Confused ... Absolute beginner

Even if you are happy with the sound, the player is worthless if you are unable to find the album that you are looking for.

How hard should that be if you know the artist’s name?

In my classical music collection, I have more than 50 albums for some artists.

…and you don’t know the composer or the name of the work?

Not being funny but I’d imagine most people know what is in their library and a few search terms out to really narrow it down.

When you have thousands of albums, and box sets that are composed of 10-15 albums of the same artist, without a proper browsing, sorting and search, you waste your time.

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I have in my collection Bach: The Six Partitas by Angela Hewitt .

I was sitting at my desk listening to the album in JRiver but for all the search items I used I could not find that Album in AS – WHY . In JRiver I could find it via server configured views in seconds. I shouldn’t need to struggle to find an album. What am I doing wrong ?

I have 2 versions the 2018 recording and an earlier (1990’s) one , I could find the earlier one but not the later one. The albums have different names Bach: Partitas and Bach: The Six Partitas ,

Explain how I find it ??

I have a large collection and I know “roughly” what’s there but I have library software to help me find stuff …

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I have the same albums of Angela Hewitt. It took me 1 second to find them in Swinsian. It’s a player on Mac that serves me as a library manager for all my players. I just typed “Hewitt bach” in the search box.

Capture d’écran 2021-08-16 à 08.16.51

From here, I can just drug and drop the albums in HQPlayer or in Foobar (Mac) who have a very poor library management… But with AS, it is even impossible to drug and drop something to it.

I don’t need to drop of course to JRiver. It will find the albums as easily as Swinsian.

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Not true, at least for Windows version. Tested with A 3.5 and AS. At least drag and drop from Explorer.

I must have missed that during the trial. Where do you drop them in AS?

Look at the “Artists view” of the screenshot of this other user.

Look how AS sorts the artists.
“L” arrives before “A”, then “U” arrives after “B”, but before “D”…

In the playlist window. That’s how I play music from my computer. Because my computer is too slow and I need to organize things I don’t use the library for local playback, just drag and drop the folder to the playlist window. Works with old versions of Audirvana too.

To drag them to the playlist window, you should first find them in AS.
Give me a screenshot of the place where you drop them from the Finder to AS.

However, even if it’s possible, it can not satisfy me. I wanted a player that has a better sound then JRiver and Audirvana Plus and that has a good library management. Because I have already players that sound great, but whose library management is poor. I don’t need another player with a poor library management.

I’m on Windows. I don’t know if this works for Mac. Open the folder with My Cmputer, for instance D:/Bach, resize one of the windows (AS or Explorer) and drag and dop. This works (or should work) for every player (vlc, foobar, winamp, clementine).

It works also on Mac with VLC, Foobar, HQPlayer… I said that it does not work with AS. You said that I’m wrong, so give me a screenshot of the place in AS to which you can drop your album.

OK, I missed this possibility. But as I said already, it was not what I was looking for in AS. To do that, I have already HQPlayer and Foobar… I don’t need a new player for my Mac with a poor library management. I’ll stick to JRiver and Audirvana Plus.

You are right. I’m not familiar with libraries and I don’t like softwares that checks my folders and use additional resources. But I admit that libraries have great advantages so I’m planning to change my behaviour.

With Swinsian that has the best library manager on Mac, you can search not only for the artist, the composer or the album. You can even search by the name of the label. In a fraction, of a second, it will display all your Deutsche Grammophone albums, or Sony Classical albums.
It can even search in lyrics. Just give it two or three words of a song, and it will find it.

And you can combine all these searches together.
You type Dylan and a few words of a song, and it will display the song of Bob Dylan that you are looking for, even if you forgot its name.

If you search for the albums of Miles Davis for the label Prestige. It will display them all. All is done in a fraction of a second.

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This is excellent feedback that AS devs need.

We all use such software in different ways, and the way I select what to play may differ from other users, I may not even notice things ‘missing’.

It’s one reason I’ve always liked being able to search photos/music by a hierarchical directory/folder structure for local files. Doing so for streamed purchases/favourites may be more challenging.

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This is a good idea. AS dev team should check how JRiver applies this feature.
To better answer your previous questions, search is not enough for classical music. Proper sorting is indispensable. If you have a box set, for instance, of Mozart’s piano concerts, it’s impossible to remember who is the conductor or the soloist for each of the 27 concerts. It’s the same for his 41 symphonies.