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Topic: Guide a nitpicker to choose matching services (Amazon, Google, iTunes  (Read 10368 times) previous topic - next topic
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Guide a nitpicker to choose matching services (Amazon, Google, iTunes

A few pieces of information not covered by the chart at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of...e_music_lockers (is the information correct and updated, by the way?)

Like,
- can the matching service tell masterings apart?
- or at the other extreme, do I even risk that a track from a live album is replaced by the studio version? (Or ... cover version ...?)
- are there known quirks with e.g. gaplessness?
- can I set e.g. "match whole folder as album or stay away from it"?
- does it by default touch my local files (cf. e.g. WMA's destruction of tags ... yeah I hate software that knows-what-is-best-for-me so much it does not kindly ask for permissions first.)

Other things I should know?

Guide a nitpicker to choose matching services (Amazon, Google, iTunes

Reply #1 –
I can't comment on the other services but I can answer your questions for iTunes Match.

1.  Yes.  I have a few repeat albums in my iTunes library, some were the original CD pressings from the early 90's while others were modern remastered versions.  iTunes Match has been able to distinguish between the two without issues.

2.  I haven't had live versions of songs replaced by studio editions (or vice versa).  Just like with different masters, iTunes Match has been able to distinguish between the two.

3.  Gapless playback seems to be hit or miss.  It's fine for me in iTunes and on my iPhone 5 iPad mini but I have read people having issues with it on their iOS devices.  There are some other quirks too where iTunes Match will choose to upload a song instead of matching it.  I can rip an audio CD to Apple Lossless using iTunes (though I rely on XLD), add it to iCloud, and the song will be uploaded instead of matched.  The song has the same track tag information as the version in the iTunes Store, the same length, the same everything.  On the other hand I had a 64kbps mp3 file of a song from the mid-90's.  The track tag information wasn't complete, the song was 5 seconds shorter than the iTunes Store version, and it was able to match the song allowing me to swap it out for a 256kbps AAC version.

4.  With iTunes Match, it's all or nothing.  You can't set specific folders or playlists.  You can either add your entire library or nothing at all.

5.  No, iTunes Match won't touch your files.  It will even incorporate any custom tags so long as they are made before adding to iTunes Match.  I often insert comments with my songs or adjust track tags so that album titles (and song titles) have all first letters (including letters like A, An, The, Of) capitalized.  Those carry over to iTunes Match.

6.  As for other info, I covered it's quirks but iOS users kind of get the shaft with iTunes Match.  When it comes to using that service and accessing it on an iOS device, you either have to rely solely on iTunes Match for getting music onto the device or syncing it with a computer.  Apple doesn't allow a mixture of the two.  Also, if a playlist contains a single song that is not added to your iCloud account (it's a duplicate or ineligible for iTunes Match), you can't access that playlist on an iOS device.  It's not like Google Music which is seamlessly integrated into their Android app where it doesn't differentiate between uploaded/match songs and songs physically on the smartphone (at least it didn't in 2012).  There are also many instances where I can't add content to iTunes Match.  I'm not sure why but uploading/matching seems to be random at time.  I can try at 5:30 PM on a Thursday and it won't work yet 8:00 PM on a Friday is fine.

I still subscribe to iTunes Match mainly because it lets me swap out music for 256kbps AAC versions (if they're matched).  I also use it with my iPad mini so that I have access to (almost) all of my songs and playlists, when connected to wi-fi, without having to sync anything over.  I still use the old fashioned syncing method with my iPhone 5 as it's a whole lot easier.  Plus the playlists I sync to my iPhone 5 have duplicate songs so they aren't on iTunes Match (duplicate because I have lossless and lossy versions of albums in my iTunes library).

Edit: I accidentally said iPhone 5 instead of iPad mini for answer #3.

Guide a nitpicker to choose matching services (Amazon, Google, iTunes

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Porcus on
A few pieces of information not covered by the chart at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of...e_music_lockers (is the information correct and updated, by the way?)


I used the Google one because its free and I already use gmail a lot so it was simple to use as a backup.  For MP3s, its basically a cloud storage/player app that lets you stream or download your original files from anywhere.  Other file types are transcoded to MP3.  I think Lame is used, they show the lame LGPL license in the credits screen. 

Quote from: Porcus on
- can the matching service tell masterings apart?


I'm not sure how the matching services works.  They recently enabled it in the USA, and so far only a few files I've uploaded have matched, I assume because they're doing an MD5 hash or something similar and my files aren't encoded with a common lame version.  I could be wrong though.

Quote from: Porcus on
- or at the other extreme, do I even risk that a track from a live album is replaced by the studio version? (Or ... cover version ...?)


They provide you with an out if something goes wrong.  Any files that are matched have an option to reupload the original version if you want. 

Quote from: Porcus on
- are there known quirks with e.g. gaplessness?


The web app isn't gapless, but you can use the files in any player if you download them.  I have no idea if transcoded files lose their gaplessness.  They use libfaad, libvorbis and lame, so probably not, but I haven't tried.

Quote from: Porcus on
- can I set e.g. "match whole folder as album or stay away from it"?


No, it matches individual songs.  You'd have to delete incomplete albums after they matched.

Quote from: Porcus on
- does it by default touch my local files (cf. e.g. WMA's destruction of tags ... yeah I hate software that knows-what-is-best-for-me so much it does not kindly ask for permissions first.)


It does not.

Quote from: Porcus on
Other things I should know?


Its a free service thats designed to work with mobile devices and as a web streaming app.  If you want the equivalent of iTunes for Android, and a nice streaming app, its great.  Its also nice if you have a lot of computers and want to share music between them (e.g. listen to your music collection at home and work).  If you want something like foobar, you're going to be disappointed.  If you want a cloud backup service for lossless files, this is not it.  The web interface shows you cover art, will try to correct missing tags, and lets you edit tags.  It has basic playlist support.  And thats it.  Its built around consuming media, not managing it.

Guide a nitpicker to choose matching services (Amazon, Google, iTunes

Reply #3 –
Quote from: saratoga on
For MP3s, its basically a cloud storage/player app that lets you stream or download your original files from anywhere.  Other file types are transcoded to MP3.  I think Lame is used, they show the lame LGPL license in the credits screen.


WMA is supported and not transcoded, those files are directly uploaded.  That is only for the Windows version of Google's music manager software though.  AAC, protected AAC, Apple lossless, FLAC, and Ogg vorbis are all transcoded to 320kbps mp3.

I thought AAC was supported without transcoding but I was wrong.  That explains why it took so long to upload/match my iTunes library which is mainly made up of mpeg-4 LC-AAC files.

Guide a nitpicker to choose matching services (Amazon, Google, iTunes

Reply #4 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
Quote from: saratoga on
For MP3s, its basically a cloud storage/player app that lets you stream or download your original files from anywhere.  Other file types are transcoded to MP3.  I think Lame is used, they show the lame LGPL license in the credits screen.


WMA is supported and not transcoded, those files are directly uploaded.


I think they're transcoded once they're uploaded.  Or at least I really doubt Google has licensed MS's patents required to stream or distribute WMA. 

Actually I think most (all?) files are transcoded after you upload them.  Transcoding a 128k AAC file to 320 CBR before uploading it would be really, really slow and waste a lot of their bandwidth.

Yeah, uploading wma_128k.wma and downloading it again gives me "00 - wma_128.wma.mp3", a CBR LAME 3.98r file with gapless info and joint stereo.  Most likely it would be very expensive to license the WMA patents from MS, if even they would allow it.

Guide a nitpicker to choose matching services (Amazon, Google, iTunes

Reply #5 –
That's interesting.  I was going off of what their website says:
*wma files are only supported by the Windows version of the Google Play Music Manager.

** FLAC, ogg, and aac files are transcoded to 320kbps mp3.

It's interesting that their service transcodes any non-mp3 file (or maybe all) when it only explicitly states that FLAC, OGG, and AAC files are transcoded.  Google doesn't mention anything about transcoding WMA or even other mp3 files but it's apparent that they at least transcode WMA files.

Guide a nitpicker to choose matching services (Amazon, Google, iTunes

Reply #6 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
That's interesting.  I was going off of what their website says:
*wma files are only supported by the Windows version of the Google Play Music Manager.

** FLAC, ogg, and aac files are transcoded to 320kbps mp3.

It's interesting that their service transcodes any non-mp3 file (or maybe all) when it only explicitly states that FLAC, OGG, and AAC files are transcoded.  Google doesn't mention anything about transcoding WMA or even other mp3 files but it's apparent that they at least transcode WMA files.


I assume this means Google uses the user's codec to decode WMA for transcoding on the user's machine, thus avoiding licensing issues?
Creature of habit.

Guide a nitpicker to choose matching services (Amazon, Google, iTunes

Reply #7 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
That's interesting.  I was going off of what their website says:
*wma files are only supported by the Windows version of the Google Play Music Manager.


I think you do not need a patent license to use WMA on Windows machines.  Possibly they did not want to pay to support it on MacOS, which might be prohibitively expensive, if even MS agreed to license it. 

Quote from: kornchild2002 on
It's interesting that their service transcodes any non-mp3 file (or maybe all) when it only explicitly states that FLAC, OGG, and AAC files are transcoded.  Google doesn't mention anything about transcoding WMA or even other mp3 files but it's apparent that they at least transcode WMA files.


They are currently fighting a huge number of software patent related lawsuits.  Maybe they think using an older, well-litigated format like MP3 is safer?

Guide a nitpicker to choose matching services (Amazon, Google, iTunes

Reply #8 –
Thanks for the input.

Quote from: kornchild2002 on
I have a few repeat albums in my iTunes library, some were the original CD pressings from the early 90's while others were modern remastered versions.  iTunes Match has been able to distinguish between the two without issues.


Do they have reliable information on issue date(s)? If so, it sounds like a selling point to me - I was too careless upon ripping/autotagging, and have a lot of don't-know-when-(re)released CDs on file.
 

Guide a nitpicker to choose matching services (Amazon, Google, iTunes

Reply #9 –
Quote from: Porcus on
Do they have reliable information on issue date(s)? If so, it sounds like a selling point to me - I was too careless upon ripping/autotagging, and have a lot of don't-know-when-(re)released CDs on file.


Sometimes the only differences between the track tags, from the old and re-releases, are the dates.  For example, I had some old Beatles CDs before the recent remastered releases.  I have The White Album from a 1990 pressing and then I purchased the recent remasters as digital files on that Apple USB thumb drive.  Those were all FLAC files but I re-encoded them to ALAC and imported the resulting files into iTunes.  iTunes Match shows the files as being different as the CD was uploaded while the newer ones were matched (since the iTunes Store only has the newer remasters).  The only difference in tagging between those two albums is the release date but iTunes Match was able to differentiate between them.  The same thing is true for all the other duplicate albums I have in my library.  Disturbed's The Sickness album was released back in 2000 and then it was re-released in 2010.  Both versions are in my iTunes library with the same tags other than the release date (and the album artwork I embedded into the ALAC files).  Both albums are matched and, when I download the matched versions, they are audibly different.

So that hasn't been an issue for me.  Of course, YMMV with iTunes Match.  Just keep in mind that iTunes Match does not actually stream music to iOS devices and you cannot sync audio content from a PC to an iOS device with iTunes Match enabled on the portable.  Instead, you download songs/playlists from iTunes Match onto the iOS device and then play them back.  I'm not sure if that is a killer feature for you or not.  I use it with my iPad Mini so that I can copy songs to it whenever I have access to wi-fi while on trips, songs that I didn't sync over to my iPhone 5 because there wasn't enough room.  I still sync my iPhone 5 using my PC though as it has over 5000 songs on it, that would be a pain to do with iTunes Match as each song/playlist would have to be individually downloaded.  iTunes Match does stream to PCs running iTunes though, you don't have to download the audio content to them for playback.