The "Official" Aurender Discussion Thread

[Buzzer]

1 hour ago, XCop5089 said:

Thanks

 

I really appreciate your answer, but I am not particularly confident with computers (hurtling towards 70) so I would please ask that you spell it out for me!

 

The album "...with love" appears on my iPad (Conductor App) with no artwork. It can be selected and the tracks played perfectly!

 

The problem for me, is that when I look for the folder containing the album, to add artwork, using Perfect Tunes software, it is not visible under the path as displayed by the Conductor App (Music2/Various Artists), so any amendment to the meta data is impossible!

 

With the formula you have kindly detailed, do I copy and paste this somewhere? If so, where? - dbPoweramp, Perfect Tunes, CD Ripper etc.?

 

Apologies for my lack of computer knowledge, but I can grasp the basics, but just need a bit of 'hand-holding" to achieve what many others take for granted!

In addition, you might check out the dbPoweramp forum.  https://forum.dbpoweramp.com.  This topic is certainly suited for addressing there.  I have received lot of good information there.  One can edit tags for each CD using Perfect tunes or dbPoweramp for the Aurender to recognize all information.  You may have to rename the folder to get rid of those tree dots with whatever system you are using  -  Safari or Windows.

[XCop5089]

2 hours ago, SirAtilla said:

The easiest thing is just remove the three periods in front of the folder name.  On computer connect to the Music2 storage over the network to the Aurender.  Select the folder and remove the periods in the folder name.

 

PerfectTUNES should see it now and you can add the artwork at that point.  Note that in PerfectTUNES you can configure whether artwork is embedded or placed as a file in the folder along with the music files.  If you choose the latter the files should be folder.jpg or cover.jpg.  I attached a screenshot showing my configuration.  There is really not a right or wrong more preference but I do like having consistent size of covers in my own library and have chosen 1000x1000 as a reasonable trade-off of quality/size for retina based iPad Pro viewing.

 

Cheers

Very useful information and much appreciated!

 

Unfortunately, my problem is, connecting to Music2 storage over the network to the Aurender N20, as you detail in your first paragraph, I am unable to locate and amend the folder name, because it just isn't visible in the file path "Music2/Various Artists"

 

I can see the album (minus artwork) on the Conductor App (Apple iPad) and play it, but cannot find the album over the network, where Conductor says it should be located!

 

Hence, unable to remove those pesky three dots at the beginning of the album title!

[SirAtilla]

2 minutes ago, XCop5089 said:

Very useful information and much appreciated!

 

Unfortunately, my problem is, connecting to Music2 storage over the network to the Aurender N20, as you detail in your first paragraph, I am unable to locate and amend the folder name, because it just isn't visible in the file path "Music2/Various Artists"

 

I can see the album (minus artwork) on the Conductor App (Apple iPad) and play it, but cannot find the album over the network, where Conductor says it should be located!

 

Hence, unable to remove those pesky three dots at the beginning of the album title!

 

Are you using macOS or Microsoft Windows to connect to the N20?

[XCop5089]

1 minute ago, SirAtilla said:

 

Are you using macOS or Microsoft Windows to connect to the N20?

Apple MacBook Pro with Sonoma 14.2.1 macOS

[The Computer Audiophile]

Aurender support can connect for you and make the change, or you'll need to connect to the Music 2 folder using a tool that can view hidden files and folders. 

[SirAtilla]

10 minutes ago, XCop5089 said:

Apple MacBook Pro with Sonoma 14.2.1 macOS

 

ok, so its very easy in a macOS finder window to toggle hidden files on/off.  They are off by default which is why you don't see them and nor does PerfectTUNES.  The scanner in the Aurender obviously does see them.

 

Navigate to the Music/Various Artists folder on your Mac with Finder.

 

You should be viewing all the normal non-hidden folders like normal.  I attached my screenshot of a test for this post.

 

 

When in this view use the key sequence Shift + Command ⌘ + [.] Period keys simultaneously and now Finder will show hidden files as well.  See attached screenshot I prepared as a test with a folder in place prefixed by three dots.

 

Click on the hidden folder and change the name.  Ignore the the other icon will disappear after you change folder name.  Use the same key sequence to toggle hidden files back on.

 

After changing filename.

 

 

Now run PerfectTUNES and add the image you want.

 

You can do this easily via command line as well but based on your description figured this approach would be more straight forward.

 

Cheers

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, SirAtilla said:

 

ok, so its very easy in a macOS finder window to toggle hidden files on/off.  They are off by default which is why you don't see them and nor does PerfectTUNES.  The scanner in the Aurender obviously does see them.

 

Navigate to the Music/Various Artists folder on your Mac with Finder.

 

You should be viewing all the normal non-hidden folders like normal.  I attached my screenshot of a test for this post.

 

 

When in this view use the key sequence Shift + Command ⌘ + [.] Period keys simultaneously and now Finder will show hidden files as well.  See attached screenshot I prepared as a test with a folder in place prefixed by three dots.

 

Click on the hidden folder and change the name.  Ignore the the other icon will disappear after you change folder name.  Use the same key sequence to toggle hidden files back on.

 

After changing filename.

 

 

Now run PerfectTUNES and add the image you want.

 

You can do this easily via command line as well but based on your description figured this approach would be more straight forward.

 

Cheers

I totally forgot about that move! I usually use the Nova app I have open, for working on this site, to browse hidden files and folders. 

[XCop5089]

Gentlemen

 

What a fantastic community!

 

Not actually an Aurender/Conductor problem at all, but acquiring the knowledge to successfully negotiate the world of Mac computers!

 

 I went into Perfect Tunes, brought up the Music2 folder and selected “Various Artists” where the Conductor App told me that the album was lurking in the shadows.

 

By pressing Command + Shift + . (Full Stop/ Period key), the album folder “… with love” magically appeared and allowed me to upload album cover art on my photo library.

 

A quick scan and download of the Library Data later and the album art is now showing on the Conductor App!

 

Thank you so much for your advice from a (slightly) embarrassed computer-illiterate Brit! 😊

[DancingSea]

2 minutes ago, XCop5089 said:

Gentlemen

 

What a fantastic community!

 

Not actually an Aurender/Conductor problem at all, but acquiring the knowledge to successfully negotiate the world of Mac computers!

 

 I went into Perfect Tunes, brought up the Music2 folder and selected “Various Artists” where the Conductor App told me that the album was lurking in the shadows.

 

By pressing Command + Shift + . (Full Stop/ Period key), the album folder “… with love” magically appeared and allowed me to upload album cover art on my photo library.

 

A quick scan and download of the Library Data later and the album art is now showing on the Conductor App!

 

Thank you so much for your advice from a (slightly) embarrassed computer-illiterate Brit! 😊

 

I'm not familiar with PerfectTunes.  Did you do all of that with the unregistered version?

[SirAtilla]

17 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

 

I'm not familiar with PerfectTunes.  Did you do all of that with the unregistered version?

 

I am definitely using the registered full version.  The team at Illustrate (Vendor) have implemented many of my direct suggestions to PerfectTUNES over the years.  I have a few more on the table that will be harder to implement but program is very nice to identify inconsistencies in metadata.  I have about 10K albums and is part of my overall workflow when I add new music to my library.

 

I also use dBpoweramp (also from Illustrate) and Yate for primary editing.  

 

dBpoweramp and PerfectTUNES are available on macOS and Windows while Yate is macOS only.

[SirAtilla]

24 minutes ago, XCop5089 said:

Gentlemen

 

What a fantastic community!

 

Not actually an Aurender/Conductor problem at all, but acquiring the knowledge to successfully negotiate the world of Mac computers!

 

 I went into Perfect Tunes, brought up the Music2 folder and selected “Various Artists” where the Conductor App told me that the album was lurking in the shadows.

 

By pressing Command + Shift + . (Full Stop/ Period key), the album folder “… with love” magically appeared and allowed me to upload album cover art on my photo library.

 

A quick scan and download of the Library Data later and the album art is now showing on the Conductor App!

 

Thank you so much for your advice from a (slightly) embarrassed computer-illiterate Brit! 😊

 

Glad this worked out for you!

 

But I have to ask are those "The Best Prog Rock..." different albums or multiple discs to a single album?  I am metadata OCD and freely admit it!

[XCop5089]

26 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

 

I'm not familiar with PerfectTunes.  Did you do all of that with the unregistered version?

No. I purchased Perfect Tunes, together with the dbPoweramp suite of CD Ripper etc. for the purposes of ripping my entire CD library (3977 albums) to my Aurender N20 SSD's (2 X Samsung 870 EVO 4TB) in WAV format.

 

I really hate Apple iTunes or whatever it's called these days, which is the default, whenever I load a CD into my Buffalo Blu-Ray ripper. 

[XCop5089]

5 minutes ago, SirAtilla said:

 

Glad this worked out for you!

 

But I have to ask are those "The Best Prog Rock..." different albums or multiple discs to a single album?  I am metadata OCD and freely admit it!

It's a three-disc compilation album!

[SirAtilla]

34 minutes ago, XCop5089 said:

It's a three-disc compilation album!

 

While this is certainly user choice I would certainly suggest that is a single album not three.  

 

This is where the dBpoweramp formula comes into play I suggested a few posts ago.  As long as metadata is accurate: Album name must be exactly the same and each disc must have correct CD number and total number of discs  Then you can use dBpoweramp to re-arrange the files so that tracks become filenames prefixed by disc - track filename.  

 

Example screen shot of an 11 disc album you can see how Conductor displays the disc # nicely.  I also attached screen shots of multi-disc collection in Yate and also how it looks from a file system standpoint.

 

Conductor view:

 

 

File system view:

Editing the album as a full 11 disc set using Yate

 

If community wants more detail could write up something but dBpoweramp has very nice batch processing.

 

 

[SirAtilla]

2 hours ago, XCop5089 said:

No. I purchased Perfect Tunes, together with the dbPoweramp suite of CD Ripper etc. for the purposes of ripping my entire CD library (3977 albums) to my Aurender N20 SSD's (2 X Samsung 870 EVO 4TB) in WAV format.

 

I really hate Apple iTunes or whatever it's called these days, which is the default, whenever I load a CD into my Buffalo Blu-Ray ripper. 

 

You might consider using something other than WAV format.  The downside of WAV is by specification it does not support metadata.  However, modern programs "attach" to the WAV file ID3 tags which is what the Aurender is reading.  AIFF is a version of WAV that natively supports metadata.  

 

More commonly FLAC is a lossless format very well known and supported.  If you want no processing of compression during playback you can adjust in dBpoweramp the FLAC compression ratio.  A FLAC uncompressed file will be roughly same size as WAV.  Apple lossless is another option but you don't have finite control over the compression level during encoding.

 

The Aurender will play any of these formats without issue.  Any existing rips in WAV can easily be converted to another lossless format by dBpoweramp in bulk without needing to re-rip a CD.  PCM to PCM lossless format conversions are easily done.

 

If you ever wonder into DSD land the two types there are DFF (no metadata support) and the more popular DSF format that includes metadata.  I would not recommend PCM to DSD conversions if you can avoid it.  Some Aurenders including your N20 can do DSD->PCM on the fly but would not call this completely lossless and normally includes around a 4 DB drop in volume due to filtering process.

 

 

[CP010]

Well i have my Aurender A200 for 9 months now and happy with the sound. But i see some filter settings in the menu. So my question is what are you using to the A200 owners? Thanks.

[GJo]

50% of my ripped CDs are missing album artwork. What's the easiest recommended method to correct missing album artwork?

 

 

[DancingSea]

10 minutes ago, GJo said:

50% of my ripped CDs are missing album artwork. What's the easiest recommended method to correct missing album artwork?

 

 

Yes, a great bother!  Either pay $54 for Perfect Tunes, or manually add the correct art jpg to the album folder where the file for each album is stored on the Aurender HD. 

[GJo]

4 hours ago, DancingSea said:

Yes, a great bother!  Either pay $54 for Perfect Tunes, or manually add the correct art jpg to the album folder where the file for each album is stored on the Aurender HD. 

Thanks. Purchased PerfectTunes and registered.

 

Now three hours into it.

 

Is it typical for the application to not identify artwork in the original scan, then to require the end user to click "Fix" and wait five minutes for PerfectTunes to return artwork options from which to select?

 

It's going to take me eight hours at this rate, and I only have ~600 albums digitized.

 

 

[koupa]

I use Jriver. You select the album and it shows the images from web. Also you can create a "smartlist" with files having no artwork.

[GJo]

15 hours later, PerfectTunes has Fixed all my album artwork, and is shows correctly within the PerfectTunes application.

 

Now, all my albums on the N30SA via Conductor4 have the artwork of one album. The same album cover on 450+ albums.

 

Super fun.

 

Days like this, I wish I hadn't sold my vinyl 10 years ago.

[DancingSea]

1 hour ago, GJo said:

15 hours later, PerfectTunes has Fixed all my album artwork, and is shows correctly within the PerfectTunes application.

 

Now, all my albums on the N30SA via Conductor4 have the artwork of one album. The same album cover on 450+ albums.

 

Super fun.

 

Days like this, I wish I hadn't sold my vinyl 10 years ago.

Wow, that’s crazy. I’ve experienced quite a few Conductor head scratchers, but nothing like that!  I’ve spent about 4 hours getting my artwork straight, and it’s nearly perfect, but far more work than it should be.   Out of 1400 albums, only around 100 were missing artwork in Conductor even though they had artwork.   I simply dragged the artwork into the Aurender folders. 

 

Aurender really ought to incorporate metadata and artwork editing within Conductor.  That’s a bare minimum ask.  Even the most basic library management software not from a company selling $30K servers has such features. 
 

I use Yate for metadata, it’s free. It has artwork fixing capabilities, though I’ve not used it. 

[stefano_mbp]

2 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

I use Yate for metadata, it’s free

It’s $20 … not expensive but not free

[DancingSea]

Just now, stefano_mbp said:

It’s $20 … not expensive but not free

I have it, was free for me. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, GJo said:

15 hours later, PerfectTunes has Fixed all my album artwork, and is shows correctly within the PerfectTunes application.

 

Now, all my albums on the N30SA via Conductor4 have the artwork of one album. The same album cover on 450+ albums.

 

Super fun.

 

Days like this, I wish I hadn't sold my vinyl 10 years ago.

Did you do a rescan of your library, clean scan or otherwise?