My Music Library Refresh with iTunes Match – Part Four

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Aaron Hahn

Finally… weeks later – and with the re-ripping of a couple of The Mavericks CDs I still needed… I’m done.

Some Stats:
- when I started, I had 5,000+ songs less than 256bit
- now that I’m finished, I have 250+ songs less than 256bit

- when I started, I had 3,000+ songs less than 256 AND were ‘matched’ in iTunes Match service
- now that I’m finished, I have 7 songs less than 256 and still matched by iTunes Match service

- I downloaded approximately 3,000 songs from iTunes Match service to replace lower grade/quality songs

Now on to what I learned over the course of the process…

The Bad
- Some of the finite details do not work. List play count from an iOS device no longer syncs up with your library, this bothers me greatly.
- I would never pay monthly for this service. At 25 bucks a year, or even 50 bucks a year, I can handle it. It it was a 100% flawless service. Okay, so perhaps monthly (at a good rate), I might consider it.
- For whatever reason, some of the songs that are in the iTunes catalog will not “match” the songs in your library – therefore you can’t download it at a higher bitrate… but upload it. Dumb.

The Neutral
- Get your library in pristine condition prior to signing up. It will make everything so much easier.
- The songs from iTunes, though DRM free, still have your account associated with it in the metadata.
- The finite details with iTunes Match can be annoying as you’re trying to get things up and ‘perfect’, thus why I brought up the first point in this section

The Good
- If you love music, the service as a whole is indispensable.
- Having a library above 192 bit, I never thought it would be that much better. It is, in a big way, IMO. I hear things in songs I haven’t heard before.
- It completely revamped my music. Or another way of putting it – it made my investment in music worth more.
- The songs from iTunes, downloaded, are of MUCH better/higher quality than the ones that had previously.
- (I can only state this since I used Verizon) Even with 1 bar of 3G, or no 3G, iTunes Match still works! It’s… amazing.

Conclusion

Doing all of this really helped me get almost 9,000 songs in order. I found that I had a lot of duplicate titles from various songs that were on an albums – so those could be deleted. The same goes for some of the songs that I simply don’t listen to anymore (or never have). Old “bootlegs” of songs that I was desperate for at that time (of rather horrible quality in comparison to the rest of the library) are gone. With pretty much everything at >256, it easily exposes lesser quality music. I’m over 8,800 songs now, so getting rid of 200 songs was worthwhile, IMO.

Now my library is a tight, fit, streamlined, library of music. No “crap”, horrible bootlegs, songs never listened to / never gonna listen to, etc. Everything in there has a purpose. Songs, albums, metadata have been updated, broken track listings fixed. It’s fit! It can easily bench press 400 pounds!

To handle almost 4,000 new files of bigger size, I also had to clean my hard drive. Having to clean it turned out to be a plus. At the start, I was really low on space (5GB) – but now I have a good 44GB left after all is done.

Even my wife loves this service, as it has completely changed the way she listens to music. It took her 32GB iPhone and gave her a music library of 88GB, and now she can’t live without it. In addition to her phone, her 16GB iPad can now be used as a radio. This is new for her, as her iPad has now been taken to a new level of cool.

Fun tidbit… I had a modest collection of The Frames’ music but I didn’t know some of the B-sides that I had at really low quality were matched. I downloaded them with iTunes Match, and BANG! Then, I found out they re-released their first three albums remastered. I then bought the second album (as it had a rare song on it – as in it was part of the ‘re-release’). I only ever had a sucky 128 bit version of it (unmatched)… and wow… that song was awesome and it completely changed the entire album for the better.

As you can probably tell by now, I can just go on and on with this.

So to wrap it up, if I was asked “Is iTunes Match worth the trouble?” – I’d say a very resounding… “YES… very much so. Especially at 25 bucks”.

This concludes the fourth installment of My Music Library Refresh Series reports, but stay tuned over the coming weeks/months for more thoughts on this continuing experience. If you missed the first three parts of the series, have a look at them here: iTunes Match Part One, iTunes Match Part Two, & iTunes Match Part Three.

My Music Library Refresh with iTunes Match – Part Three

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Aaron Hahn

Well, the process is still a-kickin’.

The more I do this, the more I see that some digital music is simply not the same as other digital music. Taking it a step further, some digital albums are not the same. This is because of various reasons. For example: the actual recording process, the track order, or the quality of the music from start to finish. Therefore, I am actually rating my music now too as I go. If I see a song or album that was not rated, I am taking the time to rate them accordingly to my opinion of my music. Since they’re on my hard drive, (as I have deleted other files I do not need), it is safe to assume that even a “one star” album/song is something that will still be to my liking. I also have about five albums that are personal favorites that simply can’t be messed with. And lastly, I have albums or a music collection that is beyond a rating – the Beatles.

Therefore, my rating process will look like this:

1-3 stars @ 256.
4-5 stars @ 320.
Top 5 or 10 albums (to me) @ Apple Lossless.

This method should position me permanently for the future, as compression rates have not changed since the 90s – and they still top out at 320. Anything more than 320 (Apple Lossless or 100% uncompressed) will never change because it’s just math at that point. It just can’t get any higher than uncompressed.

As far as the re-ripping goes, I’m now up to the ‘M’s’ of my library as I just finished my Mavericks collection.

By the way… not to sound like an Apple fanboy, but iTunes Match is great. I just can not express this enough. So far, I’ve had no issues with the service – even in areas where my mobile reception is poor. To me, the service still working as well as it does with limited mobile reception is huge. It may be simply a testimony of Verizon’s awesomeness, I dunno. I have always received awesome throughput with Verizon at one bar. So at this point, iTunes Match is a huge deal to me.

Taking the time to bump up the quality and updating metadata as I go extends the power of my 83.65GB music library and it makes iTunes Genius that much smarter. To an audiophile like me, it’s indispensable. In other words, I now depend on this service.

Yes, it didn’t take long for me to do so. That more than anything should speak volumes of iTunes Match. If you have great music, then this is a service worth 25 bucks a year.

This concludes today’s report, but there’s more to come. Stay tuned over the coming days for more of my Music Library Refresh Experience. If you missed the first two parts of the series, have a look at both iTunes Match Part One and iTunes Match Part Two.

My Music Library Refresh with iTunes Match – Part Two

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Aaron Hahn

After a lot of time in front of my Mac, I have just finished the first pass of the iTunes Match downloads. My “work” went from 4,000+ songs down to 1,500+.

That’s a lot of downloads throughout the course of the day. The rest will be re-ripping CDs (1,500+ songs). Also… I’ve SMASHED my hard drive space. The good news is that I’m pruning things – removing a lot of duplicate songs and albums/songs not worthy of my hard drive or cloud space. So I’m managing as I go. BUT… it’s coming along. Once this is over with, I’ll be set for a long time.

My First Hurdle

I’m a little shocked, actually. It would appear that ‘back in the day’ there was DRM protection burned into music CDs. The ‘Mac’ (or OS X) didn’t care back then and did its thing to rip the audio from the CD.

Now, a decade later (as the music CD is now 10 years old), OS X actually “respects” DRMed music CDs! I actually had to use Windows Media Player to rip the music (in WAV format of course). I’ll take that WAV file and convert it to Apple’s 320 Bitrate.

The funny thing is, I used my Mac to rip this music back in the day at 192. It had no problems then. Now, OS X just ejects the disk – it doesn’t even mount. This is rather unbelievable and disturbing. Disturbing that Apple, not Microsoft, is respecting DRM for once…? Wow.

An Update On Where I’m At Now

All of the music I have that is not on CD has been re-downloaded by iTunes for “free”. All of the music that is not >256 and on CD is a pain in the arse. This is mainly because re-ripping is a slow process. Since I have a lot of CDs that are <256… it’s going to take a while.

I also continue to prune my hard drive. I have freed up space by getting rid of music I simply do not listen to anymore. I’ve deleted probably 100+ songs. I have also made the decision that any album that I deem to be “good” but not “great” will either be re-ripped at 256 or simply downloaded via iTunes Match were applicable. This will speed things up.

So far, I can conclude the following:

1. If you’re going to do this, get your library as much in order as possible before starting. Therefore, prune your collection for unwanted material and get your files in order.

2. Downloading from iTunes is fast and easy… and kinda fun.

3. Any song that is not found in the iTunes catalog is uploaded to iCloud, so make sure all of the metadata is as accurate as possible.

4. iTunes Match is not very customizable. Therefore, once you hit ‘go’… you’re off to the races.

Current Thoughts

I’m quite proud of my music library and I’ve felt this way since 2004. It’s been this way because of the iPod, and eventually it paid off BIG TIME when ‘Genius Playlists’ came to light. But my library is huge, and since 2004 it has become slightly unwound. I am tightening it back up with higher quality music files and optimized metadata. I have found that pruning what you don’t listen to or care about anymore is very important. The overall process is like making your music library get into shape. It’s going to be slow at first, but the payoff will be huge.

iTunes Match is best served with a tight library. Since it’s designed to work with a tight music buying ecosystem (iTunes Store), iTunes Match is flawless. Since I have a vast music collection and more than the iTunes Store catalog, it’s this part in particular that must be tight before clicking ‘go’.

Personally, I kinda like doing this stuff. It really is flexing your hard drive space which happens to be a big source of entertainment – and the payoff is just too great. All you have to do is it once, then the rest is cake. Well… maybe again a decade later.

After everything so far, do I recommend that iTunes music lovers go through this process?
Absolutely. Yes. Do it.

Take control of your music and hard work.

This concludes today’s report, but there’s more to come. Stay tuned over the coming days for more of my Music Library Refresh Experience.

Quick Hits: Brief iTunes 11 Review

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Aaron Hahn

A brief statement and then I’ll expand with some more thoughts:

iTunes is the sole reason why I started to even look at a ‘Mac’ back in the day. iTunes spawned OS X, OS X spawned UNIX, and UNIX ultimately gave me my career. So if I’ve said this once, I’ll say it 1,000 times… I will always be indebted to iTunes. Then there’s the whole love of music, my half-audiophile nature of my brain, and the massive vault that is iTunes’ media library, (stripping all other functions from it, sticking with the media library portion of it).

That said, I’ve been eagerly waiting for iTunes 11, as iTunes “pre-11″ had become outdated, bloated with features outside of ‘tunes’, and well, slow. The biggest issues I’ve had with iTunes pre-11 was how much of system resources it consumed daily. Since iTunes is a staple in my household (streaming media and all the other jazz), it’s always open, and ALWAYS consuming at least 1.5 – 2GB of RAM.

Since I’ve had iTunes 11, I have used ALL it’s features religiously, for a solid 24 hours now. It has only consumed < 650MB of RAM since I’ve opened it.

Wow.

It’s fast, it’s slick, and the interface is radically different (not bad) as it’s both logical and refreshing. It’s great. Period. There’s a little place in my heart that’s so happy to see “my” software mature, finally.

I have only two modest gripes:
1. You can’t change the size of the album art in the default ‘Album’ view (formerly known as ‘Grid’ view).
2. While playing an album in the ‘Album’ view, you wouldn’t know if you’ve closed the new song list view. In other words, unless the album your playing is open, you can’t tell what album is playing.

Other than that, it has my recommendation. Heres’ a screenshot of my library:

Oh, and one more thing – one big change that I neglected to mention… music videos. They’re separated from the album and properly given their own section. Yes!

The biggest benefit of all that is for those AppleTV users out there… it now has a ‘music video’ section! Freaking awesome… so go enjoy!

Windows 8 Review – Interesting, But Yuck

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Aaron Hahn

I just downloaded and installed two OS’ in the last 24 hours, one of which was the latest rev of Ubuntu, the other Windows 8 Customer Preview. I think the this preview is the public preview before the GM build of Windows 8, the GM build is normally 99% of what will be shipped to store and our computers. As always, I’d like to share my thoughts…

Personally, I think Windows 7 is fantastic. I think Microsoft really tried hard to break away from XP with Vista, and again, I never had any issues (at all) with Vista. Though Vista was a pretty XP on top and (IMO) limited and annoying changes underneath, it was a good upgrade. Vista was a resource hog for older/slower machines and that was its biggest ‘issue’. People couldn’t run it without having a great system. And if they had a great system (normally it was because of video games), Vista didn’t do ‘as well’ as XP while playing the games. I saw that, but to me, since video games are no longer a big part in my daily life, it wasn’t a big deal.

Then, Windows 7 came along and fix most of, if not all of, Vista’s issues. It is literally a Vista SP3 purely by code revision (6.5), and that really is brilliant. What isn’t brilliant is how Microsoft handled this ‘update’ to Vista – charging another $200 – $400 for an “update” just 700 days after Vista’s release. To me, professionally, this is what ultimately rubbed the masses the wrong way – especially for all of those who felt they got duped by Vista in the first place. But I digress…

Taking a page from Apple (yeah, I said that, and “this time” it’s true), they’ve gone with the extreme, and in some ways better than Apple – by bridging tablet computing with desktop computing. The problem is, on a desktop, it falls short. To me it’s like a cartoon of Wile E. Coyote: jumping the canyon with a rocket tied to his back… almost there… then the rocket gives out, falling just short of the goal and into a cloud of dust.

This is the most unfriendly version of Windows ever. Going from 3.1 to ’95 was completely rough, and this version of Windows is just as bad. The UI, though I really praise Microsoft for trying something different (to finally rid all of us from this ‘windowed’ world), is just limited, clunky, and seems rushed. The new default interface, ‘Metro’, is super familiar to X360 and Mobile Windows 7 users, on the desktop – it’s… unnecessary. This is the biggest feature I really wanted to see, and unfortunately I am disappointed. There’s no graphical indication of what you are suppose to do with the Metro interface, and if you go to the desktop, there’s no graphical clue with how to get back to the Metro interface. To me, this is a big problem. I say this because if I, a geek for over a decade and a half, can’t quickly see what I am suppose to do, then I immediately cry foul.

Did I figure things out? Absolutely.

Was it intuitive? Hell no.

Also, any non-native Microsoft app or app that is not designed for the Metro UI (on the Metro screen) is ugly and sticks out like a wart on a face. Again, yuck.

So let’s look at real world use… 75% of the people that own a computer really only do a few things on it. Use the web, email, & _____ (fill in the blank). Since the Metro UI is the default UI, surfing the web is neat with IE (a native app), but again, it crashes down to a cloud of dust. The cookies between the desktop version of IE and the Metro IE, do not sync up… ???

I can’t find the home button for Metro IE, and it’s slower than the desktop version. This upsets me. The desktop version is fine. In fact, IE 10 is rather nice on the desktop. I can’t say that for Metro. But hey, lets be honest here, who really uses IE anymore? I seriously cannot think of anyone other than my parents. And do you really want to be classed with people in their 60s? I downloaded both Firefox and Chrome, and they do not have a native Metro UI (nor do they have a native Metro UI icon) and this is fine, but now I am wondering - what’s the point of the Metro UI on a desktop?

The Metro UI in apps designed for it, like email, are awesome. Really. They’re beautiful, because it’s not “windowed computing”. Unfortunately for a desktop, mousing around the “entire” screen is a burden. But, the default email app shines with its simplicity. It truly is a new age of computing *sigh* … if it only worked “well”. The settings for the menu context is all the way on one side of the screen, hidden. Then, to do something else, you have to mouse over to the other side of the screen (where there too is another hidden set of options). On a 24″ monitor, this is a lot of mousing around. It’s like playing a game with a retarded supermodel. Gorgeous, but frustrating.

Getting to some good, what really shines for Windows 8 is their store. Finally, Microsoft has a place to download content. Ubuntu has been doing this (successfully) for years now. OS X just started doing it (successfully) last year. Google does something (?) with a web store (stupid Google), and now it has come to Windows desktop. It’s here that users of Xbox 360 will feel right at home. Mostly anything you’d “need” for basic computing is presented in a beautiful UI, with really easy to use features. It’s Metro UI native, and it’s a simple and painless system. I really like the concept of a place to download content. On these OS’s it’s like going to the mall. It’s nice.

What sucks about the Microsoft Store is that it’s for Metro UI only – there are no desktop apps, (at least from what I can tell). And this is fine, since most of these apps aren’t professional grade, like your Adobes and media apps.

Bottom line, the Metro UI is absolutely fantastic, but not on a desktop. It simply doesn’t work well enough. Well, it does “work”… but it’s just not intuitive enough to be the main feature. I have very little control of what and how the Metro UI works and looks – and on a desktop computer, I expect that.

There is no doubt, however, that Microsoft is going to make a big splash this year with Windows 8. The current Customer Preview is not without its bugs, and I’d be surprised if Microsoft doesn’t change A LOT of things before GM, (if this isn’t already the GM). The simple fact that we’ll be getting a ‘tablet’ interface as a default makes me expect tablet features, like iOS or Android. This, like Windows 7 Mobile, is missing these features and it’s only expounded on a desktop. The example here is folders – let me group my apps into folders, instead of a barfed view of “everything”! OS X does it, iOS does it, Android does it… c’mon Windows?!

I do have to say that I praise Microsoft to all ends for trying something new, having the guts to go with it, and the guts to spend millions and millions of dollars to give it us. What they’ve done is fantastic on paper, but not practical in its current position. I think it is absolutely awesome that they split us from the traditional “desktop” and made their desktop another feature. In a sense, that’s brilliant and out-of-the-box thinking. But, it doesn’t work. I have to look at what Apple is doing with OS X – slowly bringing the tablet experience to the desktop… vs. the desktop to the tablet. I like this approach, as it fits better with today’s desktop computing.

That all being said, perhaps this is exactly what we need? Perhaps Microsoft will indeed do something revolutionary for the first time? Perhaps Micorsoft is now the new “Apple-Underdog”? Regardless of what transpires, my eyes have been sparked by a Microsoft product for the first time since XP. But, my Micorsoft luvahs and Apple hatahs… there’s a long way to go.

I’m still not switching back, as I still love OS X for it’s UI and controls. OS X Lion’s “tablet features on a desktop” is brilliant.

But… ask me later about Ubuntu 12.04.

: )