iPhone/iPod touch users - if you could change something about the Music app, what would it be?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by paulisme, Dec 18, 2014.

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  1. Master_It_Right

    Master_It_Right Forum Resident

    I do enjoy some of their Mastered For iTunes offerings. But come on, it's almost 2015. Where are the Apple Lossless downloads? If Apple isn't going to do that, I really wish Amazon or Google Play would upgrade to at least CD-quality FLAC files. Then again, I guess I can't complain either because I'm sure they'd charge and arm and a leg for it because it's higher quality.

    I do like my iPod Touch, but it's pretty much been relegated to free streaming apps that I listen to while gaming. I use that as opposed to my iPhone so that I don't accidentally go on my 4G while streaming and use a ton of data.

    And I really really love that FiiO X1 I bought awhile ago. $99 was an excellent price for what I got imo. It sounds a lot better than my iPod. I don't think it measures up to some of the higher end players like the X3, X5 or some of the A&K players but I like that they made it so affordable. I think if my dad's iPod Classic ever bites the dust, I'm going to get him one (hopefully by that time, microSD cards will be > 128GB). Then all I have to do is show him how to use Sandisk Media Manager to sync music to the SD card and how to refresh the library.
     
  2. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    Yeah, that would be nice. I'm having some kind of problem between the vehicle & the iPhone, and I guess it loses the play queue
     
  3. numanoid

    numanoid Forum Resident

    Location:
    Valparaiso, IN
    I don't think that's quite the case. I'm sure they'd love for you to buy all of your music from them, but I don't think that their decision not to include boutique formats like Ogg Vorbis isn't pushing anyone into buying from them instead.

    To nearly all consumers, MP3 is the standard. iPod supports MP3. AAC was supposed to replace mp3 and is a better encoding scheme. This is Apple's default, and they support it. They don't support FLAC because ALAC is almost the exact same thing, and takes seconds to decode/re-encode if you like. Should they include all of those lossless file formats from the mid 2000's as well? Like *.shn, *.ape, etc? They support the most common formats, and for the 0.01% of users who are bummed out because of the lack of Ogg Vorbis support, well, I'm pretty sure you're not their target market. Hell, even I have never used Ogg Vorbis and I consider myself an audio nerd.

    Believe me, if they wanted to lock you into buying from them, they would have done it. And if they tried, no one would buy iPods or iPhones. Remember when they used DRM and how successful and long lived that was?
     
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  4. numanoid

    numanoid Forum Resident

    Location:
    Valparaiso, IN
    While we are on the subject, why is everyone clamoring for FLAC support? I could understand if Apple didn't have a lossless format, but they do and it's nearly identical, in fact some say it's reverse engineered from FLAC encoding. I have plenty of FLAC files, and it takes seconds to convert to ALAC. You can even use scripts to drag a FLAC to you iPhone and convert them to ALAC on the fly, so you can keep your FLAC library intact and not have duplicates. If this were truly crippling I could see it being upsetting. But they are virtually identical, in fact, ALAC may be slightly better. My ALAC files tend to be just a bit smaller in size, usually about 0.1 or 0.2mb, but still...

    As far as the player itself, it seems like most of you had the same issues that I did. The album by year sorting was backwards, the idea that you had to scroll through a list of songs for each album within an artist rather than just a list of albums was silly. But I've found that the app Picky fixes all of these problems. It lets you sort albums by year, shows a list of albums rather than all of the songs in the album, you can shuffle albums or songs, and it shows album artwork for the artist rather than some lame promo picture that Apple picks. I always hated that. It doesn't add anything groundbreaking, it basically fixes all of the stupid flaws in the built in app.

    It's called Picky. Costs a buck. No affiliation.
     
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  5. paulisme

    paulisme I’m being sarcastic Thread Starter

    Location:
    Charleston SC
    Thanks for the info on Picky. I just purchased it and it looks like it does address some of the problems that prompted me to write my own app. However there are still some key differences I think will make mine stand out. Thanks for the tip. It makes me confident that there is demand for an app like mine.
     
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  6. charlie W

    charlie W EMA Level 10

    Location:
    Area Code 254
    I hate the Music app. So I use the alternative Groove app which fixes most of my complaints. Still, I wish I could delete tracks inside the app and choose to randomize my tracks by albums.
     
  7. floweringtoilet

    floweringtoilet Forum Resident

    Location:
    Warren, RI, USA
    The app "Picky" incorporates some good ideas. Including a filter that lets you set a threshold for how many songs an artist must have loaded before they show up under "artists." It had a few bugs that made it less than optimal.

    The thing I like least about the itunes app is that when you turn the ipod sideways it shows you thumbnails of all the albums in your library. I often accidentally select a different album. Annoying!
     
  8. superstar19

    superstar19 Authentic By Nature

    Location:
    Canton, MI, USA
    This is a pretty cool app. I'm liking it. Still looking for the iPod Classic Shuffle Albums playback option, but not a big deal.
     
    numanoid likes this.
  9. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    "Sort album by Bit/Sample Rate" So my higher sampled albums would separate themselves from the pack.
     
  10. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    The answer is simple: Torrent downloads. However no one wants to admit this.
     
  11. Galley

    Galley Forum Resident

    Groove is a fantastic app, but it doesn't allow you to browse by Album Artist, only Artist. That's a deal breaker if you have numerous compilations in your library.
     
  12. drahffir

    drahffir Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hartsville
    For me, any alternative to the native app needs to update play counts so my smart playlists refresh with tracks I haven't just heard. I'd love to have that in CanOpener.
     
  13. Galley

    Galley Forum Resident

    AFAIK, any app that has an EQ function does not update play counts due to a limitation in the API. Notice that any tracks queued up in these apps will not be queued in Music.app.
     
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