to macOS in JRiver Media Player 29. What a sight to behold. Loved using this system theme on Windows way back when.

Thank you for leading me to their website - I don't think I would have gone there if I wasn't suggested it as part of this conversation.

I hope the Z theme doesn't stand for Victory in a Russian sense. I might just boycut all the things.
View attachment 2047980

I hadn't used it for a long while now but decided to give it a go today for fun. It is much as you say. One thing interesting was that it does play 5 channel music files. I had some by chance and it was also capable of a very good play back in stereo mode (I was using Peachtree M24 speakers which have 'reasonable sound' from up close).

I wanted to test out the movie playback from NAS but ran into a problem that likely is something I missed in set up. It was originally meant to be a complete solution and not just music files.

To be fair, when iTunes had its "jukebox" (?) feature, that is when iTunes was easy to use and worked reasonably well. Today the Music app is well...not "Mac cool" if that makes sense.

 

[Analog Kid]

I like the look of Roon, but I'm quite fed up with subscriptions... So I went for Swinsian. Very happy with it, it seems much smarter than iTunes and way less clunky. I already paid for a licence after I found out it can be run on Apple Silicon this afternoon! Edit: I tried Quod Libet first but it was a bit buggy on my 2012 MBA on Catalina.

How does Swinsian handle sync'ing with iPhone and streaming to HomePod? Or would I be doomed to keeping two libraries?

 

[rhett7660]

I have moved on from iTunes and now exclusively use Plex to manage my music and I haven't looked back. There is some setup and a few items that you will want to put in place such as setting up the server software on your device and then making sure you can reach it from outside your network. Depending on your setup, could be a challenge.

The ability to do dynamic playlists was a game changer for me along with just being able to throw anything at it, almost any format, and it just worked and played my files without issue. Not to mention, I was able to have it on multiple devices across multiple platforms.

I also use it manage my digital movies, but the big piece of it is the music part. Also, it is free!!!!! Once you start using and you want to move to some of the more advanced features, you can wait for the lifetime membership to go on sale and purchase that, but it is pretty much free. Used it for years without issue.