Frustration with iTunes User Interface

[I. G.]

"rather than one (Audio MIDI control panel)"

 

Just this one can be royal pain in the arse if you have 88 96 176 and 192kHz albums/tracks as Apple refuses to let iTunes recognize/set it.

 

[One and a half]

is iTunes and quicktime under windows.

The 32bit windows of quicktime supports WASAPI, however the 64bit version does not, pity cause that's where you can load up on RAM wholesale. The stream from itunes goes through quicktime, then to the Windows Audio drivers, mixers and the like. Itunes under windows is very ordinary, much like Winamp not tuned properly.

 

I haven't experimented when you are playing 24/96 files in windows itunes, but would imagine, you would need to fiddle hardcore to even get close to bit perfect.

Jobs won't make any improvements to this system cause all he sells is 720p and 256 AAC, and nothing higher, unless one fine day he can make some money out of it, the Audio midi setup will remain clumsy for hi-res files, unless you buy an Amarra.

 

In this case, just use itunes for the iphone/touch syncing or to buy AAC music, and use a player that ouptut bit perfect natively under windows (Foobar, Jr River...)

 

[alextanght]

For the cover flow with multiple entry for the same CD is because you have different artist for the same CD (usually a major artist feathering with others). iTune is smart enough to separate them for you to choose by artist, but it is a double edge sword. There is two very simple configuration to solve them.

 

1. You press shift to select all the songs for the same CD, then press Cmd-I to to get info. In the Info tab, you will see a Album Artist, enter the major artist and cover flow will smart enough to collect them into a single item

 

2. If it is a compilation disc, you can have the same approach as 1, but after you just go to option tab and make "part of a compilation" to yes.

 

The different is that if you filter by artists in the list view, compilation album will goes to Compilation section instead of the artist. So for classical CD which is performed by a conductor, I will put his name in the album artist and leave the artist field in comma separated list with conductor and orchester. This make my cover flow and filter by artists perfect.

 

Alex

 

[rayhil]

I thought I'd asked this before, but couldn't find the answer nor can I make iTunes work correctly.

I'm ripping my Xmas collection and I have several discs that are collections of various artists. Rather than sorting in track order, iTunes is insisting on sorting alphabeticaly by aartist. How can I change to sort in numerical track order?

Thanks.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi rayhill - Make sure the track numbers are associated with each track. Then if your sort by album iTunes should sort each album in numerical track order. You may have to remove artists from view (under view options) just to sort everything. Then select artist again under view options to show it again.

 

This explanation may sound like a soup sandwich so sorry if I only confused you more.

 

[rayhil]

Thanks Chris. Unfortunately, I still can't make this work. I've got each track on a particular album appropriately tagged with the track number. I've gone into the view menu (which I have selected to show as list) and gone into the View Options; I've unchecked everything except album and track and still the tracks are sorted within the album alpphabetically by artist. I've also gone into the Get Info (command i) and gone to the sort tab and still can't find a way to have the album sort by track instead of artist.

Any help appreciated.

 

[Daudio]

OP.

 

You can access an iTunes tracks metadata with the 'Get Info' command (from the iTunes menu. context menu. or keyboard) Once there you can see and change 15 metadata fields. as well as lyrics and artwork.

 

And as others have mentioned you can edit metata on multiple tracks at once, by selecting the multiple tracks before the 'Get info' command.

 

Also folders are no problem. Under the 'File' menu is either a 'New Playlist Folder' or 'New Folder' command, depending on version.

 

I use the iTunes folders to organize my artist playlists into genres and sub-genres, and it has worked fine for me so far.

 

As to the sorting of tracks in iTunes, you can simply click on the top of the column you want sorted. So click on the empty cell just above your top track number. click again to reverse the sort order.

 

This is from my iTunes 9.2.1 on G4 Mac.

 

Easy once you know how, and even through I have been a Mac user for a long time, I had to find these iTunes techniques with some work, not as easy as one would hope...

 

Dave

 

[Mister Wednesday]

rayhil,

 

It sounds like you may be having a problem with these "various artists" type albums being broken up into separate albums according to the artist names rather than having all the tracks being grouped under a single album name. Is this correct? If yes, then the problem may be that the metadata for a specific album that the Gracenotes database is providing to iTumes when you're ripping has the Compilation flag set improperly.

 

Check out this article on the Macworld website and see if this solution resolves your problem:

 

http://www.macworld.com/article/144726/2009/12/itunes_compilations.html

 

Hope this helps.

 

Regards,

 

Mister Wednesday

 

[rayhil]

All, my thanks for your help and, ultimately, I think Dave's suggestion. However, it took my 17-yr-old (who doesn't use a Mac) to help me solve this one. Truth is, I'm totally blind and, as a result, I use VoiceOver to navigate the iTunes screen. Unfortunately, while Apple has done a fairly good job with their speech output, there are certain things on the screen that VoiceOver simply doesn't read well. Those empty cells above the track numbers in the list view is one of those things that I simply don't "see" with speech output. Per Dave's suggestion and after reading Mr. Wednesday's link, I asked my son for help. BINGO! He simply clicked on that cell above the numerical track listing and happiness. My tracks are correctly sorted within the album by track number, not alphabetically by artist as before.

When I joined this site well over a year ago, I'd never used a Mac and hated having small braille labels on the cases of my roughly 450 CDs, which gave me very little information about the disc. Chris had suggested a post laying out how I made it all work, but this is not intended for that right now. Suffice to say, I bought a Mac (having never used one before), I learned VoiceOver (which does have some quirks), I've ripped all my CDs, I've gotten them all effectively tagged (although with occasional sighted help from a family member), and I can now playwhat I want all from the comfort of my couch with a bluetooth keyboard.

My thanks to so many of you for all the good information on this site which has helped me reach this goal.

We can now play our Xmas favorites all from a playlist that nicely shuffles a variety of tracks and prepare for another holiday.