Library Organization Solution

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Comments

13 comments

  • Official comment
    Tony W.
    Product Support Manager

    Hi Eric

    Thank you for taking the time to write. Bluesound is not a music curation product and has never pretended to be one. It is simply a High-Resolution Playback System. In fact, when BluOS Creates a Local Library and Music Share, files are mounted as Read-Only. 

    This is because there a number of other third-party metadata products that are available that do a great job already.

    That being said, you can already use Folder Browse to locate your lost content until you correct the metadata. Here's how; https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/articles/204103476

     

  • Eric M Schopmeyer

    Thanks for the quick response! I appreciate it (though I can't tell if this was just a form response based on my topic or a real human response.)  

    Just curious...Did you actually read my post?  

    I hear what you are saying about Bluesound being a  High-Res playback system rather than a music curation product. However, in the case of the Vault, it seems like the whole concept is to replace the user's physical collection. That function inherently requires some degree of curation. It's an unavoidable fact that library organization is a major aspect of the overall user experience.

    The solution I proposed is very simple and expressly avoids the necessity of editing metadata. 

    Thanks for the link. But I already know how to find my content and edit the metadata. It's just that that process takes on a truly maddening scope when you have a collection of over 1000 CDs with innumerable metadata problems.  Plus, the third party products you allude to don't actually "do a great job", as I outlined in my post. But again, the proposed solution here is NOT for Bluesound to offer metadata editing capabilities (or mount anything other than "read only files", but to allow users to better organize their libraries without editing metadata. 

    Actually, the more I think about it, I realize now this was just an automatic form response and that my post wasn't actually read by anyone. 

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  • Tony W.
    Product Support Manager

    Hi Eric

    It was, I am here - Folder Browse meets those needs.Try it...

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  • Eric M Schopmeyer

    Well, I stand corrected. Thanks, Tony. Good to know Bluesound has real people responding so promptly (on New Year's Eve, no less! What are we doing spending the holiday engaged in a user experience discussion!?) I hope you understand that it is not my intention to strike an argumentative tone. I am not an irate customer. I am overall happy with Bluesound and have been talking it up to people I know. I just think there is significant room for improvement in the realm library organization.

    Yes, I understand the browsing by folder concept. I know how to do that. It sort of meets those needs but not in a very elegant way.  I addressed that above:

         Yes, you could also do something similar with “folders.” You could get your computer out, connect           to the server and make a bunch of folders for yourself but you can’t see the album covers that              way. Plus you wouldn’t be able to put an album in multiple collections that way. 

    In terms of user experience for a music lover/collector, the difference between awkwardly browsing a bunch of folders and file names and browsing a mosaic of beautiful album covers, is significant. I don't want the to feel like I'm opening a computer file, I want to feel like I'm putting on an album. I think the visual aspect of album covers is actually really important.

     

     

     

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  • Dmitry

    do some one read this post? The answer from Bluesound team will be really interesting?

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  • Felix Klein

    Hi,

    Eric explains very clearly what I need and what (I'm sure) a lot of users of BluOS desperately need.

    Also, to add this terrific improvement to the functionality of the BluOS app seems very easy.

    There is a category named "My Favourites" which does exactly whay we want. We just need the option to create several "My Favourites" and the option to rename them. That's all!

    Please do it. For me it would be a game changer.

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  • Don Hanson

    This a brilliant idea and is desperately needed. 

     

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  • Tony W.
    Product Support Manager

    Please see the official comment - Folder Browse is designed as an alternative solution until you clean or resolve your metadata issues. You will continue to have problems as long as you have bad metadata.

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  • Dmitry

    Hey Tony, could you please explain what do you mean with bad metadata? Do BlueOS have any documentation how metadata should be made for this? witch delimiters are allowed?

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  • Terry Summers

    I was just about to buy a Bluesound Node and this post stopped me in my tracks.

    I have a very varied, large collection of music, exactly like that described by Eric. It has all been ripped to FLAC files using MusicBee and I can find anything I want quickly (genre, artist, composer etc.). It also has a complete set of artwork.

    I would enjoy the convenience of a high quality streamer, but, above all else, there's no point if I can't be sure I will always be able to find my music.

    So the key questions are, has the development of the app over the last 2 years made this possible or, failing that, is there an app you would recommend that can?

    Thanks

    Terry Summers (Monmouthshire, UK)

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  • Eric M Schopmeyer

    Hi Terry,

    There haven't been any developments to address the concerns I listed in that post.  It really seems like it would be so easy to just give the user a little more control over how stuff is organized in Bluos. Their response was that they are a "playback system not a curation system," which still makes no sense. If you have a product that can hold 2TB of music and essentially replace large physical collections of music, you can't ignore the curation function. You have to give some consideration about how the user will be able to organize and access those files. 

    All that aside, I still love my Bluesound system. The sound quality is excellent and it allowed my to put all my CDs away, freeing up a lot of space at home. It was a huge project getting my collection into the Vault and editing the metadata with a third party app (I use metadatics). It took several months and was very frustrating at times.  But it was worth it. I bought the Node2i to connect to my upstairs stereo system so I can access my collection from there too. It's very convenient. 

    For me, the pros still outweigh the cons. However the it would be a huge upgrade if they would simply add the "collections" feature I proposed above. I'm no programmer but seems like it would be a very easy solution that would improve the experience for all Bluos users. 

    Hope this was helpful.

    Eric Schopmeyer (Portland, OR)

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  • Terry Summers

    Hi Eric and thanks for your response (I will be splitting my personal email address). Yes, typical techies - so involved in the engineering (terry.d.summers) that they completely lose sight of what they should be trying to achieve - making it possible for us to find our music before listening to it! I had a look at metadatics, and you must be a Mac user, so that's not available to me, a PC user.

    I think I'm going to spend a little longer looking at my options as it is not at all clear how I would move my library (similar to yours, but probably smaller - 44,000 files covering rock, jazz, blues, classical and world) (AToutlook.com) onto my Synology NAS. I've read countless posts on the MusicBee website, trying to find out how to do this, but they are equally incapable of keeping out of the weeds. The added problem with MusicBee is that it is exclusively a PC based app, so I could well lose all my metadata in the move to the NAS.

    Thanks for trying with Bluesound. It's particularly off-putting that they don't see the problem.

    Regards

    Terry

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  • Bjørn Ulvik
    Hi-Res

    as it is not at all clear how I would move my library.....onto my Synology NAS

     

    Bluesound devices will only read tags, so there should be no issue moving your library to a NAS. Nothing will get lost or altered.
    Regarding artwork, there are some limitations covered here: https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/articles/200271926

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