Gone and Going

This is a great time to look back and reflect on the last twelve months. Before I turn my thoughts to the coming year a couple of things stand out about 2014.

The first is the decline in highly compressed music. We spent much of 2013 persuading clients that Apple Lossless was the way to go, but last year little persuading was needed. Lossless is now the standard people are asking for and I can't remember the last time I had to even debate the issue, Apple Lossless it is and that brings me to the first "farewell" from 2014 - the USB memory stick.

Ok it's over ten years since we started ripping CDs for people but the first batch of music went back on some CDs. Then we took the step up to DVDs, wow, seven times the capacity of the humble CD. For some years DVDs did us proud but as collection sizes grew and small disc drives became affordable that's been the standard way to get music back to our clients. Yes, there have been one or two people with collections small enough to fit onto a USB thumb drive but we've never really found a need for the 8Gb and 16Gb units although we've used a couple of 32Gbs.

So, at the end of 2014, it's hard to think we'll be using any memory sticks for CD ripping in 2015.

The second observation concerns the type of units our clients are buying. At the start of podSERVE all our clients wanted their music on Apple iPods. Although that remains a strong thread so many of our clients now focus on Sonos systems. And that's what I've been thinking of when returning music to clients. The units they're buying now are predominantly wireless. Even the once ubiquitous Bose Soundock has gone Bluetooth. Who needs a mess of cables when it can be avoided?

In 2015 I'm expecting to see fewer hardwired systems in clients houses. I'd also like to see the back of all those wires we have festooned about our houses to charge and sync our portable devices.

Vinyl for Sonos

Right from day one we've been asked if we can rip vinyl LPs to digital files. Yes, we've tried, no we can't do it economically with decent quality. In the early days our clients just wanted to listen to music on an iPod. Today so many of our clients want to stream their music to in-house systems such as Sonos.

So how about a turntable that plays vinyl albums and can connect to your Sonos?

Flexson, an accessory maker for the Sonos range, has introduced a record turntable which will stream music direct into your Sonos network. Called the VinylPlay it costs around £330 (cheap for a decent turntable) and apparently it will also rip music from albums into digital files - good luck with that. And they have a YouTube video which explains all, enjoy.

http://youtu.be/s6hUDBzJ3cA

The Worst Data Grooming Case Ever?

Last week I collected a Western Digital MyBook Live from a client who has been experiencing major problems with their music. Let me paint the picture - a busy family, husband, wife & children, they have a "family" Mac along with a wired home featuring Sonos music streaming through their home. Sensibly they have a NAS drive installed to store their music and most importantly make it available through Sonos when the family computer is switched off or otherwise engaged. In my opinion, it's a sensible set up.

Yet its gone wrong, the whole thing has become a mess which is why the NAS drive is here with us while we try to unpick the problems and put it all right.

We have been through the NAS, along with three large folders of music copied off their Mac. We've put a first pass of the entire collection into iTunes on one of our Mac Minis and this is what we've found. The total music library is just over 1.2 Tb in size and iTunes has found 3,115 albums. That's a pretty big music collection.

There are 58,619 tracks - sadly a large number which are either not labelled other than some sort of track name, tagged with an album name such as Unknown or Untitled or something that isn't right. There's a fair sprinkling of missing artist names, and one family member has tried to tackle the problem with classical music composer names by replacing the proper artist / performer field with the composer's name.

Our software has made a first pass to tackle the issue of duplicated tracks. As soon as you look at the library in iTunes you can see duplicates and the first count is 16,493 duplicate tracks. Around 25% duplicated. No wonder they've been complaining that "Sonos has gone wrong, it keeps playing the same track over and over again". Actually Sonos is fine, they are so many duplicated tracks in their library it just sounds like its playing the same one over, and over again. You can see the same track listed four or more times.

So the nest step is to remove the duplicated tracks. Our software deletes the tracks from the main music library and deletes it from the hard drive at the same time, rather than empty trash after the operation. Although this sounds simple we're erasing some 400 GB of data and that's going to take a long, long time. So what do we do tomorrow?

Once the music library has been shrunk down we'll go through the album names. We have to do that more or less manually and already we can see yet more duplication. Someone has added a chunk of CDs and helpfully added the word "NEW" before the album name, despite there being many of the same albums in iTunes already. You can see many more examples of duplicated albums being added by someone not checking to see if the music was there already. Actually iTunes does check if an album is in your library when you insert the CD but it can't if the tracks have been ripped already and added as files with a different album name.

Once we've brought some further consistency to the album names we'll take a look at performer names, another area of rich potential for duplication. Tidy up album and performer names then again look for duplicates and that will probably weed out another 500 - 600 tracks.

I've also made a note to look at Genres. This library has 98 entries under the genre heading. That's not in itself a problem but there are some typos - Hip Hip for Hip Hop, Opera and Operae - so we'll fix those. In terms of time, not a big task. What will take longer is fixing the classical composer names and examining the consistency of applying genres to classical music. If you're going to split-off some tracks from Classical into Chamber or Opera you've got to be consistent for the whole of the work in question. No point in having the first album of an opera in "Opera" if you leave the rest in Classical.

And yes, when we've done all that we run de-duplicate again. Why? We operate a pretty tight definition of a duplicate track - we remove only those tracks that have the same name, same track number, genre and appear on the same album. As we tidy up more tracks fall into the clutches of the de-dupe sweep.

Then we're on to checking for album art (on a library this size, filling gaps could be another afternoon's work) and trying to fill in the gaps in artist and album names using some of our "secret sauce". When this is all done we'll have a simplified and slimmed-down library, primarily one without duplicated tracks. The final step will be to delete the originals from the MyBook drive and copy it all back. Sounds simple, but that in itself can be a 48 - 72 hour chore. At least next weeks tube strike has been called off so we'll be able to take the drive back on Monday or Tuesday.

Pirates, Players, Music Lovers, Thieves and 24 Bits

Today's Times has a brief announcement suggesting that very soon there will be a major announcement from Apple. A new music file format. One that cannot be copied. Really?

Just think about that, and wonder if there might be a grain of truth behind a different story.

If there's going to be a new music file format Apple are going to be spending money - in all probability a lot of money. Why? To confound those dratted pirates? Well they might be, but piracy is hardly Apple's problem in that it doesn't really impact their revenues. If anyone takes a hit it's the music labels. This is an area I follow closely and I haven't heard any squawks, neither parrot nor pirate, from the industry for ages. It may all be happening behind the scenes but I don't see any evidence that the industry is trying to get Apple or anyone else to do more to control piracy. I think it's an issue whose time has come and gone.

Would it even work? I remember when labels issued CDs that supposedly couldn't be copied or wouldn't play in a PC. You might also remember the trouble Sony got into for injecting code onto peoples PCs when they played a music CD. As a CD ripping service we've worried about our business being abruptly curtailed by some techno sleight of hand that rendered our service invalid. There's been nothing so far.

So I don't think Apple are spending money to protect tin pan alley, nor wipeout those of us who are left in this market. But I do expect, and very much hope, Apple are working on something and if it's what I suspect it is, then it would need to be very secure.

High quality digital music that goes beyond CD quality. Specifically 24 bit music.

At the moment whether you rip your own CDs, use an outsourced CD ripper, or buy music from iTunes Music Store (or Amazon or Spotify etc.) you get music that is recorded using a calculation based on 8 bits of data storing each part of sound. If you could make that sound using more data, using 24 bits, then think how much better the sound would be. It would take digital music into a new league of high quality audio. But ....

But one, the files would be huge. The trend over recent years has been to move to much less compressed music as storage costs have fallen. Bigger drives abound in laptops, home PCs, network attached storage and bigger portable devices like the iPod Classic. But haven't Apple just killed the Classic, leaving only the iPod touch and the iPhone as portable devices? They have, and of course some while ago Apple introduced iTunes Match which for a modest cost gave you 256 kbps music stored on Apple's computers and probably streamed to your player over the internet.

Imagine the impact on Apples server farms if they had to hike their hard drives up by a factor of three or four to handle 24 bit music.

Imagine the cost of having to stream from Apple HQ files that are hogging three times as much bandwidth.

But two, where do you get source 24 bit music files? Not from the CDs you buy from Amazon or your local music shop, even if you still have one. Existing CDs are all 8 bit and you can't transfer from 8 to 24. The only place you'd get that high quality music is from the labels who have the original tapes. Remastered you'd then have a source of 24 bit music.

But three, the music industry loves money for old rope. Remember when we went from vinyl LPs to cassette tapes, and how we were expected to buy tiny plastic boxes of music to play in the car or on our Sony Walkmans? Remember when CDs came out, and the industry hoped we'd all be replacing vinyl and cassettes with CDs? All of these were happy days for the labels, tsunamis of cash from the music loving public without the need for anyone to troupe back into the studios to re-record all those millions of tracks we know and love.

The stars are combined in heavenly aspect. Better quality music via 24 bit files is the next big thing. The labels would love another excuse to urge us all to re-buy all that music we know and love.

But four, they'd go ape if they thought there was anyway we could copy that music or use it to create super-CDs to share, and in so doing defeat their revenue hopes. Equally Apple would keep their place at the head of the music quality queue.

However - for this to work for Apple they would ideally want a music file that squared the circle. A format that would be 24 bits in quality, but equal to or ideally even smaller than current iTunes Music Store / Music Match files (8 bit, 256 kbps AAC). I can't see the labels allowing access to their source material without a technological guarantee that the new files couldn't be copied.

So, my conclusion is that Apple will shortly announce a new music file format that is higher quality and more compressed. Maybe they're even talking to the nice folk who made all those DVD / CD drives we used to have in Apple systems. Sony. They have a technology called ATRAC.

How to Download the New U2 Album - Songs of Innocence

First you'll need to have an iTunes Store account. Opening an account is free so if you don't already have one, that's your starter. Assuming you do have an account it's pretty simple.

Open iTunes and hit the Store button on the right of your screen.






Look for Quick Links, arrowed above, it's on the right of the screen.



After you've clicked that, as well as anything else you've purchased, you will see that waiting for you is the new U2 album. So click on that and it will start to download from Apple to your computer. To get the new album onto your iPod or iPhone simply sync with your computer in the usual way and you'll be ready to enjoy U2.

Sonos + NAS + iTunes = Trouble

Sonos users who store their music on a NAS drive may be falling foul of an iTunes glitch.

This is what can happen. You point your Sonos Controller to the iTunes music library on your NAS and you do the same with iTunes. At the outset all may be neat and tidy but after a while things change, let's suppose you face a problem of some duplicate tracks.

How do you fix this? Naturally you'd go into iTunes and highlight the tracks in question, then delete them. When you do this everything will look neat and tidy, with just a single copy of the track / album. When you play music, the deleted tracks don't play, just as you'd expect.

Then you log into your music via Sonos, when you find that much to your surprise the duplicated tracks are still in your music library. How did this happen? Well, I recently found that the way iTunes operates in handling drives such as a NAS, is that in effect although the files leave the iTunes database the files remain on the NAS drive. My understanding is this applies only to files stored on a NAS (rather than an internal hard drive, or a directly connected USB drive).

How can you get round this. First, you should check to see if music you delete from iTunes does actually leave the NAS. I've only tried this on a couple of makes of NAS and so can't confirm it happens on all systems. If your music is being left behind by iTunes I think you have three options. One is to manually go through your folders on the NAS and manually delete the files that are duplicated. Second is to copy all your music off the NAS onto another (internal or directly connected HD), run iTunes against it, then copy your files back onto the NAS - but for a large library will take a long time using this method.

The third option is to use some software that recognises this and has a feature that directly deleted the tracks on the NAS you want to erase. The program is called Dupin and its available from Doug's Applescripts. You'll need to look at the options for deleting tracks and select the route for direct deletion without going via the trash can.

Mighty Red Face Here at NAS Central

One of the reasons I give to people for outsourcing their work, for example getting us to rip their CDs rather than do it themselves, is that we make the mistakes first - so you don't have to. Indeed I may well have said that to the client who has asked us to spread the musical love across his three properties, each of which has a NAS drive. His simple requirement is for a copy of his music to be placed onto a hard drive, then copied across to other drives, which will be installed inside the NAS box in each location.

We've had some problems with this. Initially we'd been given some Seagate drives to use but after much trial and far too many errors we established that the drives, whilst OK to use inside a PC or a free-standing USB enclosure, simply weren't up to the task of running trouble-free in the NAS enclosures he's bought. After much toing-and-froing we now have a collection of Western Digital Red drives, tailor made for a NAS. Very good they are too. We're in the process of copying 1.5 TB data from one of our PCs across the LAN to the NAS.

On Saturday evening I was talking to a friend who manages a major international network for a financial services company. We talked about what I was doing and I mentioned this project, which for us is rather unusual, for him rather routine. I told him how long each transfer is taking and ran through a list of the kit we're using - mainly variations on gigabit ethernet. He thought for a few moments then said it shouldn't be taking anywhere near as long as that. Doing some mental arithmetic out loud he thought it should take around half the time the first transfer had taken.

Why?

"Have you got your wires crossed?" he asked. I didn't think that possible but first thing this morning, before we started on disc 2, I was checking cables and connections. The router plugs were all present and correct as were the plugs into the NAS and the PC into which the USB hard drive with the source files was plugged. I even made sure that USB 3 interface was functioning OK, which it was. The only thing left to check was the quality of the cables. All looked fine and blue, no sign of mousey rodent attention, and the two key cables ran neatly under a mat. Two one side, two coming out the other. For some reason I thought it best to lift the mat and see what was underneath. To my amazement the wires were (physically) crossed, and the effect of the odd footfall on the mat was that at the crossover point the cables were compressed. I took a close look and they both looked fine and undamaged but when I put them and the mat back I made sure neither ran over the other.

When I started the data transfer I didn't think it would make any difference, but something has punched the go-faster button. Just as my friend predicted, data transfer seems to be running twice as fast as it did first time across. So if you have any data wires running anywhere in your home or office, just check that transfer rates aren't being artificially choked by a crossed line or two.

Sonos - Major Upgrade

Sonos have just announced a major update to the features of their product line - you no longer need the bridge unit to connect their mesh into your home network. Yippee. Why is that of any consequence?

First, it saves you money. You were being forced to buy a box that did next to nothing for you. As the name implied it was simply the bridge from your home data network into Sonos and their proprietary mesh network. Second, it's yet another box, something else to go wrong, another set of wires, another thingy to dust.

Mainly its another element of complexity removed from the equation. Over the last few years I've become a frequent visitor at several London houses where the owners had "lost" their Sonos system thanks to the bridge failing. It's never been a hardware failure and usually remedied in a few minutes but it's a weak link that all too often fails.

Restoring the link is counter-intuitive. You have to make the link work and then crawl around the house bringing each bit into play. We've got the hang of it but it took a while to realise what the game was. Maybe this was all OK when Sonos was a product sold by premium suppliers whose hand maidens of audio technology would lovingly massage their boxes into life - for a fee - but today Sonos are pitching the same consumer market as Apple. Sonos needs to play nicely with everyone else in the home technology market, this is a big step towards that goal.

Automatically Add to iTunes?

How do you add music to your iTunes library? Well, pretty easily, we do it most days and when we complete a project we brief clients on how they can do this themselves. These days most of our digital music goes back on a small USB hard drive but the process is the same if you’re loading from a data CD or data DVD.

“Add folder to library”. It was in iTunes at the outset and in the first how-to notes we supplied with the first set of CDs we ripped some ten years ago. Reliable, proven and I don’t think we’ve edited our instruction sheet nor had anyone say it was difficult to follow.

A couple of years ago iTunes introduced a new folder which it creates along with your main iTunes music library file. It’s called Automatically Add to iTunes and there’s no escaping it. So, why? And what use is it for you? Why would you need a second way of adding music when the first works so well?

Let’s tackle the how first. Anything you put into this folder will be checked and then added to your iTunes library the next time iTunes is opened. As its a data file you can use normal tools such as drag and drop to get files across. Then just open iTunes, the rest is done for you.

More complex is the why?

In many ways its easier. You just drag and drop. If you have files from multiple sources you can scoop each group up, copy them over and away you go. If you’re restricted by the number of USB connections it is straightforward to copy several batches of files rather than plug in each unit and run through the Add folder loop.

It’s tolerant to breaks. I found this myself a couple of weeks ago when a lightning strike nearby caused our power to trip out. Not only did I need to go back to the beginning with Add folder but you’re never quite sure if the process completed properly.

You can start and stop. Not sure the files came across? Just drop the lot again and let the operating system sort out if there are any duplicates.

You don’t need to worry about file types. Just stick everything into Auto add and let iTunes sort out not just what goes where but also what should and shouldn’t be in iTunes. You can see any orphan files, they get left in the Auto add folder after you open iTunes. If you inadvertently include a Word document iTunes will leave it be.

You know the files have reached their destination. With add folder I’ve sometimes had a nagging doubt that it worked OK. Actually it had but Auto add offers a handy, comforting, open view of what has happened. I like the now you see it, now you don’t method.

Of course you don’t need to constrict yourself to music files, this method will handle movies and podcasts too. Just drop them into the magic folder and let the computer sort out the details.

I’m very tempted to revisit our advice to clients on how to load music. In fact i bounced this off a couple of friends over the weekend and got an unexpected response. Scepticism. They thought this was so simple, so foolproof, that it was almost too good to be true. Well then, go on and give it a try next time you need to add anything to iTunes,

iPod Classic - the ideal player for CD ripping

Over the years I've consistently said the iPod Classic is the device to buy for the serious music lover who wants as much music as possible at their fingertips.

Capacity is the most obvious reason, particularly if you have a large music collection and/or music ripped at a high quality level, such as Apple Lossless, then the lower capacity devices just don't enough storage space. However I've also felt, from entirely subjective listening experience, the Classic just sounds better than the Touch or even the iPhone.

Well I can believe my ears, there are differences between the Classic and other devices. The Classic has a better digital-to-analogue converter (DAC) and more effective amplifier for the earbuds. Even though the underlying music files may be the same using these two components will deliver a far better listening experience. So, if you're thinking about investing in a new iPod you might want to snap up an iPod Classic PDQ, they might just be replaced later this year by another device.

iTunes Phishing Scam

I've just checked my emails and seen that Google has placed in my Spam folder a message that appears to be an invoice from iTunes for the cost of some downloads - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire - and in a nice touch, in brackets, unabridged. Total value of my supposed purchase - $289.90. Must say I liked that little touch, the supermarket psychologist's "just under" price point.

Thankfully the ever watchful Google reports other users believe this is a phishing fraud and indeed the body of the text suggests if I query the transaction, or believe my "account" has been hijacked I may indeed be asked for financial data.

Two giveaways for me. First, I can't imagine Apple or iTunes Media Store ever allowing anything out of its grasp without pre-payment. Second, the sender's email address is a tubarao.unimedsc.com.br address.

If you get anything like this, don't respond, if you can flag it to your email host that it's definitely spam / phishing. 

Equalizer

Last Monday I took a break from CD ripping to catch up on an outstanding chore, sorting out some scanned 35mm slides. I knew at the outset it would take all day so I decided to use iTunes as the source of entertainment to stave off the mind-numbing boredom of the task.

I spent the morning listening to various podcasts and streamed internet radio stations. Although it was fun, for a while, to listen to early morning local stations in America just after lunch I turned to what the iPod / iTunes ecosystem was designed for - music. We've just finished a library of 750+ CDs for a client so I dipped into that from the NAS drive we're running just now. I was using my Mac with the Soundsticks attached, a set up I love almost as much for how it sounds as for its looks.

Let the music play. But my attention was fading, my eyes were tired and the thought of cropping a couple of hundred more scans was less and less appealing. I wandered over to the iTunes equalizer settings. The control panel appears under the Window command in the top menu level. It's worth pointing out what this doesn't do, which is to alter any of your digital music files, nothing is changed.

The equalizer intervenes between your ripped music and your speakers and it massages the sound you hear. It allows you to fine tune how your music is played so you get sound playback that's better than the bog-standard settings. At the top you'll see some pre-programmed options designed to suit jazz, rock, classical music and so on, plus others to adapt to your system such as small speakers which I think works well on a laptop. Below that there are sliders which can boost or fade sections of the sound spectrum held within your digital files. You can also create your own pre-sets if you find a particular setting that works well for your music, your hi-fi / speakers and of course your ears.

So I played and fiddled. I tried the classical setting against Exile on Main Street, then to be impish I planted Hip-Hop on Haydn. I found myself fiendishly amused, well against image editing anyway, and the time slipped by. It was a couple of hours well spent.

Just one thought. I wonder if its possible to fix an equalizer setting to an individual track or maybe a genre. It's a powerful tool, certainly one I've neglected in the past.

iPod Earbuds to BOOM?

I've been to London a couple of times this last week, once by train and then by car. A couple of things struck me.

First, as I was sitting on the underground fewer people were listening to music on large ear covering speakers. It seemed too that more people were using the white Apple earbuds. Now I think the latest version of Apple's free headset is much better than the original they still lack a lot compared to a bigger and / or more expensive alternative.

Second, the number of taxi drivers with white earbuds. Is this legal? Maybe they mostly use them as a hands free phone system but I did notice a couple of taxi drivers tapping their steering wheel as if they were listening to music. The Apple speakers are quite discrete so maybe the Police and the Public Carriage Office don't notice.

The thought I had in mind is that maybe the tide has turned against wearing anything larger that earbuds in public. OK the sound can be much better but they do make you look a little odd don't they? So I was surprised to read speculation yesterday, repeated this morning in The Times, that Apple are planning to buy Dr Dre, the company that produces the most iconic of the larger than life headsets. Maybe Apple have noticed a worldwide trend that has swept past London, maybe the good Dr Dre has something in the pipeline that Apple admires.

Maybe Dr Dre can work his magic and produce a future version of Apple's own product that sounds much better. Or could it be that Apple want to get hold of the music streaming service that apparently goes with Dr Dre? All will be revealed - or not - in a few days.

CD Ripping & UK Law

So, at last, it is to happen. In the next few days we will all be legal. Say goodbye to worries and fears.

It seems hard to believe that just over ten years ago I sat opposite the assembled legal might of the UK's recording industry and was told they'd like to put me (and a few others) out of business. In the following days I awaited stiff legal action, but it never came. CD ripping was a matter of public debate and I kept telling anyone who'd listen that as the process was now very easy, and massively convenient, the great British public would do it whatever the industry said.

Then a few months later senior figures in the industry said that while they still held to the view that CD ripping was strictly speaking a breach of copyright, they would take no action provided it was purely for personal use. So away we went, and along with millions of ordinary people we've been ripping CDs ever since. Despite their grave concerns when we met in London, I don't think anyone in the business would say the humble Apple iPod and iTunes had opened the floodgates and drowned an otherwise healthy industry.

That's how it's been, a kind of legal stalemate. A decent truce which i think has benefited us all. Well today I heard on the BBc that next week the government will introduce legislation to legalise "format shifting" providing it is for personal use. Which I think is very sensible, so well done the good and the great.

Sonos - iTunes - Out of Sorts

This afternoon I was at a client's premises looking into some problems with their network and how that was handling music streaming. The client asked me to look at an issue that was puzzling him and it concerned music on his Sonos controller, compared to his iTunes library.

He showed me his Sonos hand held controller and accessed his Bach music. Right at the top of the list were two tracks that were obviously out of order. When we crossed to the Mac with iTunes, did the same search and looked at the result. A very different result. It was a trip down memory lane for me, back to my early days in IT when as a programmer you had to keep in mind a thing called "sort order".

I've deliberately put "sort order" in quotes, but if you saw that phrase among others, sorted alphabetically, where would you expect it to be slotted? In the good old days It manufacturers took different views and looking at the Sonos display it was obvious that the Sonos view is that single quotes and double quotes should come at the top of the list, like this -

'A
"A
A
B
C and so on.

Looking in iTunes it's clear Apple have set up iTunes to ignore any distractions such as the single or double quotes. So the track title will appear in the place it would be in if it didn't have those marks. Clever, would have saved me hours and hours all those years ago.

So if you have an iTunes / Sonos environment and you're experiencing some sort oddities take a look at your track names and album titles. My client's library is huge (2,700 albums) and I found four albums and 12 tracks that started with ' or ". It only took a few minutes to edit out those unnecessary characters and now iTunes and Sonos sort in harmony. Lovely.

iTunes - The Hidden Gem?

We've had some huge CD ripping projects since Christmas, today we complete an 1800 CD music library. The last few tracks are making their way across to the NAS drive now. It's a huge library covering what seems to be everything in the popular and classical catalogue. So, how does the owner of such a large music library get to enjoy the full benefits of their music? Time for the hidden gem in the iTunes system.

The Genius playlist facility. Here (in overview) is how it works. Highlight a track you like, hit the Genius icon, and the intelligence of Apple's computers will create a playlist for you based on that track. Once done you can re-order the list, delete items, and of course save the list. Saving allows you to create another list and access the previous list from the menu. As with any intelligence Apple's genius learns, and you can prompt the system to update its analysis of your music when you add new tracks to your library.

If you log into the iTunes Music Store after the Genius function is enabled you'll notice their brain has assembled some new tracks you might like. Cynics will say this is just a merciless sales tool, others will find it a clever way to find new music.

But there's more .... Genius Mixes. After your library has been scanned the Genius brain will create a set of mixes for you, just hit the icon for a selection of your music in the theme shown on the mix label. All done for you, as if by magic.

Any down side? Although you don't have to pay to use Genius you do need and iTunes Music Store account which requires an Apple ID. That's a pretty simple process. When you switch on Genius you'll be taken through the Apple small print and you need to understand Apple will have some summary data about your music library. Apple doesn't use the data for anything other than this process and it doesn't collect any more personal data than this, but you do need to be aware of this. Also, the process takes time and data is exchanged over the internet so you'll need a link and maybe some patience.

Aside from that this strikes me as a great way to tackle big music libraries and uncover some great tracks nestling in the hidden recesses of your music vault. Give it a try.

Data Grooming In Practice

Classical music lovers are quick to appreciate the benefits of our data grooming function, particularly in standardising classical composers names. Here's snippet of what this can mean in practice.

In a few minutes this afternoon we ran through just three composers - Bach, Mozart and Chopin - and reduced the total number of composers by 23; how? It seems amazing how many variations get submitted when music lovers would be perfectly happy with a single surname. So we see christian name followed by surname, surname then christian name, same variations with one or two initials. It's rare but it does happen that someone thinks it's a bright idea to have both initials and christian names.

Perhaps the oddest construction is adding dates. OK, it is interesting and I'm sure some people find it relevant but do people really get confused with some other Chopin? Is the years of birth and death vital to enjoying the music he composed? Well, if you are going to add dates be consistent - in the same album some tracks had the dates while some didn't and one track had the dates in brackets - but with the closing bracket missing.

The consequence of this is that iTunes, or any other music management system, thinks each of these variations constitutes a different person and you the listener have to scroll through each of these names to find the music you love.

What Does the Little Cloud Symbol Mean?

Always happy to answer questions and we get many phone calls to resolve issues with CD ripping or other aspects of digital music. Last week I ran through a Q&A with a client day by day, over email. He's away on business so the stuttering conversation was the result of flights and time differences. Me, I remained stuck here in rain soaked Brentwood.

Q: What does the little cloud symbol with a down arrow mean in iTunes?

A: This indicates tracks that have been purchased from iTunes Music Store against the account to which that computer is linked, but haven't yet been downloaded.

Q: How did I make these purchases? Don't remember doing it and wouldn't they have downloaded when I bought them?

A: OK, couple of ways. maybe after buying the tracks the computer you were working on lost its internet connection. Or the transmission got screwed up. Alternatively you could have made the purchase from an iPhone or an iPod Touch. The tracks would have been sent to those devices over their data link, then synced with your computer later.

Q: Wouldn't they sync when I connected my iPhone or whatever to the computer at home?

A: I don't think so, I think syncing purchased music only goes one way, from iTunes Music Store to one of your five authorised devices.

Q: Would the symbol have anything to do with iTunes Match?

A: No, and you don't have an iTunes Match account (at least you didn't when I was with you last week).

Q: Do I have to enter a password when I buy music from iTunes Music Store?

A: I think that's optional. You can turn on one-click purchasing that side steps that, so anyone can make a purchase if that's set that way.

Q: So that explains why I've bough stuff from this Bon Jovi. Can I get a refund on music I don't like?

A: No, Apple doesn't do refunds.

More Bits?

Talking about quality yesterday, and how CD ripping has changed since we started. Gone are the days of persuading clients to move up from 128 Kbps AAC or MP3 files, squeezing music collections onto masses of CD-Rs then onto DVDs. Today's standard is Apple Lossless delivered on a small USB drive.

So what about 24-bit rips?

At heart the source of our digital music libraries hasn't changed, that being the CDs issued over the years. Just to be a little technical, the music on those discs have been mastered from an analogue source using computer software which expresses each note as a digital value, stored in 8 bits. The big "complaint" about CDs and digital music is that it loses the detail, the warmth, the "feel" in the process. Something that doesn't affect vinyl. Suppose you upgraded and converted music using more bits to represent each sound, then you'd get back the elements that were lost. Well, that's the argument and indeed there are now a number of high quality music streaming or download services which are built on 24 bit sound.

Why don't we rip at 24 bit?

First, if we just ripped from the typical CD there would be no benefit. As an 8 bit source there's no way you can get back that which was lost when the CD was created. Second, you'd need 24 bit friendly devices to store, manage and play back the music. That isn't available in iTunes, the iPod or even a system such as Sonos.

Would we rip in 24 bit? Yes, we would, even if the only justification were to future proof our clients collections. However true 24 bit music libraries would require re-mastered CDs, better ripping software, plus storage and replay systems to take advantage of all that extra data. That's not going to happen any time soon.

The Worst Music Mess?

“Is this the worst mess you’ve ever seen?” It’s one of our most frequently asked questions, usually posed when we’re called onsite to deal with a home entertainment issue. In most cases the problems aren’t massive and it’s pretty easy to find a polite way to sidestep the question.

Except on Monday. By a county mile I cam across the worst mess I’ve ever come across.

I’ll give you a flavour of the issues by describing the hardware. A PC, an iMac, a Sonos system with ten zone players. Next to the iMac were three iPad devices - two Classics with stick on labels, then an iPod Touch in a labelled box. Nestling amongst the Sonos boxes were three iPod docks, and yes, each dock had its own iPod Classic.

Then I was told there was a Mac Mini, and sure enough next to the Sonos boxes and the router, in a basement cupboard, there was a little silvery box with a tray containing a flip up screen, keyboard and a mouse. Then I saw the WD My Book Live NAS drive.

How did this mess come about? Here’s the history. Initially the client had a PC and naturally they put their music on it. A while later they decided to move from the PC to the iMac, their music was copied across by the Apple install man. Using the Mac resulted in a larger music library on the Mac, and a stack of classical music CDs ready to be ripped.

Not wanting to rip the CDs themselves, and the Sonos installer not being prepared to do it for them, they hired a student to rip the CDs. The Mac Mini was bought to give the student something to work on, hence that unit.

While the student was ripping the CDs they decided to install the NAS drive because the client didn’t want to have to leave the iMac on when (in due course) the Sonos system was linked up. However once the Mac Mini project was completed nobody seemed to know how to get all the music onto the NAS drive, so various genres of music was downloaded to its own dedicated iPod Classic. Each iPod was planted in its own Sonos dock, so that the in-house music system had something to broadcast.

Where can I begin to describe the problems the household had with all this. First the music ripped onto the Mac Mini had vast gaping holes - none of it had genre information attached. As the Mini didn’t connect to the rest of the home network none of the music on that could be shared, it couldn’t be accessed on the iMac, it couldn't be put onto any of the other iPods. As the iPod Classics driving the Sonos system sit in docks all day, and the docks are in an airless cupboard they frequently seize up. When that happens nobody can access that genre of music in the house until some kind family member does a hard reset. A problem that’s happening more and more often, iPods simply aren’t meant to run all day every day.

The client doesn’t know how to add music, there’s effectively a berlin wall between the Apple iMac in-house and the Sonos system. They have a bag of new music they’d like to add but if they add it to the Mac Mini somebody has to stand in the cramped cupboard ripping CDs. Oh, and as the Mac Mini daren’t be connected to the internet, all track data has to be entered by hand.

Maybe I’m being picky but despite the effort that had been invested in CD ripping (including some poor soul who had stood ripping 400+ CDs onto the Mac Mini) the music had been ripped to Apple AAC at just 256 kbps. Now that’s more than fine for an iPod on the tube but a massive Sonos investment real ought to be driven by higher quality music, Apple Lossless.

The way ahead?

After some head scratching I think the place to head towards is one where all the family’s music is stored in a single place. That should be the NAS drive. How do we do this? Well the Mac Mini has been dragged from its subterranean lair and the music has been removed to another drive.

As the iMac is connected to the internet and the home network the music recovered from the Mini will be plugged into that, where we’ll spend a few hours tidying up the resulting music library. Once that’s done we’ll copy that all onto the NAS drive, setting the iMac to rip into Apple Lossless for any music they might rip themselves in the future.

Once that’s done we’ll make sure the Sonos system is connected to the same router as the rest of the system, and that the Sonos Controller program points to the shared drive on the NAS. When that’s been done all the music will be available on each computer or Sonos unit in the home, any iPod could be loaded with any selection of music regardless of genre. When this is achieved the client will have a few iPods and iPods Sonos docks surplus to requirements.

End of the iPod?

Could it really be? Is Apple going to kill the iPod? Well, that's what the rumours have been in parts of the Apple watching blogosphere.

The rationale is pretty much as this - Apple is used to growing revenues across its product line, iPod revenues are falling, so the merciless suits will kill the product. Well .. revenues may be falling but even at a massively reduced level the portable music line makes lots and lots of money for Apple. Today there is certainly considerable overlap between iPods, iPhones, iPads and Apple TV but I for one don't see them as competing, more as complementing items playing roles in the Apple home entertainment ecosphere.

At the same time there are rumours that Apple will refresh the Apple TV product and (maybe) deliver on a refreshed version of iTunes. I can't see it would make sense to drop the world's most popular, biggest selling, portable music player. It would leave a massive gap in the market ready for another supplier to enter. Having digested portable music what then would the next target be?

I can't really see Apple turning their back on the iPod. And I have high expectations for a better Apple TV product, very soon.