tunequest

Volkher at livingwithmusic posted the other day a rather thoughtful treatise against digital music files as a medium. He does a good job of bringing up all the relative shortcomings of abandoning physical media, including the effort required to encode/download and properly organize/tag files as well as the burden and cost that goes into storage and preventative backups. And he's right on the money about picking ...

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Like clockwork, each January means the end of Christmas decorations, the onset of the full desolation of winter, learning the motor-memory of writing a new year and, of course, a sudden, massive hard drive failure. Every year since 2001 it has happened to me, always to my external music drive and always in January. It's quite comical, if you have the right sense of humor. Then it should ...

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Update: The revised sorting feature/problem in iTunes 7.3 and later renders portions of this advice useless. Some of it still applies for Smart Playlist building, but the segregated sorting no longer works. If you're using a version prior to 7.3, go nuts. If you're using 7.3 or later, be warned. In striving for zen-like simplicity while maintaining and extending the usability of iTunes, please follow me as ...

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Update: This problem seems to have been addressed in a recent update to iTunes. The program now stops looking around 100 missing files before giving the warning dialogue. So if you're having this problem, make sure you're using the latest version. :: One of iTunes 7 handy new features is the "sync problems" warning. The screen pops up whenever you try to sync your iPod with your iTunes ...

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When it comes to organizing for iTunes and iPod, classical music is an entirely different beast. Why tie yourself to an inefficient and illogical "album" model when classical works were never meant to be treated that way? iTunes allows you to appreciate individual works as they were conceived and executed: as individual, stand-alone works. :: Example of my tagging structure (click to see full size). I recently ran across ...

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