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Topic: Searching for PC audio player (Read 8212 times) previous topic - next topic
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Searching for PC audio player

I've asked and gotten help specifically with foobar before here but I'm feeling like it isn't working for me as a solution. Its playlists really mess up my ability to do what I want...

I have a large collection of audio files (FLAC and 320kbps MP3) that I keep on a separate internal HDD. This is in addition to shelves of CDs and records. I have always simply used Windows Explorer because I keep everything organised by artist and then with subfolders for chronologically ordered albums.

Because of a huge amount of jazz and pop vocalists, I have a lot of directory structure that looks like this...
Artist - Labels (corresponding to years spent during career) - Albums (Chronologically)
But with others it's just Artist - Albums and that seems to mess with finding (at least in foobar) any organisational GUI that works for me.

That organisation system doesn't play nice with a lot of software out there. I don't use playlists at all. I find them pointless for my use. I listen to albums in their entirety 98% of the time and never shuffle my music except for the odd time when I listen to one song and then just search for another. (This, like random web browsing, can last hours if you're not careful when you have a massive collection    )

The thing is that I'd really like some kind of GUI that could be the equivalent of skimming through record/CD shelves so I could look at album covers while I search for what I want and then clearly see the album I'm playing and its cover when I'm playing it while looking at other album covers in my library. Can anyone recommend a software I can use? I used to use Winamp but the GUI is awful. Then I've tried all these other programs I've read about (media monkey, musicbee, foobar) but they're ALL playlist and Windows library based. Nothing is just a simple GUI mixture of Windows Explorer and physically flipping through records and CDS. And no, foobar can't do EVERYthing. This simple thing I want, for example, is something that no foobar add-on is capable of doing.

I'd love to hear any suggestions. Thanks!

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #1 –
Are your songs tagged (is the artist, album, song, and artwork embedded in the file)? 

If you songs are tagged, the physical organization on your hard drive isn't important.  I think most MOST players can do what you want if your music is tagged and you take an advantage of those tags...

Quote
The thing is that I'd really like some kind of GUI that could be the equivalent of skimming through record/CD shelves so I could look at album covers while I search for what I want and then clearly see the album I'm playing and its cover
iTunes seems to default to something like that.  I only use iTunes to sync my iPod so I haven't tried to customize it, but it shows the artwork and I can sort by album, artist, song title, or whatever.

I  normally use Winamp for playing music on the computer.  It can show the artwork as you browse the library.  It's very configurable and I don't remember the defaults, but I have a panes for artist, followed by albums, followed by songs.  Or, sometimes I start with genre, followed by artist, etc.  But, I can easily sort by anything and if I select "all artists" I can see all songs in my music library, etc.  Or, I can sort by year, to see all songs from 1960, etc.  Winamp can show the artwork, but I usually turn that off because it takes up too much screen space.  (Except, it does show the art for the currently-playing song).

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #2 –
Quote from: DVDdoug on
Are your songs tagged (is the artist, album, song, and artwork embedded in the file)?
Yes, I'm really meticulous about making sure anything I ingest into my computer gets tagged with my defaults in mp3tag almost instantly.

Quote from: DVDdoug on
If you songs are tagged, the physical organization on your hard drive isn't important.  I think most MOST players can do what you want if your music is tagged and you take an advantage of those tags...
What I'm finding is that most players don't have the ability to show you a visual representation of the organisation you may use in folders in Windows. You see, the folder tree structure I'm talking about isn't something I can tag albums with. My Sinatra collection on my computer is one of several perfect examples of this. It's basically like this... I won't show the whole tree because it's an enormous collection

-Frank Sinatra
--Capitol
----UK Remasters (21 albums in this collection, each in a folder)
----MFSL remasters (16 albums in this collection)
----Unreleased and promo singles
--Columbia
--Reprise
--RCA

Each album title in each label is tagged like this: (chronological order number)-(title) - (release year)
So imagine how many album "01-XXXXX" I have and how annoying it is when they're all stacked together. The inability to show albums by their subfolders means a lot of these programs simply complicate my music. Sorry about the lengthy explanation but it was the only way to properly describe the situation. And you know, maybe there really is nothing better for me than using Explorer. I just really like the idea of a GUI and not having to "Select All3 and then run in a program like Winamp and not getting to really see any artwork without constantly switching in and out of folders. I think I've figured something out now in JRiver that works quite nicely though.

Simmered down to basics, I'd like to see the following columns:
Column 1: Artist names alphabetically
Column 2: The folders for each artist when selected in column 1
Column 3: The albums in whatever folder is selected in column 2

Then somewhere else on the screen...
- a detailed 'playing now' with the album tracks and info on the currently playing track. Big album artwork.
- being able to look through that column database seeing artwork without having to do anything more than double click to hear a song or select a whole album.

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #3 –
Have you tried Boom?

http://perkele.cc/software/boom

It's not quite what you want, but I'd never heard of it, and it's really simple. It won't give you visual browse, but it will give you simple folder/file browse without playlists right there in the player.

If it would show folder.jpg on the "outside" of the folder, it would be perfect for our house.


Quote from: tinpanalley on
This simple thing I want, for example, is something that no foobar add-on is capable of doing.
Blimey, you're brave. Red rag to a bull, and all that...!


Cheers,
David.

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #4 –
Quote
Artist - Labels (corresponding to years spent during career) - Albums (Chronologically)
I don't know what you can do about the label, (or "folder") since these are not standard tags, but Winamp can certainly show Artist/Album and then the songs by year, which will put the albums in chronological order, except for Greatest Hits albums where the songs were released over a number of years.  (I tag the songs from compilation albums with the year of original release, not the year the compilation was released....  I also use the original release year for music originally released on vinyl.)

Winamp tells me I have 38 Rolling Stones albums (which is the most by any one artist).  That's really NOT an overwhelming list to scroll-through.  So 38 albums is the "worst case", and the next "most popular" artist in my library shows 23 albums.

I can find (and start playing) any album in a matter of seconds.  If I want to play a song and I don't remember the artist, it might take a little longer.  But with the songs in alphabetical order (about 15000 songs), I'm pretty sure I can find any song in less than 30 seconds. 

Quote
So imagine how many album "01-XXXXX" I have and how annoying it is when they're all stacked together.
What???  Most albums have unique names...  The exception is I have several albums titled "Greatest Hits", or "Anthology", but it's easy enough to re-title the album as "The Eagles Greatest Hits", etc.

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #5 –
I run Music Player Daemon (mpd) which manages and plays my music, and use GMPC (Gnome Music Player Client) to control it. GMPC has an album view mode which shows the album art of each album, sorted by artist.

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #6 –
Quote
Artist - Labels (corresponding to years spent during career) - Albums (Chronologically)
I don't know what you can do about the label, (or "folder") since these are not standard tags, but Winamp can certainly show Artist/Album and then the songs by year, which will put the albums in chronological order, except for Greatest Hits albums where the songs were released over a number of years.  (I tag the songs from compilation albums with the year of original release, not the year the compilation was released....  I also use the original release year for music originally released on vinyl.)

Winamp tells me I have 38 Rolling Stones albums* (which is the most by any one artist).  That's really NOT an overwhelming list to scroll-through.  So 38 albums is the "worst case", and the next "most popular" artist in my library shows 23 albums.

I can find (and start playing) any album in a matter of seconds.  If I want to play a song and I don't remember the artist, it might take a little longer.  But with the songs in alphabetical order (about 15000 songs), I'm pretty sure I can find any song in less than 30 seconds. 

Quote
So imagine how many album "01-XXXXX" I have and how annoying it is when they're all stacked together.
What???  Most albums have unique names...  The exception is I have several albums titled "Greatest Hits", or "Anthology", but it's easy enough to re-title the album as "The Eagles Greatest Hits", etc.




* I don't really have 38 Rolling Stones albums...    Some of these are audio from video concerts or tours where I've treated (and titled) different cities as different albums.  And, I usually have a duplicate full-continuous-concert version with "full concert" tacked-onto the album name.

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #7 –
Quote from: tinpanalley on
The thing is that I'd really like some kind of GUI that could be the equivalent of skimming through record/CD shelves so I could look at album covers while I search for what I want and then clearly see the album I'm playing and its cover when I'm playing it while looking at other album covers in my library.


?

I can do this with Foobar.

I can't show a screencap right now,  but when I open F2K I see:

scrollable album art library (ordered as they are in a directory view) is in  left panel, currently playing album track info in  the middle, currently playing album art on the right panel.  text playlist is also visible.

this requires plugins like graphical browser, and colums UI, which I'm not sure people use any more... but I do. ;>

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #8 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Have you tried Boom?
I have. There are some things that are too simple, even for me.
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Blimey, you're brave. Red rag to a bull, and all that...!

Honestly, find anything that people use in massive numbers and you'll find an equally large percentage of those users doing so because it's what everyone else uses. I don't think anything should be looked at as unchallengeable no matter how brilliant people think it is.

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #9 –
Quote from: DVDdoug on
If I want to play a song and I don't remember the artist, it might take a little longer.  But with the songs in alphabetical order (about 15000 songs), I'm pretty sure I can find any song in less than 30 seconds.
Quote
So imagine how many album "01-XXXXX" I have and how annoying it is when they're all stacked together.
What???  Most albums have unique names...  The exception is I have several albums titled "Greatest Hits", or "Anthology", but it's easy enough to re-title the album as "The Eagles Greatest Hits", etc.

Ok, I see why you're confused. I tag ALL my songs and albums with a number system that I tried (failed) to explain before.
ALBUMS: I tag all albums with numbers before the title chronologically. Why? So that when I copy the album title to the folder, all folders in the artist's root folder are in order. Also because I like seeing at a glance which album I'm listening to in the discography of the artist. I enjoy this method of understanding the artist's discography because it helps me "relive" in a way the artist's records as they were released.
SONGS: I tag all songs with numbers so I can see at a glance which track I'm listening to with respect to sides or whereabouts the song is on the album. I find organisation and ordering of album songs really interesting and I like to know where songs sit in a track list. It's especially interesting with vinyl to see where things were placed. From a practical perspective as well, I've had several media players over the years and they didn't always list the track number so I got into this habit somewhere around the time I owned my Rio Karma.
So, naturally, I can't look alphabetically. I just get all the thousands of 01-'s and then the 02-'s, etc etc etc. I HAVE to see folders. Like looking at the genre sections of my CD and LP collection, it's my only way of getting around my music.  Crazy, perhaps, but it works for me.

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #10 –
What you could do is have the album (title) tag and (track) title tag as most people use them, but have your custom album number and track number as separate tags. When creating the filename from tags (I highly recommend having a file name convention that you can auto create from your tags!) you just concatenate the two together to get what you like.

Then the tags are searchable in the normal way, while your file+directory structure is organised in your special way. (You're not the only person who does that btw).

Just an idea. Though I'm waiting for krabapple to show how you can do exactly what you want in foobar2k. Or anything else.

Cheers,
David.

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #11 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
...have your custom album number and track number as separate tags...
Ok, I totally get that. Interesting. And in fact, I already have all the tracks tagged with the track number tag, but how would I create a custom album number tag? Do I do that in mp3tag? Also, remember, I actually want the title and album to show their numbers the way they are now. I may have accidentally made people think I wasn't happy with not being able to search alphabetically. It's fine to me. I don't really search alphabetically. Ever, really.
(Unrelated: my optical mouse is stuttering like crazy when I move it. Absolutely infuriating...)

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #12 –
I've been using NI Traktor since ...






I also like how's it in WMP as well though it's more than audio player ....

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #14 –
Quote from: tinpanalley on
The thing is that I'd really like some kind of GUI that could be the equivalent of skimming through record/CD shelves so I could look at album covers while I search for what I want and then clearly see the album I'm playing and its cover when I'm playing it while looking at other album covers in my library. Can anyone recommend a software I can use?


How about a combination of software?

A music database software http://www.collectorz.com/music/features.php , to browse your database as shelves , and then send your selection to your player of choice.

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #15 –
Quote from: eahm on
Try 1by1 ("the directory player"): http://mpesch3.de1.cc/1by1.html
Winyl also, Library based but you can browse by folders as well: http://vinylsoft.com/ (this skin is great too: http://vinylsoft.com/forum/index.php?topic=8497.0)

Goodness, both of those look great. 1by1 is the best combination of a simple player and Explorer-type browsing.
Winyl looks good too. I like the GUI but I wonder if it will show you your music in the folders you have.

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #16 –
Quote from: tinpanalley on
Goodness, both of those look great. 1by1 is the best combination of a simple player and Explorer-type browsing.
Winyl looks good too. I like the GUI but I wonder if it will show you your music in the folders you have.

Glad you like them, I didn't make any of them but I use them sometimes and suggest them to friends and relatives. I only use foobar2000.

You can go on any parent folder with 1by1 then press F3 and Enter and it will show all the music inside the subfolders, I think it's the best directory player out there.

Winyl shows the music in the folders only after you add the library (kind of cheating, foobar2000 and others do that too).

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #18 –
Quote from: tinpanalley on
Quote from: zeremy on
How about a combination of software?
A music database software http://www.collectorz.com/music/features.php , to browse your database as shelves , and then send your selection to your player of choice.

This is actually a pretty brilliant idea. Hadn't thought of it. But Music Collector is paid, right? I've heard of it before.


Yeah it's paid , but there is a trial.
I used it in the past , when you said "shelves" I remembered it's bookshelves style.

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #20 –
Quote from: zeremy on
I used it in the past , when you said "shelves" I remembered it's bookshelves style.
Yeah, I was just trying to give a visual for what I was looking for but I'm glad you remembered it because I ran the trial a few years ago and was blown away by how cool it was.

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #22 –
Couldn't a foobar UI layout or skin do this?

Searching for PC audio player

Reply #24 –
Quote from: tinpanalley on
Quote from: Phixion on
Couldn't a foobar UI layout or skin do this?

If there is one that can, I can't find it, nor can people over at the Foobar forums.


I don't really understand what you want.  I sort my library by directory, and I use only two "playlists": the playback queue and the library selection viewer. It sounds to me quite a bit like what you are after, but most likely I am wrong.


Apart from that, I find the Artist - Label thing quite counterintuitive. In the very least, if I were to organize by "era" this way I would prefix the label by a number, e.g. year for debut on label, to get the eras in rough chronological order.

Rolling Stones, The/1964ff Decca/1964 The Rolling Stones
Rolling Stones, The/1964ff Decca/1966 Aftermath
Rolling Stones, The/1964ff Decca/1972 Milestones [compilation]
Rolling Stones, The/1964ff Decca/1980 Solid Rock [compilation]
Rolling Stones, The/1964ff Decca/1996 The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus [compilation]

Rolling Stones, The/1971ff Rolling Stones Records/1971 Sticky Fingers
Rolling Stones, The/1971ff Rolling Stones Records/1981 Sucking in the Seventies [compilation]
Rolling Stones, The/1971ff Rolling Stones Records/1991 Flashpoint [live]

Rolling Stones, The/1993ff Virgin Records/1993 Jump Back: The Best of The Rolling Stones [compilation]