folder and file organization on computer

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I bought an Astell&Kern AK100 II for a bit over $700 about 2 years. This is a high end FLAC player. I highly recommend it. I have it connected to my McIntosh MA-700 Integrated Amplifier and the sound is superb. (It only has one DAC, however.)

Here are some reviews from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Astell-Kern-A...kern+ak+100+ii

They also have a 380 model, but it's around $3,500, which is a couple of thousand beyond my price point for a portable player.

I've a Fiio X3ii that is a very nice music player that also handles FLAC & DSD. I find A&K to be overpriced for what you get. If I had $700 to spend, I'd get a Fiio X7.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

If you're looking into these kinds of players, you could also look at the Fiio X5 Mark II. I have the Mark I, and it's a very good player with a very powerful headphone amp and great sound. The only caveat is that you need to arrange your music in folders. Its tag database is crap if you want to do antyhing else but shuffle by album or genre. Maybe they have improved this with the Mark II model. I don't know.

(Oh, and it doesn't support ReplayGain, so that's possibly a dealbreaker if you like to shuffle through different albums.)

The X3ii, X5ii, & X7 all support replaygain.

[taosaur]

It's been a long time since I even thought about my ebook library. I have thousands of books in Calibre, but haven't touched any of them in ages. Once upon a time I scoffed at those who got all their books through Amazon, but now I am 100% that guy. Most of them are library loans, but the process is the same: I say "Gimme!" and it shows up on my Kindle. Most of my audiobooks are the same thing through either Audible or Overdrive. Same goes for pretty much all media: music, movies, shows, comics. I used to be all about carrying around a local collection of all of the above, but now I walk around with my head in the cloud

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by taosaur

It's been a long time since I even thought about my ebook library. I have thousands of books in Calibre, but haven't touched any of them in ages. Once upon a time I scoffed at those who got all their books through Amazon, but now I am 100% that guy. Most of them are library loans, but the process is the same: I say "Gimme!" and it shows up on my Kindle. Most of my audiobooks are the same thing through either Audible or Overdrive. Same goes for pretty much all media: music, movies, shows, comics. I used to be all about carrying around a local collection of all of the above, but now I walk around with my head in the cloud

It's nice having media in the cloud, I use both dropbox and iCloud myself, however I also like having my media available for those times where I'm not connected. For example, I download my audiobooks and specific playlists to my car iTouch so I can listen in the car without worrying about connectivity. Streaming is fine at home, not so good on the road when I'm using my cellular data plan, or am driving in an area where the coverage is a bit spotty.

I downloaded all my music, movies, TV shows, ebooks and audiobooks to my main computer, so I can get at them whenever I want. I have plenty of capacity, so why not be safe rather than sorry. Cloud services are just as likely to go belly up, or be dropped by a company as any other service.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

It's nice having media in the cloud, I use both dropbox and iCloud myself, however I also like having my media available for those times where I'm not connected. For example, I download my audiobooks and specific playlists to my car iTouch so I can listen in the car without worrying about connectivity. Streaming is fine at home, not so good on the road when I'm using my cellular data plan, or am driving in an area where the coverage is a bit spotty.

I downloaded all my music, movies, TV shows, ebooks and audiobooks to my main computer, so I can get at them whenever I want. I have plenty of capacity, so why not be safe rather than sorry. Cloud services are just as likely to go belly up, or be dropped by a company as any other service.

Well, of course with books and movies, there are copies on the devices I'm using, so they don't require connectivity beyond the initial download. At the same time, I'm almost never "not connected." Google Music does allow downloads and I do have some music on my phone, but I can't tell you when is the last time I had to rely on downloaded music rather than streaming. Streaming music isn't going to make a dent in my data plan, and Google Music does cache several songs ahead, so in the rare event I hit a dead spot, it's not much likely to be an issue. For the most part I don't worry about "having" media, in the sense of an owned collection, so long as I have access to media. And again, libraries provide a lot of that access.

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by Krazykiwi

Musicbee understands audiobooks, I've rather fallen for it and use it for all my music and audio now. Out of the box, if you add audiobooks to the Audiobook library it treats them differently when you play them, such as remembering position, turning off any shuffle/repeat settings from when you were playing music, etc) It's also one of the few players outside Itunes that understands the chapter markers properly in m4b formatted books. From there you can use a custom tag (similar to custom columns n calibre) to keep series labelled and together etc.

It's a bit calibre-like in the amount of customisation you can do, which makes it a bit intimidating to get started with, but once you have it set up to your satisfaction it's very nice. Since you mention failing eyesight, there's also a ton of customisation in the visual layout too, which you might find useful.

As far as the initial topic, it'll either calibre/iTunes style organise the files for you, or not, your choice.

Your post got me to DL MusicBee. I've got to say, it's really nice! I don't really do much in the way of audio books, but for music, it's REALLY nice. It reminds me of MusicMatch Jukebox before Yahoo bought and ruined it. After MMJB got ruined, I found myself less and less interested in listening to my own storehouse of music, and after a hiatus, I just started to listening to the streaming services.

I think I'm going to break out my backups and load them onto the HD.

Back on the topic of good organizers, they can really help you keep your interests from flagging. If there's too much hassle involved, many people will just stop messing with it. In fact, I kind of wish Calibre had a two tiered user interface, one being SUPER simple that does the basic things, and then the more advanced 'complete' version.

For the photographers out there, sort of the way PaintShop Pro has the super simple "Adjust" tab and the full powered "Edit" tab available.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by taosaur

It's been a long time since I even thought about my ebook library. I have thousands of books in Calibre, but haven't touched any of them in ages. Once upon a time I scoffed at those who got all their books through Amazon, but now I am 100% that guy. Most of them are library loans, but the process is the same: I say "Gimme!" and it shows up on my Kindle. Most of my audiobooks are the same thing through either Audible or Overdrive. Same goes for pretty much all media: music, movies, shows, comics. I used to be all about carrying around a local collection of all of the above, but now I walk around with my head in the cloud

Yes, me too, but I still get the "cheap" paper bound or even hard bound at the dollar stores, thrift stores, church sales, and Amazon 1 cent + shipping sales.

There is something about just picking up a book and flipping the pages, and dropping a dollar (plus tax) on the counter. Almost like the bygone days of the corner or mall bookstore. (Except that was more than $1.00 -- except on closeout fire-sales.)

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The X3ii, X5ii, & X7 all support replaygain.

Maybe now they do, but they didn't when they came out. The X5 Mark I still doesn't, and probably never will. Fiio has said that the 2.6 firmware will be the final one for that player, without it having ReplayGain, even though they repeatedly said on Head-Fi (since the beginning) that they were looking into it.

Because of that, I'll probably not buy a Fiio product again. Problem is, they are the only ones offering somewhat normally priced FLAC music player/headphone amp combo devices such as the X3 and X5.

The small Sandisk Clip+ (or Sansa Clip, can't remember) running RockBox sounds fine, but its screen is way too small, and the amplifier is not powerful enough for a set of larger cans at 50 Ohms or so.