Messages

16

Beyond MusicBee / Re: No more iTunes app in Microsoft store

« on: March 24, 2022, 09:11:14 PM »

OK. I signed up as a fan with bandcamp. Now, how do I find the music I am looking for? Their search engine doesn't seem to work the way I would expect.
for example, I enter 'Journey' into the search box at the top of the page, but the results are just about everything except the Rock band Journey. Is it that Bandcamp doesn't have any tracks/albums by this artist, or am I doing something wrong?
I turned off my ad-blocker in Firefox, but that didn't help.
Also, when I try to confirm my e-mail, I don't see anything in my Gmail inbox, spam, or trash.

17

Beyond MusicBee / Re: No more iTunes app in Microsoft store

« on: March 24, 2022, 08:42:47 PM »

Thanks guys;
Interesting thing: This morning - just after I posted here, I did a Google search for 'iTunes for Windows', and found the link here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210384. The file 'iTunes64Setup.exe is for ver 12.11.3.17.
When I installed it on Windows 11 and opened the app, there was an update available, so I installed it. The update version is 12.12.3.5 - the same version I have on Windows 10.
I could not locate the setup file on my system, which wasn't surprising, as I had updated from within the app.

Now I have downloaded the file from the link provided by sveakul, and it is ver 12.12.3.5. Very confusing. One Apple site has a newer version than another?
When I went to the MS store in Windows 10, and entered 'itunes' into the search bar, it did come up with iTunes, but instead of the 'get' button, there was the 'open' button - since I already had the app installed.
When I switched to Win 11, I never even bothered to try the MS store; I just installed the (older) version I had found previously - and then ran the update.

So I may have reacted a bit too quickly on reading that iTunes was no longer available on the Windows store.
Now I have both versions saved to a backup drive, but I wonder how long Apple will allow music to be purchased and downloaded if they are trying to migrate to a streaming service (Apple Music?) exclusively.
I would rather not be at Apple's or Microsoft's mercy, so I will indeed check out bandcamp. I have tried Amazon, but I was not satisfied with the quality. That said, I would love to try some 24-bit  96KHz on my system to experiment with the quality.
I play music from MusicBee through a Schiit Modius DAC into a Schiit Magnius amp with Senn HD600 cans using balanced config. But I'm not so young anymore, so I kind of doubt I would be able to hear the difference between 16/44 and 24/96.
I have the same music on my Galaxy A51 (Android 11) phone and use HiFiMAN Deva Pro with their 'Bluemini' DAC/amp over BT LDAC when at home, but use a much less capable JBL/UA Train Wireless for running.

18

Beyond MusicBee / No more iTunes app in Microsoft store

« on: March 24, 2022, 06:07:09 PM »

Hey all;
I have always purchased my music - mostly from iTunes, but I also own about 100 CD's which I have ripped to .flac and store on my computer's SSD while keeping dual backups (both located off the computer), so I think my music files are well protected.
I use MusicBee to play tracks on my Windows PC, and PowerAmp on my Android phone.
However, I am still buying new tracks - mainly on iTunes, which I have installed on Windows 10.
Since Microsoft has removed iTunes from the MS store, I am concerned that I won't be able to re-install iTunes if my system crashes.

Are there other music services that will allow me to purchase single Rock & Roll tracks (as well as albums)?
I have purchased a few tracks from 7Digital and maybe HDTracks, but there don't seem to be many places where one can still purchase music for download - rather than streaming.
While I could switch to a streaming service, such as Spotify, I don't see the point in paying $10/month for songs I already own. In addition, I use Tracfone, so I don't have unlimited data. I could download tracks from Spotify to my phone to play without streaming, but I would really rather keep my own music library on my computer.

So, should I just buy all the tracks I think I will ever want from iTunes right now, or is there some other place I can find the variety of tracks that is currently available through iTunes?
Of course I could probably find used (or new) CD's on Ebay, but if I only want one or two tracks, the CD's will cost a lot more than the $1.29/track I pay on iTunes.

Thanks for your help
Ultrarunner

19

Beyond MusicBee / Re: Joe Walsh song with collect phone call from Joe Vitale?

« on: March 24, 2022, 12:42:49 PM »

Thanks for the 'heads up' on the tracks. I normally don't purchase entire albums, so yes, I will purchase 'Bamboo Jungle' as well, and create a medley of the two tracks, so they will always play together in the proper order.
I had never heard the entire phone conversation between the two Joe's before listening to 'Lady on the Rock' in its entirety. I think that when the song was played on the radio, the DJ would always start another record before the previous one ended.

20

Beyond MusicBee / Re: Joe Walsh song with collect phone call from Joe Vitale?

« on: March 23, 2022, 03:24:22 PM »

Thanks very much!
I just purchased the song on iTunes, and now shopping for more Joe Vitale tracks!

Funny that I didn't find the song through any of my Google searches. I did search Joe Vitale as well as Joe Walsh. I even searched for relevant phrases describing the song without specifying an artist, yet Google failed miserably to land me in the right spot. I guess their algorithms aren't perfect - yet.

21

Beyond MusicBee / Joe Walsh song with collect phone call from Joe Vitale?

« on: March 23, 2022, 01:32:07 PM »

Hey guys;
I have been racking my brain trying to find the Joe Walsh song in which you hear a phone ringing, and Joe Walsh picking it up to receive a collect call from Joe Vitale. The operator asks Joe whether he is Joe Walsh, and he replies 'I think so', to which the operator replies 'Sir, you should know something like this'.
Perhaps it was the other way around, and it was Joe Vitale who receives the call from Joe Walsh, but I seem to recall it with Joe Walsh receiving the call. I believe it's at the end of the song.
I thought the song was 'Life's Been Good', but cannot find a version that contains this 'break'. I do have the version of the song with the Wah Wah's at the end though...
Perhaps it's not even a Joe Walsh track; could it be the Eagles?

I don't have much Joe Walsh in my music library, which is all purchased (not streaming), but I plan to fix that problem today.
This will be on my mind until I find the song, so I would really appreciate some help.
Thanks
Ultrarunner

22

Questions / Re: Trouble with tags

« on: November 15, 2021, 01:44:05 AM »

The problem I was having where some files appeared to be ignored when scanning was caused by my having set a filter.
I filtered the Music tab by genre, setting to 'Classical'.
Some of my files had their genre tags left null. So when selected 'all Composers' in the navigation pane, then selected all files in the 'Classical' file listing, those files which had the null genre tags were not being included in the 'Send to > File Rescan' command.
The solution is of course to set all of the genre tags to whatever the genre is, but if I want to list all files in MusicBee regardless of whether they have a genre tag or not, I need to turn off the filter.

23

Questions / Re: Add silence between some 'albums' but not others

« on: November 13, 2021, 04:01:37 AM »

Update:
I just realized that I had the option 'Remove silence at start and end of each track' ticked. I have un-ticked it. This should solve my problem, since there is normally enough silence at the end of a Classical piece as ripped from the CD.
Sometimes it's difficult to see what is and what is not ticked.

24

Questions / Add silence between some 'albums' but not others

« on: November 13, 2021, 03:29:40 AM »

Hello;
I have both Rock and Classical in my MusicBee library. I select the genre I want to listen to using filters.
For Rock tracks, I rarely listen to an entire album, and prefer no silence between tracks. Matter of fact I use crossfading.
However, for Classical pieces, I don't want any crossfading - and have the 'do not crossfade' option ticked for these tracks.
I also prefer to add some silence (about 5 seconds) between pieces (works).
I see there is an option in Preferences > Player to add silence to end of each track, but ticking this box would add silence to Rock tracks - which I do not want.
I could add the silence to the end of the last movement of each Classical piece manually using my DAW (Reaper) but that would be time consuming.

Any ideas?
Thanks
Ultrarunner

25

Questions / Re: Trouble with tags

« on: November 06, 2021, 04:30:45 PM »

Thanks for the advice; it is well taken. I have been reading the Wiki, but probably not as much as I should. Sometimes I learn best by trying (and failing) to figure things out. Click this or that and see what happens.
Phred; I agree with your suggestion to test with a couple of files. Besides that, I am creating regular backups of my MB config files.
At this point, I have Classical and Rock music in separate folders on my SSD, but keep them all in the same library in MB, and using filters to sort them out.
Before this, I was trying to keep two separate MusicBee libraries. It was making my life more complicated than it needs to be.

An interesting note about file names:
Do you recall when I said that MB wasn't reading some of the tags? Well, I think I was mistaken; it was the FILES that MB wasn't reading.
For some mysterious reason, MB would refuse to read the contents of certain folders in my music library.
I tried File > Scan Folders for New Files, and Send To > File Rescan but those tracks would not appear anywhere in MB.
I disabled all filters, so even if the files were mis-tagged, I should have seen them, but that was not happening.

Finally, last evening I figured it out. Here's what I found (with examples)
The files in a folder 'Classical \ Beethoven \ Symphony #8_Cleveland" were not being read by MB.
I tried changing the name of the folder, thinking that MB didn't like that I used an underscore in the name (even though it is a perfectly legal folder name in Windows). That did not help.
Then I started looking at the file names in that folder. The following files were located in the suspect folder:

05 Symphony No. 8 in F major Op. 93-i.flac
06 Symphony No. 8 in F major Op. 93-ii.flac

There were  two more files in the folder, but they have the same naming scheme so no need to list them.
I suspect the file names were created by EAC when I ripped the CD.
So I thought perhaps the combination of the dash  and the letters -ii.flac immediately before the .flac extension might be causing the problem.
I removed the dash from the file names and replaced it with a space.
Now I did a Scan Folders for New Files, then a Send to > File Rescan.
The missing tracks suddenly appeared in the main window of MB.
Since I had already set the tags in Tag & Rename, the new tracks were properly organized.

This has led me to ask what other file names does MB not like?
I am going to do some experimentation with this over the next couple of days, but in the meantime, perhaps I will find the answer in the Wiki, or someone will post it in reply to this thread.

This can all get very frustrating when all I'm trying to do is organize my music library.
At one point, I gave up on MusicBee and installed MediaMonkey. I didn't take a close look at the listing in MM, so I don't know whether it read all of the files and tags.
In any case, I didn't like MM as much as I do MB. Partly because I have been using MB for some time, and also because I do like MB's UI better than MM.
I think that MB is far more 'configurable' than any other music management software, and that is the reason it has a steeper learning curve.
If I had wanted simple and maintenance free (at any cost) I would have kept my sub with Spotify and left my own music library in archives. But I like having control over my music library.
In addition, I don't have an unlimited data plan on my Android phone, so I would have needed to download music to the Spotify app on the phone.
But probably what made me leave Spotify (after a free trial and a couple months paid) was that I found myself listening to the same music I already owned on my SSD.
What is the point in paying $10/mo to listen to tracks you have already paid for and spent the time ripping to PC and/or phone.
And then there's the quality issue. Although I was streaming at the highest quality Spotify allowed (I think 320Kbps), it did not sound as good as what I played from the files on my PC.

Perhaps it might be worthwhile to sign up with Spotify (or another streaming service) for the sole purpose of searching for new music I want to purchase.
While I could use iTunes for free, it will only play a short cut of any track.
Of course there's YouTube, but it's not as convenient as Spotify or iTunes.

OK. I think I've said enough for one post. Thanks for reading.
Ultrarunner

26

Questions / Re: Trouble with tags

« on: November 06, 2021, 12:12:23 AM »

I think I'm finally getting the hang of MB.
I completely removed, then re-installed the latest version of MusicBee from the website (not from Microsoft store).
Instead of keeping Rock and Classical in separate MB libraries, I have added all folders from both genres, and am using custom views and filters to select which music I want to see and play.
But probably the most important change is that I am taking my time, and not spending long hours working with tags. It can be quite tedious - and frustrating if I push myself when I'm tired.
I think that (my being tired) was one reason I was having so much trouble with this.

I think I am beginning to understand why so many people use streaming services. You don't have to worry about organizing your library!

27

Questions / Re: Trouble with tags

« on: November 04, 2021, 11:17:57 PM »

Actually, I'm not sure what's going on right now.
I think at the time I posted here, I had failed to tick the 'flac' item in  'Scan Folders for New Files > Filter'.
I also seem to be getting my artist and composer tags mixed up.
I'm going to need to evaluate this a bit longer.

28

Questions / Trouble with tags

« on: November 03, 2021, 08:40:14 PM »

Hey all;
I have been playing around with MB for several years now, but only recently got interested in working with tags.
I have been using another app - Tag & Rename - to edit IDV3 tags.
I had never figured out why MB wasn't reading the tags when I updated them in T&R - until today.
I had always thought that the action: 'File > Scan folders for new files' would also update the tags, but it did not.
As a matter of fact, if I make changes to the tags in MB and then Save, the tags are updated in the files themselves.
After several Google searches - most of which took me to threads in this forum - I found that the process for updating IDV3 tags is to highlight the tracks, right-click and select 'Send to > File rescan'.

Now, if I can figure out how to automatically activate a view filter when loading a library, I'll be all set. Until then, I can do it manually.
I guess I shouldn't complain about the relatively steep learning curve for MB, as there is so much that can be done with the app.

Your thoughts / suggestions
Ultrarunner

29

Questions / Tabbing between columns in Music window

« on: October 19, 2021, 10:41:58 PM »

Hello;
I am trying to update my IDV3 tags for my music library. The tracks are stored as .flac.
When looking at the main window - after clicking 'Music' on the top bar, I see the columns I have set to be displayed. All is good.
But now I want to edit the info in some of those columns (the tags). The easiest way to do that is to click once to select a track, then click again (but not quickly or the song will start to play) in the column where I want to change the tag.
Once I click again in the column, the tag will open for editing. Sometimes there is a down-arrow on the right, which I cannot explain.
I enter the new info into the tag, then hit the TAB key to move to the next column to the right- where I want to change the next tag.
I found that depending on the order I have the columns arranged, the TAB key will move to the right (to the next column) in the editing mode, but sometimes it will exit the editing mode when I hit the TAB key and will not allow me to move to the next column to edit the data.
I found that when I re-arranged the columns, I can now TAB from one column to the next while still keeping the editing mode open.

I have re-named some of my custom tags (Tags(1)).
Now, when I right-click on a track and select Edit > Tags(2), I see my custom tags.
Some of these tags have a down-arrow on the right of the box, while others have the three dots ...
I cannot see the difference between tags that have the arrow and those that have the dots.
I have the feeling that this makes a difference as to which tags (in columns) I can TAB to and which I cannot.

I would like to create a screen video of this, but I lack the software for that.

I don't know if I have made myself clear as to what is going on. Please let me know and I can clarify.

Thanks for your help
Ultrarunner

30

Questions / Re: A very frustrated man

« on: August 01, 2021, 02:38:38 AM »

Thanks for the info.
I do prefer MB over a database program like MS Access, since I can more easily find and delete duplicates, and play the tracks I have selected.
I only wish MB had an Android app. It would make managing the PC and phone together much easier.