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Topic: Is Helium Music Manager as bad as it seems? (Read 7687 times) previous topic - next topic
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Is Helium Music Manager as bad as it seems?

I've been trying to find a comprehensive package to manage my digital audio, which will allow me to use it in different ways depending on which of the many types of music in my collection I am listening to or organising.  I had hoped that Helium Music Manager, which is quite a complex piece of software and uses a relational database to store its data, would fit the bill admirably.  Unfortunately Helium seems to me to be complete rubbish!  Everytime I think I have found a way  to set up different views of my music depending on the Genre or the Library it is in, I find that Helium still demands that I have one universal way of listing things.  This is proving to be the most exasperating software package that I have ever evaluated, and I have been working in IT for getting on for 40 years!

Helium just will not allow you to do what you want, and as such it is utter, total rubbish!

Somebody please tell me that I am wrong, and indicate how I might get different views, automatically, depending on the type of music that I am looking at (Classical or Rock say... let alone Classical - Orchestral and Classical - Opera).
Does anyone know how to work this package?

Is Helium Music Manager as bad as it seems?

Reply #1 –
Wouldn't it be better to direct your questions to their own forum? I doubt you will find many that use that software here.

Is Helium Music Manager as bad as it seems?

Reply #2 –
There are plenty of other viable, better developed options out there:

Windows Media Player
Winamp
iTunes
Foobar2000
Mediamonkey
EAC>1)fb2k>LAME3.99 -V 0 --vbr-new>WMP12 2)MAC-Extra High

Is Helium Music Manager as bad as it seems?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: LANjackal on
There are plenty of other viable, better developed options out there:

Windows Media Player
Winamp
iTunes
Foobar2000
Mediamonkey



Hello LANjackal,
                      you are right, there are many options to choose from, and I have been trying to evaluate them over the last couple of weeks, basing my judgement on creating a 'library' for 'classical' music of many types and quite a lot of Rock/Pop/Folk and Jazz (perhaps as many as 4-500 albums eventually).  Downloading of music from on-line libraries is not something I have considered.  Unfortunately almost all of them have major deficiencies.  The software packages that I have looked at, and my personal views of them, follow:

1.  Windows Media Player - good User Interface (UI), slick in operation, good at retrieving Album data under some sort of user control.  No flexibility with listing (unable to vary columns/sorting depending on music type/genre) - doesn't support m4a/AAC files - cannot recode for burning, or even lower the quality, on-the-fly (not even from WMA Lossless to WMA Lossy).

2. Winamp - Quite slick, but I really didn't get on with the look and feel.  More of a player than a library (as a player probably very good).  As with WMP, inflexible with listing different music types.

3. iTunes - Quite good UI, especially with Rock/Pop/Folk/Jazz etc, but inflexible again when considering 'classical' music.  Also rather slow and clunky in use.  I do not like editing tags with it.  Doesn't support WMA - although that is not a total problem for me.

4. Foobar - Poor UI, and very fiddly to set-up - might well be usefully flexible in operation, but with non-existent Help information, and a poor initial structure, Foobar would take too long to evaluate properly.  The columns/sorting control may be pretty good, but it is very difficult to find out what you have to do make it work as you want - this is counterbalanced to some degree by the enthusiasm of its adherents.  Unfortunately I disliked the look and feel, was put off by the arcane nature of its controls, and I have for years refused to accept software that does not have some good, even if basic, documentation.

5. Media Monkey - Quite good UI, pretty good for editing tags (including in m4a/AAC, WMA and even Wave files (RIFF data chunks)).  In addition it appears to have the flexibility I need for different columns/sorts for different music types - at least in the 'Gold', paid-for, edition.  I do not mind paying for MM, the price is after all very reasonable (actually at £10 (GBP) it's bloody cheap), but I am annoyed that I cannot be sure that it really does what I want until I have paid for it - still, it's only a tenner!  Media Monkey is currently my choice.

6. Real Player - this I was going to use until I started to look at the difficulties of handling 'classical' music, where it suffers from the same shortcomings as the first three listed above.  However, it is very capable (supporting (playing/tagging) m4a/AAC and WMA), and easy to control, although I don't particularly like the tag editor, nor the handling of album cover art (or lack of it).  However RP is free and highly usable, although you can only set up one column/sort 'view' at any one time - just like most of the competition.

7. Helium Music Manager - Quite a complex product with a matching UI, this £20(GBP)/$40(USD) package is quite the most frustrating thing I have dealt with for years (as I said in the first post).  So nearly is this the best and most flexible Music Manager out there, that it is particularly galling that despite the use of relational databases to hold the 'library' data, and the complexity of the control mechanisms, its flexibility with different music types is no better than most of the competition.  In addition there appear to be bugs in the tag editing and handling (inconsistencies show up from time to time and data seems occasionally to have a life, or death, of its own), which makes me doubly put off.  And yet, and yet... it is so close to being exactly what I am looking for - it is a shame, but, for me, Helium is a non-starter. 



To re-use your words LANjackal, Media Monkey appears to be a 'viable', and 'better developed' option than Helium, and I am intending purchase it at its ridiculously low price.  Looking at these packages has been instructive if exhausting.  One last point, perhaps the general quality would be better if they all cost about $50(USD)/£25(GBP)!