Is there *ANY* playback software out there that caters to the Classical Music listener?

[Talos2000]

I've only recently (less than 12 months ago) switched to Computer Audio as my primary music source. I also have my turntable! I would say that between two thirds and three quarters of my music collection is classical.

 

Computer Audio, amongst other things, enables you to ask questions of your digitized music collection that you could not ask of your CDs and LPs. Once anybody has exposed themselves to the paradigm of selecting the music you want to play by using - in effect - a database query, you just cannot give that up and go back to disks of various descriptions. It causes you to think of your music collection in a number of different ways. For the Classical Music enthusiast, this creates a new class of problems.

 

I think one of the major ways in which Classical Music is distinguished from what I will refer to as (for want of a better term) Modern Music, is that the latter is generally conceived, created, and structured, in album format. How do you catalog the work of Miles Davis, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, The Tragically Hip, Steely Dan? I think most of us perceive the oeuvre of these artists in terms of the albums they created. I also think most of us imagine ourselves listening to our favorite artists in the context of the albums we might like to hear. (I know a lot of people make use of "shuffle mode" playback, but I suspect that is used for passive rather than serious listening, and is perhaps the subject of a separate discussion.)

 

On the other hand, ask a classical music listener how they think about their music collection. Some think of it in terms of the broader styles they prefer (Symphony, Chamber Music, Opera, etc). Others think of it in terms of the great composers they appreciate (Beethoven, Mahler, Stravinsky, etc). Still others might talk about periods (Baroque, Romantic, Classical, etc) or conductors, or orchestras, or performers. I believe that very few think of their music in terms of the albums they own. I believe they think of the album only as a means to access a musical piece which they have in mind. I strongly believe that the vast majority of Classical Music enthusiasts who have switched a large collection of music over to Computer Audio format find themselves struggling with these issues as they think about how their playback software - and in particular their database management capabilities - fails to deliver the experience as fully as it might.

 

I take an example from my own musical collection. I have a CD that contains, among other things, Vaughan Williams' wonderful "Serenade to Music". Suppose I wanted to listen to that piece? You will see from my signature line below that I use iTunes. Well, iTunes allows me to sort by composer, so I can narrow it down quite a bit. But ultimately I have to know which Album I am looking for. I have about 35 albums containing music by Vaughan Williams, and "Serenade to Music" (I have about four versions of it in total) is usually a throw-in piece on an album whose title typically reflects a more major or popular work. In any case, the album is unlikely to be called "Serenade to Music", or to have been filed by me under that title. So I am back to having to know which particular album the piece is on, and knowing that I must search for that album.

 

Now, you can take any specific example and say well, there is this or that obvious workaround. And on each and every individual case that might well be true. But there is no one fix that makes all of the problems go away. I believe Classical Music has its own specific set of needs in playback software, and I have not seen a single software solution that comes close to addressing them.

 

I would like to hear your thoughts on this. Do many people share my frustrations, or am I just a lone voice? Are there any software solutions out there that I do not know of? And also, do album-based music database structures cause frustrations that I might not have thought about among non-classical music aficionados?

 

[Vade_Forrester]

I have the same problem, and haven't found a good solution. So far, I've organized my collection by conductor, then by piece, then by performer. So I have a folder named Beethoven, then inside that folder, another folder named Symphony #7, then inside that, a folder named Carlos Kleiber where the actual music files (plus cover art and liner notes) are stored. That can be a lot of work, plus if you're interested in cover art, can be even harder to deal with; but at least it lets me find most music in my collection. But that doesn't work for albums which are collections of assorted pieces by different composers, like one of the Baltimore Consort's albums.

 

A Windows program called Sonata claims to be designed for classical music collections. I haven't tried it yet.

 

Vade Forrester

 

[jhwalker]

I'm in the same boat - though we have a couple thousand "popular" music albums, we also have over a thousand (and many more waiting to rip) classical albums, as well.

 

In the example you cited above, I'd just enter "Serenade to Music" in the upper right-hand corner Search field, and iTunes would find it in much less than a second - yep, worked

 

But I know what you mean - I wish iTunes had a more robust metadata / library system that made working with classical music easier.

 

[DavidL]

Like you I use iTunes but after adapting its database structure to my needs I find it better than any others that I am aware of.

For me (and I believe many others here) the solution is to adapt the "Album" database field to a new use. In my case album title becomes:

[Composer name] - [Work type] [identifier]: [optional qualifier]

where:

[composer name] is obvious

[work type] could be piano sonata, symphony, string quartet etc

[identifier] could be 'No.3 in C minor, Op.5' for example

[optional qualifier] could be 'Wigmore Hall 2011' for example

I use all the other fields conventionally.

To aid searching I created sub-divisions of the 'classical' genre: early, baroque, classical, romantic, modern and contemporary.

Like you I have several performances of many classical works. Using the above scheme the performer heading is not always sufficient so extra detail (date etc) needs to be added.

With any database definition it is worth spending some time thinking about these headings as you do not want to have to change their use once you've done a large amount of editing of 'album' details!

I have 49000 tracks now and the above approach works well for me.

Hope this helps

David

 

 

[Mark Powell]

I am not recommending it but Windows Media Center, which I have used in the past, allows you to sort by:

 

All can be edited before ripping (then the file attributes take these names) or after (when they don't) For example, you can have as many genres as you want.

 

Album

Album Artist

Track Artist

Genre

Playlist

Album Composer

Track Composer

Year

 

It makes an 'album' by it's WMP column 'album'. This can be useful, and happens automatically, but you can also end up with disjointed bits if you are not careful.

 

You can do searches (I just searched for 'allegro')

 

It invokes Windows Media Player to play.

 

Problem - it does not have nice 'audiophile' options like WASAPI and so on.

 

Advantage - if you alrady have Windows 7 Home Premium or better both WMC and WMP are included, so you can try it out on your existing files.

 

[Paul R]

It's a very real problem, and one with no comprehensive solutions as there as far as I can tell.

 

I admit, I have, like others, taken to a rough standard. In the Artist field, I use a semi-colon separated list of all the composers, and in the Album Artist field, the same for the orchestras, conductors, performers, and such.

 

This allows me to tear the data apart and put it into a homegrown database system, which gives me a cross-reference to what the music system thinks it wants.

 

I've also re-orged the physical library to be far cleaner than it was when I allowed iTunes to muck with it. If an album is completely filled with works by one compose, the top level folder is that composer. If by one orchestra, then that orchestra. The next level is album title, and under that, the tracks. I tried going deeper, but it just got confusing.

 

As a side benefit, that works very well for the much simpler pop and rock music.

 

It's really a very big job. I have only chipped away a small bit here, a small start indeed. I figure if I procrastinate long enough, someone else will do it for me.

 

-Paul

 

 

[wgscott]

I'm not claiming this is optimal, but it seems to be the least painful approach.

 

I use iTunes as a database, and right now either bit perfect or Audirvana Plus for playback, as both fully integrate with iTunes seamlessly.

 

Having done this, I figured it was worth investing some time in getting my iTunes library into shape.

 

I keep all my classical music under the (default) genre of "Classical", and then fill in "Composer" manually with (e.g.: Beethoven). I keep strictly on a last-name basis for simplicity, if possible. I also try to put as much information in the titles as possible, and use the "Grouping" field for "Piano Concerto" or whatever it is (as an alternative to having separate genres).

 

I also freely split "albums" apart if there are multiple composers, multiple symphonies, or multiple anything. So if Symphony 2 and 6 come from the same album, I split them for ease in sorting, but keep the same album art, so that I can visually identify their common ancestry. As far as I am concerned, the fact that they came off the same disc is almost irrelevant.

 

 

[Talos2000]

"... the solution is to adapt the "Album" database field to a new use."

 

Actually, I do something very similar myself (I use iTunes only so I can use BitPerfect). The downside to this approach (if I am understanding you correctly) is that the original "Album" becomes lost as an identifiable object. BTW, I also make use of the separate "Artist" and "Album Artist" fields to hold more helpful (to me) data. I agree that it sure helps, but to me it is clumsy, and falls into the 'workaround' category.

 

For sure, you don't want to spend your life editing and refining your database. I thought my 16,000 tracks was cumbersome but - wow! You have answered one question that was on my mind. Just how big can a music collection get before iTunes gets over-burdened? It seems I have a LONG way to go yet!

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Talos - Look for a complete review of the Sonata server here on CA before the end of the year. It will be the first article from CA's first contributing writer.

 

Here's a tiny bit about her, yes I said her :~)

 

She grew up in Greenwich Village in New York City. She studied the music of Bach primarily with Blanche Honegger-Moyse and Ber Lucarelli. After she received a master’s degree in oboe performance from the Juilliard School, she moved to Norther California, where she discovered the wonders of computers and technology and began applying them to music.

 

 

[r1g]

DavidL has a good option with sub categories. I have done this myself with good results. You may want to experiment with a few other options. I like panned browsing because you can just keep narrowing down your search until you get what you want. Also, file browsing can be very useful. It is just a replica of what ever file system your computer uses. I find it the most useful way to find things before they are properly tagged. Other than that, I feel that itunes is good but very limited. It is really hard to find a good music player. For your mac, you may want to try Songbird. I used it when I have a mac and found it to be a nice upgrade. It has a lot of features and it supports the very popular flac format and gapless playback. I hope this helps.

 

[Talos2000]

Hi Chris,

 

Yes, I just came off checking out the "Sonata Music Server for classical music" thread here on CA. I look forward to reading your new contributing writer's review. She sounds admirably well qualified for the task!... I'm also hoping she finds time to drop by this thread with her thoughts on the subject

 

[curmudgeon]

Amen, brother/sister ... Well over half of my music is classical. Dealing with it is very frustrating in terms of tagging and retrieval. I often want to compare particular movements back-to-back with various conductors and performers. Not so easy. I'm considering a custom D-I-Y approach...

 

My CDs were mostly ripped using freedb or discogs lookups, and the errors in classical listings (especially with freedb) are rife; not quite so bad with other "modern" genres. So getting the tagging right seems to be an important starting place. I generally have ripped with EAC (but am considering trying dbPowerAmp per CA/Chris' suggestions), then store everything on various homebrew Linux boxes (am starting to build a Vortex server now, too) where they serve up music to various Win/Mac client machines/audio systems. Right now I am concentrating on my living room iMac system running, at the moment, Audirvana. As I dislike iTunes, I run it with Audirvana's native "playlist" capability which is very ... basic, shall we say.

 

I have a fairly extensive vinyl collection which I now dusting off after many years, and have started using Windows-only Catraxx http://www.fnprg.com/catraxx/ for cataloging purposes, as it has a great deal of flexibility, with tons of fields and customization potential. It has a built-in player, which I have never tried, as I don't use Catraxx for anything other than vinyl. However, it uses, rather quaintly, an MS Access database under the hood. I have been examining its data dictionary with a possible eye to rolling my own library manager that might use MS SQL Server (my workplace mainstay) or mySQL in a way that could be a plugin or adjunct to my other player software, like Audirvana on Mac and Foobar2000 on Windows. I want to come up with some instantly-available database views (convertible into playlists) somewhat along the lines of the solutions mentioned in comments by vade_forrester, DavidL, et. al. Of course, I am up to my earballs in programming projects (that's my day job, too), and my nights are frustrating enough with time spent on audio tweaking at the expense of actual LISTENING. But that I am even considering this tells you how annoying this matter has become to me...

 

(Incidentally, I also carrying my triple-boot MacBook around the house so I can be "productive" while watching PBS Newshour, etc. and also use its Remote Sharing to control the iMac/Audirvana system -- and trying to run Catraxx with it, but needing a better integration on that score, too.)

 

In the meantime ... kludges, look at Sonata, etc. for me.

 

[Old Listener]

I looked at a number of music player programs when I was starting to move to computer audio about 6 years ago. The JRiver Media Center program was the only program that would let me organize and browse my collection of almost 2000 CDs as I wanted to. (My collection was 60-70% classical music and some broadway musicals and show tunes where composer is also important.) I have lots more CDs now and JRiver is still the best choice for a collection with a significant amount of classical music.

 

JRiver lets me define and use the tags I want to use and define views of my library that fit my needs. (I use Genre, Sub_genre, Composer, Work Name (Album could be used), Artist and version tags in browsing.

 

Here is a screenshot of a view I use for classical music.

http://naturelover.smugmug.com/Other/JRiverscreenshots/MC-12-iTunes-skin-Tag-window/637847056_JrGUm-L.jpg

 

And here is a view for broadway musicals and movie soundtracks.

http://naturelover.smugmug.com/Other/misc/broadwayshowsview/591669132_fy6o9-L.jpg

 

Other views for Pop, Jazz, Rock, folk, Country and Christmas music are a click away.

 

You can succeed in organizing your classical music collection with the right player software and some effort on your part:

 

- You will have to decide how you want to place information in tags and browse using those tags. That plan has to be feasible with the software you choose so expect to do some learning before you plunge in ripping your entire CD collection.

 

- The tags you get from an online tag database will not have the composer, work, performer and movement information placed in tags as you want it. You will have to do some manual fixups. Getting the tags right takes me about 1-3 minutes per CD before i rip the CD. JRiver provides some tools and features that make the job quicker and easier than it would otherwise be.

 

- The JRiver software is currently $ 50. JRiver provides a 30 day free evaluation period.

 

iTunes does provide better support for using the Composer tag now but it is quite marginal compared to JRiver for classical music.

 

Bill

 

 

 

[Miska]

Are there any software solutions out there that I do not know of? And also, do album-based music database structures cause frustrations that I might not have thought about among non-classical music aficionados?

 

Well, I have to first begin by saying that HQPlayer is album-based, while most other players are song-based. And otherwise quite different from the others too, especially regarding library.

 

But at least I listen a lot of classical music and have thus have some features to specifically handle this.

 

The standard library structure is Artist / Performer / Album where "Album" is in case of classical music usually "composition" or "work". There are also filters for artist, performer and album names, either with standard wildcard format or regular expressions. So you can look for artist:"*mozart*", performer:"*amsterdam*" and album:"*symphony*" combination.

 

Note, I usually have performer field filled as for example "Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly" when it's about symphonies.

 

[crisnee]

I have to agree that JRiver is very good when it comes to cataloging and finding albums or tracks. It's by far the best I've come across, but I've only done the PC side.

 

I have probably about 50/50 classical and other. There are many ways to organize and view your music. I like to organize my classical music by general genres (classical, early, baroque, romantic etc), with sub genres (orchestral, concerti, chamber, choral etc.) composer, prominent instrument, conductor, performer(s) and so on.

 

I setup JRiver this way, because much of the time I want to listen to a certain type of music but not a specific piece. This setup makes it easy to find all my baroque choral albums with John Eliot Gardner for instance.

 

Of course you can change your view of your data at will; in fact you can do almost anything you can imagine with Jriver; it's much too complex to describe (it has an excellent search engine too).

 

It's definitely worth checking out if you use Windows. It's the ultimate when it comes to organizational functionality and is no slouch in the eye candy department either.

 

-Chris

 

 

[pacwin]

What is the conceptual distinction between an "artist" and a "performer"?

 

Typically one organizes classical music by ComposerPerformer(s)Album

 

Surely "Artist" == "Composer"

 

There are other issues. HQplayer should be able to read the exact shape of the directory tree where your music files are, n-levels deep and as ragged as you want. At the moment its unnecessarily restrictive you end up setting numerous paths in order to set the root folder. Plus the file system is cached: it can't monitor the filesystem and add in newly added files or browse/expand dynamically the active node of the file tree. You have to do create and destroy manoeuvres in the library. Plus the ever present CD icon even when there is no disc in the drive.

 

Adding "tree" or path is not done on a background thread and ties up the software with a modal dialog without any indication of progress. Navigating to a root folder is done with a tiny non resizable dialog that can only show about ten folders at a time. As for displaying your cover art, there seems to be no chance of that. If your files are not strictly organised 3 levels deep then HQ desktop can't cope.

 

In the Library grid the order is Path, Artist, Album, Performer, in the "transport" view its Artist/Performer/Album/Song and in the playlist its Performer/Artist, Song. If your using the "DSD transport" all you get is the Path repeated in each column of the transport grid it cant read any metadata in the file.

 

[Miska]

What is the conceptual distinction between an "artist" and a "performer"? Typically one organizes classical music by ComposerPerformer(s)Album Surely "Artist" == "Composer"

 

Yes, in most cases artist == composer. Artist as a term can be shared better across genres than composer.

 

HQplayer should be able to read the exact shape of the directory tree where your music files are, n-levels deep and as ragged as you want.

 

It has no problem doing that already, especially when metadata is sourced from the files. You can point it at any point in the tree. When metadata is extracted from the directory structure (as people have requested), last two directories are used for artist/album.

 

Plus the file system is cached: it can't monitor the filesystem and add in newly added files or browse/expand dynamically the active node of the file tree.

 

It caches only to the album level. Reason is that you are not required to be constrained to one root node. For example I have content from:

 

C:MusicCD-rips...

H:HiRes...

\NAS1music...

 

And everything is neatly displayed, so even if you have music by Mozard in all those places, everything is shown under "Mozart / ..." in the library view. Filesystem structure is not visible in the application, it is just like mobile phones (and iPod / iPad) where you don't even know filesystem locations. You just worry about the content, not where it is.

 

Adding "tree" or path is not done on a background thread and ties up the software with a modal dialog without any indication of progress.

 

When you re-scan it is usually so fast that there's no practical wait.

 

Navigating to a root folder is done with a tiny non resizable dialog that can only show about ten folders at a time.

 

Thank Microsoft for that, it's a standard Windows dialog. You get better one on Linux.

 

As for displaying your cover art, there seems to be no chance of that.

 

It is supported in the Embedded version. In Desktop version there's no space for it in the GUI.

 

If your files are not strictly organised 3 levels deep then HQ desktop can't cope.

 

That's bullshit. I have files under roughly 10 different root paths at varying levels of tree depth.

 

There's no relation whatsoever between the library view and filesystem structure.

 

If your using the "DSD transport" all you get is the Path repeated in each column of the transport grid it cant read any metadata in the file.

 

You can edit the metadata in Library dialog. Embedded metadata is currently supported only for FLAC. Support for ID3v2 tags is coming when I have time to implement it.

 

 

...please RTFM...

 

[Miska]

Sorry, forgot one part...

 

You have to do create and destroy manoeuvres in the library.

 

No, you don't need to. You can rescan from any point in the filesystem and it makes sure you don't have duplicates. In fact it makes all the subsequent scans much faster because it looks in detail only those parts that are not yet known.

 

[durufle]

I too am a JRiver user -- it's one of the only solutions I've found that I'm happy with. I found the best way to deal with my classical collection is to add my own meta data.

 

I add the following tags:

 

WORK

ERA

ENSEMBLE

and a few others.

 

Doing so, I'm now able to build menus like:

 

COMPOSER > WORK > ENSEMBLE > CONDUCTOR

Stravinsky, Igor > The Firebird > Montreal SO > Dutoit, Charles

 

or

 

ERA > GENRE > COMPOSER > WORK > ENSEMBLE > CONDUCTOR

Romantic > Symphonic > Mahler, Gustav > Symphony No. 3 > etc.

 

Works beautifully.

 

 

 

 

[Talos2000]

I should mention that I do own J River MC16, and to be honest I do quite like it. The points its proponents make are well received. I must say that Old Listener has pointed out some possibilities that I had not been aware of. In the end, I stopped using it because the sound quality I get under Windows 7 is really a long way behind what I now get under OS/X.

 

 

Also @Miska: "... please RTFM ...". While you might justifiably think that thought many times a day, really you should NEVER talk down to (potential) customers like that. Not even with a smiley face ...

 

[Miska]

"... please RTFM ...". While you might justifiably think that thought many times a day, really you should NEVER talk down to (potential) customers like that

 

There are multiple ways to expand the abbreviation. The one to be used is up to reader...

 

In general, it would be good idea to first at least check the manual of any product before posting claims about it, that's at least what I try to do.

 

 

[Paul R]

How do you guys deal with albums like this one? Here is the base information to start with, pulled off CD Universe.

 

In reality, I would be editing this metadata pulled from multiple sources, including Amazon and Musicbrainz and most likely, the CD Cover itself. Very time consuming, but when done right, very rewarding if accessed by a client that can display the information without going out to the Internet.

 

I opinion that having the client go to the internet each time to retrieve the information is a self defeating exercise. The client will get the cover or something else wrong, sooner or later, guaranteed.

 

Not to mention you might not be able to find the information on the internet again 5 years from now. Or even next month in some cases. I strongly prefer to embed it all if possible, and I stash the information externally otherwise.

 

-Paul

 

 

 

Cirque DuSoleil: Alegria Soundtrack CD

 

Original Soundtrack/Cirque du Soleil: Francesca Gagnon (vocals); Jean Marie Benoit (acoustic 12-string guitar, classical guitar); Howard Forman (electric guitar); Francis Covan (violin, accordion); Mark Langis (double bass, bass guitar); Dominique Messier (drums); Andre Gosselin (percussion).

 

Cirque Du Soleil's Alegria fuses elements of French, Spanish, African, and Mediterranean music into dramatic new-age pieces. Highlights include the title track, "Querer," "Taruka," "Jeux D'Enfants," "Icare," and "Valsapena," all of which recall the theatrical, multicultural appeal of Cirque Du Soleil's elaborate circus performances. ~ Heather Phares

 

Category Rock/Pop Albums, International CDs, Soundtrack, New Age

Label Cirque Du Soleil

Orig Year 1994

All Time Product Rank 16,696

CD Universe Part number 6758290

Catalog number 20007

Discs 1

Release Date Jul 27, 2004

Studio/Live Studio

Mono/Stereo Stereo

Producer Robbi Finkel

Engineer Rob Heaney

Recording Time 61 minutes

 

1 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Alegria

2 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Vai Vedrai

3 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Kalandero

4 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Querer

5 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Irna

6 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Taruka

7 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Jeux d'enfants

8 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Mirko

9 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Icare

10 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Ibis

11 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Valsapena

12 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Nocturne

 

 

Composer: René Dupéré.

 

P.S. This is a real example for me. I bought the album but have not ripped it in yet because of fussing with the metadata. I also used it as an example even though it is not classical, because it has the same kinds of problems, and I wanted to avoid any possible sidetracks about things like "which Strauss?"

 

 

[Old Listener]

Paul, it is your choice. If I were tagging this album, I'd do this:

 

Genre: Soundtrack

Sub_genre: (probably empty)

Composer: empty

Album: "Cirque du Soleil: Alegria" or just "Alegria"

Artist: "Cirque du Soleil"

(Track) Name: "Vai Vedrai"

or "2 - Vai Vedrai"

 

---- comment

With a decent ripping program or tag editor, you only have to edit once to fix all the tracks.

 

If JRiver returned Track names like "2 Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: Vai Vedrai", I'd use the Find/Replace command to remove the common part I didn't want in the tag ("Cirque du Soleil: Alegria: ") from all the track names in a single operation.. Then I'd click (twice slowly) in the Name column in the track list for track one, make the remaining changes and press the down arrow to move to the next track where I can edit that track's Name tag. Keep editing the track name for each track until you finish the last track.

 

With the right tools and technique, getting the tags right is quicker than pouting about having to do it manually.

 

Bill