Apple iTunes pros and cons discussion

I use iTunes to manage my ripped library of music, and AppleTv to access it..

Works for me...
(Though I'm mainly a vinyl guy )

 

Yes I do arrange them like that, but the changed made are in the library only. iTunes does not seem to update the files, so any time you need to import them again, you have to go through the process again. Even more aggravating, after i tag them properly in iFlicks, they go right back into iTunes as Home movies. This can be a PITA especially for TV shows where you may be importing dozens of episodes. It seems to handle Movies fine, but TV and Music Videos not so much.

 

I must have screwed up something in my iTunes library because I got sick and tired of songs disappearing and duplicates. So exported everything and now iTunes never gets used on my computers. Audirvana kills it anyway.

 

My main problem with iTunes is the fact that it's sluggish and unresponsive - this is what I understand the "software bloat" to mean anyway. It seems like more and more features were added to the point where it's very unoptimized and doesn't run as responsively or fluidly as it used to in previous versions. I'm guessing the code is an absolute mess.


The other problem is lack of FLAC support



Otherwise I find the interface well designed and pretty intuitive to use, I wouldn't at all mind using it as a manager for my music library. If it were compatible with any of the files in my music library anyway.

 

Not sure what you mean about sluggish and responsive ?

I have a huge library and I can search for specific songs or albums quickly. My songs cross fade and everything happens as needed. I never wait nor are there delays during playback.

 

Maybe someone should talk to this guy:

 

Just clicking things and trying to navigate or do basic functions seems like a chore. Maybe it's just my ancient PC, but older versions of iTunes ran fine. It wasn't until iTunes was responsible for more and more functionality that it became difficult to work with, and my PC was not so relatively ancient when I began to notice this decline in performance.

 

Yeah that's not good. On newer up to date macs that's not an issue. Works fast.

 

LOL that's an "easy" fix?

That's a huge pain in the ass. Why do I have to do that? All my handbraked movies are tagged with titles, most years, and art. I have to do that for all my hundreds of movies that show up perfectly in regular folders? I'm fine just having folders, but the fact that iTunes makes me go through the rigamarole you describe above for every single movie is a completely typical anecdote of how the whole program works. It is FULL of crappy UI stuff like that.

 

Does UI stand for un-intuitive?

 

No,user interface, but in Apple's case unintuitive is often the case.

 

My main beef now seems to be with Apple music. I enjoyed being able to sync my phone with itunes via cable and be able to manually add and delete tracks and I seem to now only be able to do this via wifi.

I do love the organizational power itunes gives me but this is becoming a major sticking point for me. Anyone have any luck with this seemingly unseamless task? It does seem counterintuitive to me.

 

That's certainly good news. It's not (or shouldn't be) a very processor intensive application so I never understood why it gradually stopped running as well as I know it should, but I plan on building a new PC soon™, so fingers crossed it will behave better on that new system.

 

If that's too much trouble for you, use Plex instead. iTunes is more geared towards videos purchased through their store.

 

I moved to using CopyTrans Manager to load my iPod Touch. iTunes was too problematic and slow for me. I usually make purchases on 7Digital US or Google Play now.

 

I find it interesting when people who use J River Media Center call ITunes unintuitive. J River is the most unintuitive piece of software I've used since the DOS days. Bloated, unintuitive and a poorly set up help file both online and in the app. Ugh! ITunes pisses me off because of it's need to have a database that has corruption issues instead of just looking at the files.

 

Biggest issue with iTunes is how bloated it has gotten. It's gone way beyond a simple music manager (it was a very good one when it did only that) and gotten too slow and bloated up. And this issue is on both platforms.

 

I use iTunes all the time, the latest version on windows 10 for just my ripped music. I'm constantly signed out, I've unchecked everything except Music and Books (I love me some audiobooks!) and now it's neither bloated nor slow for me. I love the play counts, the playlists and the gapless playback. Works for me...

 

I can't wait until MusicBee can start working with iOS. I like MusicBee's software much more than iTunes.

I also highly recommend CopyTrans Manager for those currently using iTunes. The music-syncing part of it is free.

 

What is MusicBee and JRiver? I mean, the name JRiver sounds familiar, but actually do not know what it does.

 

Interesting. So better than Spotify 320 and Tidal lossless?

 

Definitely better than Tidal lossless which I have a current subscription for. I also have Amarra 4 Luxe with Tidal integration yet iTunes with Amarra sQ+ running as the audio engine beats the Luxe version. Many people tell this is not possible because Tidal is lossless, only your ears can tell you what sounds better to you. I think 256k AAC is better than 320k MP3 in terms of SQ.

 

JRiver Media Center

MusicBee - The Ultimate Music Manager and Player

 

Thanks very much.

 

I'm really digging MusicBee right now. What's nice about the application is that it has Icecast and SomaFM.