any techy people? a bit of help needed with music

mark4183

mark4183

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hello,

History; in the last year + i had an external portable hard drive go bust on me so i set up a Synology NAS at home and it works great. to save space on the mac i copied my itunes folder over to the NAS. all works great and plays through the logitech squeezebox server great (duet in lounge and boom in kitchen)

Fast forward some, i slowly got the feeling Apple were closing their doors again and my mac needed upgrading so i made the switch to windows and later changed my iphone to android.

Present; i transferred some of the music to Google Play. the rest is on the NAS in the itunes folder still and i have a box of CDs i keep meaning to rip. I have made the decision not to purchase anymore music from itunes, therefore all my new music will be bought and ripped. i am keeping my old iphone as a portable music player only though and i downloaded copytrans to help do this much better than itunes.

Questions:
What do i do with all my music in the itunes folder? change the name of the folder or keep adding to it?
Rip CDs with media player in mp3?
ignore the google play side of things?
the logitech units are dying and have pretty much been replaced with google home, can i play from synology?
and generally, i seem to have got myself in a muddle and just want it simplified and easy to use but couldnt see any light so any help or suggestions are welcome

Thanks
 
Spotify Pro? there isn't a lot of stuff I genuinely want to listen to that isn't on there.

Apart from all my Prince CDs, obvs.
 
Mark this is my arena , but on the move at the moment, let me put something together in the AM
 
Mr Bump said:
Mark this is my arena , but on the move at the moment, let me put something together in the AM
Click to expand...

Thanks, very much appreciated. today i have discovered my music is still on the laptop aswell as the NAS. I have also done a little bit of research and learnt i can download music brainz picard which will organise all my music. my plan was to organise everything on the laptop, delete the stuff on the NAS and move my music from laptop.... great stuff but still really not sure

then someone mentioned using EAC to rip my CDs and what am i using to playback the music... so... Something else slightly confused me today, base for playing the music... whether it be Media player or winamp etc.... im assuming (again) if its on the synology NAS I have to use the DS audio which is their built in

Then once its on the NAS, playing it through google home in kitchen and lounge or even home cinema in lounge for more umph

**screams**
 
Sorry mate forgot about you then.
ok sounds like on your NAS you will have some DLNA software running, you can read about it below.
but basically it makes your music or video available to compliant devices on your network, is suspect the Logitech is just hooking into that and hence you get your stuff.
I suspect it is also ok with your iTunes stuff and if you leave that as it is you should be fine.
there might be some setup on the NAS to select which folders are shared by it and that might give you a bit more idea on setup.

Ripping CDs with EAC is very good but it rips them into FLAC files which are mainly for use on high definition players
, FLAC is basically a winzip version of a CD where no quality is lost at all just a bit of space. The issue with FLAC files is the DLNA server might not like them as they are not supported on many devices over the air. You will be better ripping CDs to a lower but sill good format that your squeezers support like WMA 320bit that will provide a great quality.

http://www.techradar.com/news/digit...-what-it-is-and-what-you-need-to-know-1079015
 
mark4183 said:
thanks...

use windows media player to rip CDs? I started some the other night with FLAC and read they can easily be converted for mp3 for portable devices but now youre saying itll be best just to save mp3

I want to get shot of iTunes all together
Click to expand...

to be honest if you want to archive then save as FLAC that way down the line you have all the choices.
I have a Samsung tablet that is wired to some powered speakers in the kitchen and that has a "converted copy" of my flacs to WMA 25bps to save space and in the kitchen its still good quality.

personally I wouldn't use mp3 as a file standard its old and pretty rubbish, look at your devices and see what they support, you should be good with WMA it is much better and widely supported.


WMA file extension
A WMA file is an audio file saved in the Advanced Systems Format (ASF) proprietary format developed by Microsoft. It contains Windows Media Audio and metadata objects such as the title, artist, album, and genre of the track. WMA files are similar to .MP3 files and primarily used for streaming music from the web.
 
youre going to laugh at this one....

so.... sat at home and i decided to put my music through the brainz picard, mostly seemed to go ok with the help of youtube. then i deleted my itunes library from the NAS, no idea how or why but the library from my laptop disappeared at the same time. A bit (lot) of panic set in and searching for anyway possible to find it and get it back... eventually realising i had the organized folder saved separately.

i thought i was little tech minded but this is doing my head in, never got around to ripping any CDs
 
i thought i was little tech minded but this is doing my head in, never got around to ripping any CDs

I am not bothered about streaming music so players such as plex dont interest me and as mentioned before, i want to get away from Apple and itunes etc...

if im sounding stupid, its because ive got myself in a right pickle with it... its probably very easy and very simple
 
Why not keep itunes to manage the music on your computer? You dont need to buy from apple and you can still rip any cd's into iTunes. Seems the quickest and easiest way out of your pickle.
Get google music uploader and point that at your iTunes folder, that will get your music in the cloud and playable from your phone.
Presumably the music you have uploaded to google will be available to google home? i haven't used it so not sure.

It may have been much simpler to keep your old mac, get an airport express and connect to your hi-fi, and get iTunes match for when you are needing to play form your phone.

Re mp3 vs other formats, unless you have great ears and great equipment, mp3 is absolutely fine. every digital audio player will play it. you can also use iTunes match to upgrade it to 256 aac which is a more modern codec that will save space on your devices compared to the same quality audio in mp3 (or so i am told)
 
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