Apple may soon be shutting down iTunes, sources claim

I used Audirvana for a long time and know it well. I have no interest in going back there.

Roon’s app on iOS is what I use for music selection etc. but I use an infra-red remote for play/pause/skip and volume control. Unfortunately my household situation often requires immediate changes and it’s far too annoying to have to wake up and activate an app for those functions.

As for HQplayer etc, I’m out of the software tweaking game. Like I said above, my strategy is to get bit perfect data into the DS via optical and I’m very very happy with the results.

Talking to people about one perceived sound quality is like trying to decide which color of blue is the best. It really is a waste of time. If one doesn’t like the sound of Roon buy/use something else. There are other products that compete against Roon. There are also plenty of all in one steamers. If that is your fancy go for it.

While partially true, it’s also true that that these types of forums exist to share experiences of, and give idea about, sound quality and various ways to explore and achieve it :+1:

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Right and we are bound to disagree about things. That is what it is all about - having a discussion. Sharing different ideas. Sometimes you change your mind, sometimes you change someone else’s mind. Sometimes you stay the same. It is part of the fun as we are all trying to learn more and find out about new things which might enhance our enjoyment.

We all use forums like these for different reasons. If one of your reasons is to hear others tell you about “great” sound quality and ways to achieve it that’s great. There isn’t anything wrong with that. That’s just not for me.

There seems to be general agreement that as far as sound quality of playback is concerned there are much better options than iTunes, so what’s the problem?

My concern is that currently iTunes is the best, bug-free, proven software for curating a music library (editing metadata etc) and is no slouch for ripping CDs (OK its error checking may not be the absolute best but there has to be something seriously damaged on a CD for it not to give a good rip). Indications are that the new ‘Music’ app will retain this curating function. We shall see…

There seems to be general agreement that as far as sound quality of playback is concerned there are much better options than iTunes, so what’s the problem?

Actually with Bit Perfect installed Itunes playback is fine. I’d say the biggest problem with Itunes nowadays is that it is pretty poor in terms of library management and over time Apple have made it less and less intuitive to use. It is also very slow and quite buggy compared to the alternatives.

My concern is that currently iTunes is the best, bug-free, proven software for curating a music library (editing metadata etc)

I suspect you have not tried the alternatives or maybe you are referring to free software. Compared to even the cheapest paid software Itunes is worse in all of those regards. Also Itunes is known as being incredibly buggy and one of the worst pieces of software Apple has ever made. Having used it (or to be more correct put up with it) on multiple machines since it first came out I can confirm that. I would suggest trying one of the alternatives with just a few pieces of music to see what I mean.

Thanks for the response. I guess I’ve just stuck with software that works (for me) and not looked further.
Can you please recommend a better option? I’ll give it a try and report back. Incidentally I use MinimServer for playing music from my library. I have found this is also excellent at finding anomalies in the meta data of items in my library - far better than JRiver for example.

You must be here for the dinner recipes, I totally get it :innocent:

I guess I am. please pass along any that you have.

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I have tried nearly every Mac music playback and library curation software in creation. To the way my brain works, iTunes remains the best library management software. I find Roon confusing on the library management front, the “focus” feature doesn’t jibe with me at all. Even when I subscribed to Roon, curation was done nearly entirely in iTunes and sent to Roon. Audirvana and Amarra also have their library quirks. Amarra is a buggy mess, and Audirvana does much better, but for me, is not as fast as iTunes for curation.

With iTunes, I can easily organize my 45K track library the way I want, and view playlists by artist, album or track. ITunes has been very stable for me over the years, rarely an issue. I manage DSD content in a separate folder outside of iTunes.

The only thing that has come close to iTunes on the library curation front is Swinsian which is actually more advanced than iTunes.

The problem with iTunes is sound quality. So with Roon/ HQPlayer, HQPlayer alone, Amarra and Audirvana, I use iTunes as the core library manager and those apps for sound, all representing a significant SQ improvement over iTunes.

I hope Apple’s new music app doesn’t become only about streaming and does away with local libraries. For me, that would be tragic.

But I do understand why Roon is so popular, they’ve created an overall excellent GUI that far exceeds anything else on the market, by a wide margin.

Best would be Roon if you can afford it but if you are not having any problems with Itunes you could just use it with Bitperfect - I’m not sure about Minimserver but maybe that already does the bitperfect playback for you? You could also use something like DBpoweramp for bitperfect ripping and then just import it into Itunes. Then even if at some point you have to switch you should just be able to import all your library into something like Roon.

All they are doing is splitting iTunes into 3 separate apps - music, tv, podcasts. I expect the Music app to be exactly the same the iTunes app without the non music stuff. Nothing to see here…

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Yeah, it’s not going to be some alienating change.

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Agree absolutely as to merits of current iTunes for library curation. More information on net indicates that the Mac version of Music does not have a column browser facility which I regard as essential (not in the beta release I understand).

Hmmm, loss of column browser would be super annoying.

I use iTunes with BitPerfect, the iMac on which I have nearly all of our CD’s ripped is our music server through the entire house and for al our mobile devices.

They are just splitting iTunes up, all functionality will remain. I have no problem with buying some songs lossy, if I like them I go to the shop to buy the lossless CD. Much cheaper then paying license fees and buying hyped software packages, that change randomly in support and popularity.

I have been looking into alternatives and read part of this thread. The platforms and certainly cost structures are very complicated.

I definitely do not want to get into paying license fees for music. In principal I have always paid for the music I listen to, unless it’s explicitly offered for free. But not license deals.

I will patiently await what music will offer. If I feel deserted by them there is nobody stopping me to desert them, considering the amount of users that think the same way, Apple has too much to loose.