Who else dislikes iTunes?

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by vinyl13, Oct 23, 2015.

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  1. xj32

    xj32 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Racine, WI
    I guess I just do not understand the hatred of iTunes - would liking iTunes in an anti-iTunes thread be a threadcrap???

    I have a largely lossless ALAC iTunes library that is 4.5 terrabytes (mostly of my own cd rips and lots of Dead boots), and I never have issues with it or stumble across things it can't do that are show stoppers. I have probably 100+ playlists for most of my favorite artists, thinks like chronological studio, chronological live, outtakes and such. I have tried Media Monkey, and do use J-River Media Center for Mac only for my hi-rez library and yet no other media player I have found is as elegant and detailed as iTunes.

    I also don't get the fear/hatred of letting iTunes organize your files? It does it very logically by artist, then album and then numbered track names. You can choose how you want ANYTHING in iTunes to be tagged, and each of the artist/album folders is easily draggable onto other players from your hard drive. Also iTunes gets its info from CDDB just like Media Monkey, Media Center and others do.

    Now I will admit as I have before that I am very anal retentive with my collection and it is 100% organized my way. I split up box sets back into the original album releases, especially vintage jazz ones, I choose and imbed all of my own covers as I want the cover of the albums original issue and want my files to be imbedded in each track at no smaller than 800 x 800. I use the group tag for label so I can make smart playlists of labels. Again, I am not a casual simpleton iTunes user and I still cannot find a program on Mac that looks as good, is as detailed and smooth as iTunes. Media Center is close, but does not offer the view that I prefer. I keep my view in iTunes sorted by song which gives you the column browser and you can sort by artists, genre, and more all at the touch of a button and can sort by album by year rather than alphabetically. All of this with a nice large album cover on the left of each album.

    Anyway, I am not here to evangelize or convert anyone, just offer up discussion.
     
  2. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    iTunes desperately needs to be broken up into about 3 or 4 different programs instead of an "everything but the kitchen sink" program.
     
    Dr Jackson likes this.
  3. pathosdrama

    pathosdrama Forum Resident

    Location:
    Firenze, Italy
    I think people hate iTunes because we were used to very "light" music players. I remember Winamp, for example, to be a breeze.
    Now, it's pretty true that iTunes is horribly bloated, but to me is the only place I can properly order and store my files. I can't imagine any other program that allows to do this so easily.

    For sure, I'd separate Apple Music into a standalone app, but other than that I doubt Apple will ever tweak it, at least not significantly.
     
  4. xj32

    xj32 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Racine, WI
    Apple Music and the other features don't really get in my way in iTunes on my computer as you can turn them off or just not click on them...on my iPhone however Apple Music is annoying as all get out, and I do wish it was a separate app just like playing movies is in the iPhone.
     
  5. pathosdrama

    pathosdrama Forum Resident

    Location:
    Firenze, Italy
    This is why I'm on Spotify. That, and its social features.
     
  6. Opeth

    Opeth Forum Resident

    Location:
    NH
    I have never used apple products of any kind and never will. I was using open source programs like foobar before apple came back or anyone cared about them again. If I needed to use a linux based OS it would not be from a MAC that's for sure.
     
    autodidact likes this.
  7. roughdiamondnickel

    roughdiamondnickel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Phoenix, AZ
    I've been using Poweramp for years and with the new Alpha version with rewritten audio engine, it's even better. I can't stand iTunes interface.
     
    Dr Jackson likes this.
  8. Dr Jackson

    Dr Jackson Surgeon of Sound

    ITunes for Windows has been an abomination from day one. On Windows 7 and 10, I'm lucky if it even launches without freezing. Just a terrible piece of software. I'm sure it acts right on macs.

    It's sad because the functionality, when it works, is nice. Library and playlist management is OK, instant ripping on CD insertion is good, and backup of I devices is handy. Also the integrated SHOUTcast support (Internet radio for youngsters) is also cool. But on Windows, it's a bloated crashy mess.
     
    klockwerk likes this.
  9. Jerjo

    Jerjo Forum Resident

    The big "yeah, but" here is that you are using iTunes on a Mac. As stated by many of us, iTunes on a PC is a very different experience and a terrible piece of software.
     
    alchemy and Dr Jackson like this.
  10. OobuJoobu

    OobuJoobu Forum Resident

    Location:
    Yorkshire, UK
    I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I use iTunes on Windows and it never crashes on me or gets buggy, it just works :cry:
     
    ducksdeluxe and Stormrider77 like this.
  11. Caveman67

    Caveman67 Member


    Yea, iTunes really needs to up their sample and bit rate sizes. Everything they offer should, at minimum, be 16bit ALAC. Hard drive and memory space have gone way up over the years in capacity, along with cheap prices. iTunes is way behind. Granted, I've moved over to JRiver, and only use iTunes to purchase the off single song here or there.
     
    Andrew Smith likes this.
  12. xj32

    xj32 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Racine, WI
    Actually I have used iTunes cross platform for over a decade and up until 3-4 years ago my main music server was a custom built PC and I never had crashes or issues in iTunes other than it could be slow from time to time when editing.

    In fact I developed my work flow and knowledge of iTunes on PC.
     
    macdaddysinfo likes this.
  13. Chris Schoen

    Chris Schoen Rock 'n Roll !!!

    Location:
    Maryland, U.S.A.
    I use iTunes only as a music library (load cd music into/sync iPod). Works fine for this. Never have downloaded any music.
    My concern is that the music files that I have saved to my iTunes library can only be played through an Apple device.
    Is this correct?
     
  14. xj32

    xj32 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Racine, WI
    No all of apples formats AAC and ALAC are open source now and it's been years since MP3 players could not play those formats.
     
  15. Chris Schoen

    Chris Schoen Rock 'n Roll !!!

    Location:
    Maryland, U.S.A.
    Thanks. Not something I lose sleep over, but I do like knowing that the music on my backup drive can be played on other devices in the future.
    All of my 6, 000+ songs have been loaded from well mastered cds or cdr vinyl needle-drops. I would hate to have to do this manually all over again...
     
  16. billnunan

    billnunan Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    Same here. I'm not sure why folks are saying they have problems with it. ITunes has been working nicely for me on PCs for over a decade.

    I maintain my music library on both JRiver and on iTunes. I'm adding the JRiver library just for fun and to see if it offers anything beyond iTunes.

    I like being able to download a single song from the iTunes store when I just want one song from a CD. I've also downloaded a couple of albums from iTunes where the CD is outrageously priced. Very convenient.

    But, mostly, my very large CD library feeds my PC music libraries, and iTunes and JRiver provide a very convenient and fun way to access and organize my favorite music files. All lossless and just great sound through my DAC, Amp., and Sennheisers.

    My music hobby has never been more fun or easier.
     
    OobuJoobu likes this.
  17. alchemy

    alchemy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sterling, VA
    So is this PC server iTunes cross platform for music only?
     
  18. mindgames

    mindgames Forum Resident

    Location:
    -
    Can't live without it, my whole listening habit is based on its structure. It's the only way how I can listen to so much new music and still not leave the golden oldies behind. When I still used Windows 10 years ago the memory leaks were a pain, but I have never experienced those problems on Mac.

    I do acknowledge the major mess-ups during each new version, up until the hidden "duplicates" and "encode/transcode"-feature in the very last version from last week. The absolutely butchered tag-feature ("Get Info") a while ago which they quickly had to revert to how it was, was the low point in that.
     
  19. alchemy

    alchemy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sterling, VA
    Is your PC used for music only?
     
  20. billnunan

    billnunan Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    90%, I do a little internet surfing while listening, and a few EXCEL files for budgeting, tracking stuff.
     
  21. motownboy

    motownboy Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington State
    iTunes is software made for the masses - the more casual music listener - and is not intended or designed for the more serious music lover.
     
    klockwerk likes this.
  22. Vinylfindco

    Vinylfindco The Pressing Matters

    Location:
    Miami
    By the way you could get JRiver and all your rips will show up there. The only thing is you'll probably want to re rip into FLAC.
     
  23. Davmoco

    Davmoco Forum Resident

    Location:
    Morrison, CO, USA
    I have a hate/love relationship with iTunes.

    I use it all of the time and like the convenience of having a good portion of my collection at my fingertips. I currently have more than 60,000 songs in my iTunes account which I imagine is more than most people, but I imagine that hundreds of Hoffman Forumererers have much larger iTune accounts than me. I spend hours each week 'gardening' my account. I like having the organization abilities it offers me.

    That said, I've experienced crashes more than once, and ended up having to reload everything each time. These were caused by user error - I'm in no way a computer expert. Since connecting my collection to iCloud, I've not been pleased with the way content has been mysteriously disappearing recently, and that's on Apple. Sometimes it doesn't recognize albums I try to download even though the same albums are available for purchase from the stores. It frequently changes album art to totally unrelated to the album in my account. The ability to store and sort data is not as user friendly as it was in the past.

    But it sure is nice to listen anything I want from my collection through my phone when I'm in the middle of nowhere. I live in the West, and there's a lot of areas where if you can get radio at all, the stations suck. Why bother with paying for satellite when I've got better music already?

    There's much to like and much to not like, but it's what I got.
     
  24. xj32

    xj32 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Racine, WI
    No it was the same PC I used for internet and such. It was my ex studio recording computer until I switched all to Macs which I did simply because my studio switched to Apogee converters from Lynx.
     
  25. segue

    segue Psychoacoustic Member

    Location:
    Hawai'i
    d'oh
     
    Last edited: May 22, 2016
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