I have run into two situations in which Audirvana + combines unrelated albums. I’m new to A+ and have a large iTunes library of nearly 2000 albums and more than 26k tracks - not the biggest library I’ve seen by any means, but substantial. About half the files are high-res and I have a significant number of DSD tracks. Because iTunes doesn’t recognize DSD files, I use DSD Master to create hybrid PCM-DSD files that iTunes can play, and BitPerfect to play high-res content including the embedded DSD content of the hybrid files. Unfortunately, the hybrid file format is proprietary and only recognized by BitPerfect, which is a shame. At the time I started using Audirvana +, I kept the original DSD files in a separate folder, but nested within each hybrid album folder inside the iTunes Media folder.
Situation 1: With DSD folders nested inside PCM versions of the same album within iTunes Media, I used A+ folder synchronization with the entire iTunes Media folder. The result was that A+ showed each DSD album as expected, but the DSD albums contained one or more unrelated PCM albums from elsewhere in the library. These were not the PCM versions of the same albums either, but completely unrelated, seemingly randomly selected albums. The album title, artist and artwork were all from the DSD album and if one attempted to get info on the merged PCM album files in iTunes, it would sometimes show the DSD album title, artist and artwork, but most times not. Needless to say, having metadata permanently changed is more than a bit problematic, particularly if I couldn’t remember the original values. I ended up spending several hours, removing the nested DSD folders, renaming them by artist and album title, and placing them in a separate directory outside the iTunes Media folder.
Situation 2: With the DSD files safely filed in a folder outside the iTunes Media folder, I attempted to use direct iTunes import to take advantage of my existing playlists, and folder synchronization to add my DSD files to the same library. Although the prefs dialog directs the user to choose one of the two methods, there is nothing to prevent the user from using both at the same time, so I did just that. The result was that all of the DSD albums again contained files from unrelated albums. Even worse, the individual song artists were from yet other albums and unrelated to the DSD song artist or to the original PCM file artist. Only by searching iTunes by song title was I able to find the affected albums, which were otherwise not visible in Audirvana +. Interestingly, if I added a disc number if none was present to the affected PCM albums in iTunes, those albums were restored to their rightful place in Audirvana’s library. I also noticed that some albums were missing from A+ entirely, or that changing a tag on just one file in an album caused the entire album to disappear completely, even from search.
Conclusions:
- Audirvana doesn’t handle imports of nested album folders inside of other album folders - i.e. albums folders must not contain other albums
- Audirvana can’t mix direct import of the iTunes library with synchronization with folders. This option should probably be disabled, but I would think the ability to use both methods should be considered for a future release. After all, I would think it’s not uncommon for one to wish to import their iTunes playlists and to import separate folders of iTunes-incompatible files
- Audirvana doesn’t handle albums without a specified album artist (separate issue), leading to further problems. Unfortunately, a missing album artist is the rule rather than the exception when ripping CDs using iTunes. Fixing this took hours - Audirvana should handle it automatically.
Has anyone else seen these problems?
Daemon - please take note of the potential for library corruption.
-SteveInNYC