Audirvana Plus iTunes integrated mode vs straight Audirvana

[DancingSea]

Aloha,

 

I purchased Audirvana Plus today. In the manual, it states that the audio quality will suffer in iTunes integrated mode vs straight Audirvana mode, but does not elaborate. In what way does the sound suffer?

 

I ask because I prefer the iTunes management system and am curious what I may be sacrificing (in theory) by using the integrated mode.

 

Thanks!

[Musicophile]

In stand alone mode the computer can be better optimized for playback than with the "efforts" required for the ITunes integration.

 

I haven't checked in a bit but when A+ library capabilities initially came out I didn't find the difference to be huge. That said, you should really give A+ library features a try.

 

I still use iTunes to feed my iPhone and for folder structure management. Therefore, any new album I purchase gets added to the iTunes library and I them so an iTunes sync with A+.

 

But as of them I exclusively use the A+ library for a number of reasons: the remote app is improving on a regular basis, the integration with Qobuz lossless streaming is seamless, and you can integrate non ITunes compatible file formats such as DSD easily.

 

What j haven't done but plan to do for the future is to use the incremental tagging abilities that A+ offers (especially for classical music).

 

Damien, the developer of A+ is currently working on v 2.6 which promised significant improvements under the hood for library management. I'm curious to see how this will further improve the experience, although on my SSD fitted iMac, the experience is very smooth. Some users with their music files on a NAS reporters some isolated issues, but beyond that A+ library management works really well.

 

Give it a try. If you don't like it, you can always go back to ITunes integrated mode. I don't think you will though.

[DancingSea]

Thanks for the advice. I have done the A+ library sync. It correctly sync-ed my playlists, all except for one. Its a significant one that has 9500 songs. I tried changing the playlist name in iTunes, created a new playlist with a different name and added the songs - no matter, the play list in A+ shows zero songs. Any ideas?

[DancingSea]

Another bother is that the playlist in A+ mode seem to have no rhyme or reason to how they are listed in the album mode. They aren't in alphabetical order, seems quite random. I'm accustomed to everything making sense in iTunes and find A+ mode chaotic.

[wgscott]

I cannot hear any difference at all.

 

You can customize how Audirvana sorts stuff.

[Hailey]

I cannot hear any difference at all.

 

You can customize how Audirvana sorts stuff.

 

What type of music do you listen to?

[wgscott]

What type of music do you listen to?

 

Maybe my operating system is insufficiently revealing.

[Hailey]

Maybe my operating system is insufficiently revealing.

 

Really I wasn't suggesting that. And I'm sorry if you took it as a prying question.

[wgscott]

Partridge Family, Nirvana and Philip Glass.

 

How about you?

[DancingSea]

I've been unable to adjust the view options in A+ mode. Have tired the View option in the menu bar, get the pop up menu, but the results have been strange. In album mode, selecting "album artist" for the sort does change the order, but the results are very random and certainly not sorted by album artist. In track mode, am unable to change any of the view settings. Any ideas?

 

For now, I have to use iTunes to browse, once I find something that grabs my interest, then truck over to A+ and search for it.

[wgscott]

I've been unable to adjust the view options in A+ mode. Have tired the View option in the menu bar, get the pop up menu, but the results have been strange. In album mode, selecting "album artist" for the sort does change the order, but the results are very random and certainly not sorted by album artist. In track mode, am unable to change any of the view settings. Any ideas?

 

For now, I have to use iTunes to browse, once I find something that grabs my interest, then truck over to A+ and search for it.

 

One of the problems (or at least one that I had) was that "Album Artist" is often an empty tag, or filled in with all sorts of bizarre junk. iTunes will make an on-the-fly substitution, putting in the contents of the "Artist" tag into an empty "Album Artist" field, in order to generate the behavior you have come to expect.

 

I bit the bullet and manually edited all of mine manually. More details here:

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/itunes-album-artist-tag-classical-music-and-filesystem-hierarchy-25788/

[wgscott]

For now, I have to use iTunes to browse, once I find something that grabs my interest, then truck over to A+ and search for it.

 

This sort of grew out of an Applescript Bob Stern wrote for automatically loading a selection from iTunes into Audirvana +

 

Controlling Audirvana in Stand-Alone Mode with iTunes and Remote.app - Blogs - Computer Audiophile

[DancingSea]

I checked my iTunes library, and yes, the "Album Artist" tag is sporadically utilized. Would be helpful if A+ had an option to have it use the "Artist" tag for all of the "Album Artist" fields. Manually filling out the "Album Artist" tags is a daunting prospect. iTunes itself neatly arranges all of my albums according to the artist, not sure why A+ can't automatically do the same. For me, this makes A+ stand alone mode file system only marginally useful. I'll continue to browse in iTunes and then search in A+ for my selection. I bought A+ in hopes of avoiding these sort of Amarra type issues!

[wgscott]

This helped me: Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes - Artist to Album Artist v3.0 - Official Download Site

 

You know you can just drag and drop from the iTunes window into Audirvana's playlist, right?

[Hailey]

Partridge Family, Nirvana and Philip Glass.

 

How about you?

 

Mahler, Shostakovich, Brahms, Prokofiev, Monteverdi, Mozart, Bartok...

 

Stuff written by dead white guys.

[Musicophile]

I checked my iTunes library, and yes, the "Album Artist" tag is sporadically utilized. Would be helpful if A+ had an option to have it use the "Artist" tag for all of the "Album Artist" fields. Manually filling out the "Album Artist" tags is a daunting prospect. iTunes itself neatly arranges all of my albums according to the artist, not sure why A+ can't automatically do the same. For me, this makes A+ stand alone mode file system only marginally useful. I'll continue to browse in iTunes and then search in A+ for my selection. I bought A+ in hopes of avoiding these sort of Amarra type issues!

A+ uses the album artist and album title to uniquely identify any given album, which from a methodology point if you think about it makes a lot of sense. But if you think about it, many albums can have several different artists.

 

Itunes indeed is more tolerant towards "sloppy" tagging. But at least to my opinion these are not "Amarra type issues" (I love Amarra's sound, but their software really has to many issues), but a well intentioned attempt for building a more systematic library. In the end, a music library is a database like any other, and any record (and an album is an individual record in the database) needs a unique identifier.

 

In any case, sounds like you're happy with Itunes, no real reason to switch to the A+ library system then. But should you want to at some point, consistent tagging indeed is what is required (but I've found so far that the effort invested in getting the tags right is usually really worth it).

 

Specifically for the album artist issue, there is a relatively easy solution with this DougScript, which automatically fills the album artist tag for you in Itunes.

 

Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes - Artist to Album Artist v3.0 - Official Download Site

[DancingSea]

Thanks, I'll check out the script to see if I can make it work. I like the sound from the A+ stand alone mode, thus a practical way to fix the tags would be a great solution.

[Musicophile]

Thanks, I'll check out the script to see if I can make it work. I like the sound from the A+ stand alone mode, thus a practical way to fix the tags would be a great solution.

Obviously I decline all liability :-) but so far DougScripts worked like a charm for me. You still may want to try the script on a handful of files before applying it to the whole library, and obviously, always back up your library beforehand.

[wgscott]

This helped me: Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes - Artist to Album Artist v3.0 - Official Download Site

 

At least we can share liability.

 

Do one album at a time.

[Musicophile]

At least we can share liability.

 

Do one album at a time.

 

Didn't want to steel your idea but had missed yor post.

 

To the OP, I disagree with Mr Scott, no need to do one album at a time, once you've tested the script works.

 

I've run Dougscripts on my full 100K plus library and they usually just work (it may take a bit though).

[DancingSea]

I was able to get the script going. Spent a couple of hours or so making sure all 22K+ tracks had the album artist field entered, doing 100 - 200 tracks at a time per the script instructions. Things are generally much better organized in A+ standalone mode, though for some reason the "U's" and the "V's" appear before the "A's". Yet most everything is now in the proper order - thus thanks very much.

 

Another oddity is that utilizing the first, and recommended method for syncing to the iTunes library, incremental updates take a really long time. For instance I added 200 tracks to the iTunes library. A+ whirled for a couple of hours and only synced about 100 and was still processing. Is that normal?

[Musicophile]

What tends to take a lot of time is not the tracks itself but the playlists especially if you have a lot of smart playlists in iTunes. I hope Damien eventually finds a way to speed that up (or deactivate the syncing of playlists altogether)

[DancingSea]

I'm just syncing the library, not the playlists. Still takes a really long time. Seems faster to delete the library and reload the whole thing. Grrrrr

[Musicophile]

I'm just syncing the library, not the playlists. Still takes a really long time. Seems faster to delete the library and reload the whole thing. Grrrrr

 

How do you manage to sync the library only?

[DancingSea]

To my understanding from reading the manual, there are two modes of syncing. The first is automatic and only syncs the iTunes library, it does not sync playlists. It's the recommended sync mode. The second sync mode is manual and syncs both the library and playlists from iTunes. I tried that mode but it would not sync large playlists, only smaller ones, thus I went back to the first mode and do the playlists myself.

 

I'm new to A+, but that's my understanding of the manual, in which I may be entirely incorrect!