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Topic: Storage: New solutions for intuitve use? (Read 3618 times) previous topic - next topic
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Storage: New solutions for intuitve use?

Hi,

I just looked through ALL the storage threads and I discovered that it was always a matter of Quantity or Backup.
Never the typical collectors aspect: Ever watched the movie "Hight Fidelity" (or for old schoolers: read the book)? One wants to re-organise his collection following different methods: e.g. date of purchase, mood, tempo...what ever. But the digital storage is to strict for those purpuses - it's always from A to Z, from 0 to 9.

I have a folder calles My Music and in there are ... many albums sorted from A to Z and sometimes I'm just confused and cannot decide what to play because it's so damn neat and in order!

What I would wish is a sytem where you are free to re-organise; where you might look through the Albumart (or something similar), maybe not even in a particular order. Maybe like an oldfashioned CD-rack...you see the spines (?) of the CD's and you can drag and drop them (without loosing the advantage of digital technologies of course - like what's inside, drag it directly in a player or just one or two songs - maybe mark your favourite songs on that album and so on).

To be honest I didn't try to many players  but read a few feature descriptions. I use Musicmatch Jukebox and there is a feature to show only the Albumart...but it's hardly useful due to poor programming and you cannot re-organise it.

What do you guys think?
Is there a nice solution?
Maybe simple html or does there even exist one masterpiece  of software?
What would you wish for your collection to be more handy (in a perfect world)?

We already have the disadvantage of virtuality: it's intangible...we cannot touch our nicly designed CD's (isn't it a part of the artwork?). Let's find a substitute!



JD

PS: I'm not a programmer so...my option is: Be creative and make suggestions!

Storage: New solutions for intuitve use?

Reply #1 –
Quote
We already have the disadvantage of virtuality: it's intangible...we cannot touch our nicly designed CD's (isn't it a part of the artwork?). Let's find a substitute!

I guess you weren't around in the days when the artwork was 12x12 inches (300x300 mm),or more with a foldout.

As for access,  take a look at dbpoweramp.  You can search for any substring in artist, title, album name, you can sort by just about any tag,  specify a set of tag values for random play with favorite ones coming up more often.  No album art.

I don't think Foobar can sort as many ways (but someones always coming up with somthing new for Foobar) but you can change the format of album display.

With either you can call up an album and either play the whole thing or select a few tracks to queue up.

If you want it to be like a real CD case, the program can have the wrong CD in some of the cases.

Storage: New solutions for intuitve use?

Reply #2 –
Quote
I guess you weren't around in the days when the artwork was 12x12 inches (300x300 mm),or more with a foldout.

Oh forgot to mention vinyl - no, I'm not to young for that (ok nearly). But if I would have ANY vinyl at home - I would have my Hippie-Dad ALWAYS over in my place to listen to my music...I HAVE to prevent that!

Quote
As for access, take a look at dbpoweramp. You can search for any substring in artist, title, album name, you can sort by just about any tag, specify a set of tag values for random play with favorite ones coming up more often. No album art.

Mhh thx for the recommendation but no offense, I tried it out instantly and that player is no good for me! As for the visuality...you can ONLY SEARCH for a file; that requires that you know what you're looking for! And a big handicap is definitely that you can't collapse the tracks simply to albums - you always have to dig through every single track and thats EXACTLY what makes it difficult: There is to much text you have to look through and still sorted from A-Z or vice versa; it hurts my eyes.
A plus is definitely the crossfading and the gapless playback. But thats another story!

additionally: I think the voting system is quite nice - very simple!

I don't know how to make myself clear: Most of the time I'm not looking for a special album or artist - I'm just scrolling through my collection and wait for an inspiration. But often one album/artist just vanish because it's "hidden" between e.g. 8 Pink Floyd albums and 5 Portishead albums.
I would like to stroll along my collection and suddenly there is an eye catcher that animates me to listen to (of course virtually - I'm not insane...at least I think so..."what do you think Jane - are we INSANE? MMUAHAHAHAHAAA."

Don't you experience the same? Or is it just me?

JD

Storage: New solutions for intuitve use?

Reply #3 –
Quote
As for access,  take a look at dbpoweramp.  You can search for any substring in artist, title, album name, you can sort by just about any tag,  specify a set of tag values for random play with favorite ones coming up more often.  No album art.

I don't think Foobar can sort as many ways (but someones always coming up with somthing new for Foobar) but you can change the format of album display.

Meh... if the information is in a tag, foobar can sort by it. Even more, if the information can be derived using the TAGZ library from a tag, foobar can sort by it. I've never used DBPA, but I can't imagine it could possibly outdo foobar in terms of total sorting capability. It could match, however.

Storage: New solutions for intuitve use?

Reply #4 –
Neither, however, will match Media Center for out and out sorting fanatics. Tried all three, and it is by far the most powerful when it comes to sorting by anything.

Storage: New solutions for intuitve use?

Reply #5 –
I think I just write to much/confusing!

Here are MY wishes for a good interface/player:

- usual sorting method: artist, track, album and any other tag-entry.
- visual sorting method: album art, individual sorting possibilitys,
  including exculsion of any alphabetical order!
- voting system
- x-fading
- and of course all the usual stuff plus ID3v2 compatible
- simple to handle (not like foobar were you have to be a total computer nerd)
- well-designed skins or similar
- ...more to come: I'm a bit hang-overed from last night!

JD
 

Storage: New solutions for intuitve use?

Reply #6 –
Speaking of intuitive access methods...  Don't remember the name, but it kinda goes like this....  into the microphone.

on DBpoweramp.. yes, collapsing albums and artists would be nice.  The player is skinable but I don't know what you can do with the database window.  Another fault...
one to put on their forum, is that you can queue up some tracks but once they are played they are off the list.  So you can skip forward tracks but not back.

Can Foobar search on substrings of tags?  I just recently started using it by the backdoor of needing one of the masstagger features.