Gentlemen (meaning primarily PasTim and dolodobendan):
These things matter. A lot. To a very few of us. Among that small group of "us," opinions vary and disagreements are inevitable. Like academic infighting, one of the reasons disputes can be so bitter is that the stakes are so small. I do not have a degree in Physics, much to my regret. What I have is nearly thirty years of experience as music director of a radio station that played mainly classical music. At the start, that is. Over the course of those thirty years, the percentage of time devoted to music decreased to less than half. Managing the library was always a struggle. I tried various software solutions early on, and finally wrote my own in Filemaker. That solution gave me most of the information I needed, with the exception of a good way to distinguish between complete works and excerpts, which seemed to be a universal problem. My solution was also so clunky that entering new recordings was hopelessly complicated and severely slowed down expansion of the library. There are legends in classical radio of people who started working on their own music management software and were, for all practical purposes, never heard from again. I mean that figuratively, of course. They still came to the office every day, but they were never known to do any productive work on anything but their software project, which was never completed. I was almost one of those guys. I suppose I WAS one for a while, but I gave up and went back to my real work with what I had, limitations and all. I have a fair amount of classical music in my library, and I feel your pain. But I'm willing to be content with the limited tools that are available within LMS for managing classical music. I use the sort of workarounds that you have rejected. And there are good reasons for rejecting them. When the title field is absurdly long, because you're trying to combine some representation of composer, title, catalog number, and subdivision (if any), all in one field, it's ugly and often unmanageable. And some important information is still missing. I'm willing to live with the ugliness and unmanageability, as long as it doesn't get in the way of my enjoyment of the music. That's not to say that you should live with it or that it wouldn't detract from your enjoyment. But I would like to encourage you to consider the nature of that rabbit hole before you plunge back down into it. Especially, please try to calculate your chances of achieving what you will consider success and scale your dreams accordingly. I do wish you both (and anyone else struggling with this) the best of luck. I hope you will find a way to achieve something that satisfies you. But please try to remember that it's very unlikely that your solution will satisfy anyone else. Opinions vary. Priorities differ. I hope you can enjoy your life and the wonderful music at your command, even with the necessary compromises. LMS 8 nightly; 3 Squeezelite players connected by powerline ethernet; 5 wireless players connected via Airplay Bridge; 1 SqueezeAmp player no high-end or esoteric audio gear 1 Squeezebox Radio (upgraded UE Smart Radio) now mostly retired ------------------------------------------------------------------------ RobbH's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=67008 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=106488 _______________________________________________ Squeezecenter mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/squeezecenter
