Update October 21st 2019:
Considering:
- the comments of other forum members that the migration from older MacOS iTunes to MacOS Catalina Music worked well;
- the fact that BitPerfect was released on October 10th 2019 without anymore negative comments (neither rectifications on their WEB Site);
- and following Apple’s advise that artwork of large libraries takes time to update;
I did bite the bullet. I ensured that:
- I did not have any vital 32 bit Apps installed, that I needed continue to continue to use in MacOS Catalina (32 bit Apps will not work with Catalina), don’t update in this case (official Apple’s and third party Software developers recommendation);
- I had no third party software utilising iTunes XML files, mostly 3rd party DJ Software (Catalina does not dot nor maintain iTunes XML files anymore it utilises a new data format file), don’t update in this case (official Apple’s and third party Software developers recommendation);
- The iTunes library was organised with all files in the dedicated location (on my system hard disk) by: making sure your iTunes library is on a drive large enough with ample spare space for all your music, than perform the “Organize Library” function with “Gather Files”, which will copy all your audio files into the single library folder;
- Time Machine has caught up with the backup, by performing a backup manually prior to updating the system.
- All my credentials on my accounts are up to date;
- Funny enough there was a Mojave update after the release of Catalina, which I performed prior to updating to Catalina;
- That the System update was performed from the Apple System Preference menu.
Then performed
- the update;
- updated bBitPerfect from the AppStore, had to go to the app purchase page in the App store as it was not listed in the " Update" menu of the App Store;
- opened the four Apps to which iTunes was split;
- when opening iTunes I was prompted to adjust the privacy, security stettings such that Music could access the iTunes folders and share the music as it did prior to the update to MacOS Catalina (for security reasons Catalina restricts access and sharing options by setting the security options to most onerous per default, you can change them back to accessing or sharing what you want);
- ensured that my account settings were correct;
- kept the apps open for ample time to import the libraries from iTunes.
Result:
Everything is there even the artwork (covert) that I had added manually to Albums. No Album is missing, even not those generated with BitPerfects DSD Master. The new version of Bit Perfect (3.2.0) plays all music formats I have as before. in the I decided to update my MacOS as I always tended to do, in order to keep the Mac as up to date as possible and receive support.
Hope this is useful to those who utilise iTunes with BitPerfect as Music Server from their Mac.
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Original post, October 14th 2019
Do not update your Mac computer to Catalina yet if you have a iTunes library!
I manage all audio files in iTunes, my companion for the last 14 years. Bit Perfect allowed me to also manage my DSD files in iTunes.
With the introduction of Catalina Apple split iTunes up in different apps. When I checked the BitPerfect site if an update is available for Catalina prior to updating, I got a red flag warning:
- the author of BitPerfect lost the majority of his nearly 4000 music art works!
- Apple is not cooperative with BitPerfect, new App Store rules
Then I Googled for the problem, there are many reports of people loosing:
- scanned and imported artworks (obviously a lot of work)
- metadata
- complete legally ripped music files
- the import of libraries may take several days rendering the computer unusable, with above uncertain outcome
This is such a déjà vu with what happened to my Aperture foto library.
How disrespectful of Apple to rip their clients of their library properties and data that they established with the well paid Apple hard and software.
How on earth can Apple employ so many geniuses that they need a building as large as the Pentagon and not assign any resources to test the import/conversion of a representative selection of iTunes libraries, which used to be one of the pillars on which Apple grew out to the almighty company they are now.
I have been very critical about PS Audio’s quality on this forum, but PS Audio does not have the resources by far that Apple has.
I hope Apple will fix this with a decent update. Till then I recommend no to update to MacOS Catalina.
I may have neglected signs on the wall, Apple refusing to sell even lossless CD quality let alone high resolution files.
So time has come to rethink digital music server. Multi platform Roon comes to my mind, I will wait what Octave brings.
Maybe I also need to go back to Sony Walkman or other dedicated high res portable players. It will save me paying excessive cost of memory that Apple charges for their devices.
I need to start spreading the risk of loosing information from libraries that I have set up with great care, a lot of time and expensive hard and software. Obviously this means not buying into any more Apple services.