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That wasn't how Apple's classical station worked, though, when I tried it. That was random tracks presented it a "guess the composer" style because the streaming metadata didn't include it.
 
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That wasn't how Apple's classical station worked, though, when I tried it. That was random tracks presented it a "guess the composer" style because the streaming metadata didn't include it.

Ok understood the stations are kind of automated and not supposedly hand picked like playlists.
 
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It's also why I'd celebrate if Apple would change "shuffle" so that it's not on a track basis. I use the album tag to designate a work, and a shuffle-by-album would be perfect. I think that may have existed at one time, but it no longer does.
 
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Dedicated music players are a very niche product these days; I want all my own music plus the ability to stream any song I want. That is where the phone won out. I don't even keep music on my computer anymore.
 
Well, I've wibbled this before, but I'll wibble it again. If you've got a classical collection, you've spent hours and days getting your metadata in place and standardized because without it, you can't find a damned thing -- there are too many classical "standards" for tagging. I just bought one of the 128GB iPod Touches because if you've spent the energy doing that, it really needs to be local.

Streaming classical doesn't seem to be an option, because they just toss random movements in random orders from random pieces.

Yeah, I feel your pain. Mixing movements, the jarring transition from a movement that normally flows without a beat into the following movement, inconsistent naming conventions in the metadata... But as someone who did spend years in radio, what Apple Music is doing has been around in classical music broadcasting for many decades. While lots of us want to hear entire works, there are others for whom the integrity of the experience is less important; they may prefer to hear only the best-known movements, the same way we may prefer to hear only the most popular tracks from a pop or jazz disk. So, if I want to hear an entire, uninterrupted work, I select an album from Apple Music, rather than a playlist or radio station. Not so hard.
 
Apple's music players have never risen above mediocre sound quality. I have bought plenty of them starting from the iPod Mini right through to the iPod Classic. Having tried a Sansa Clip and now owning a couple of Fiios I really could not care less what Apple does now. Streaming through an iPhone is fine for what it is but is a pretty poor music experience.
 
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How so? There are playlists like that but you can get albums on streaming on specific symphonies, operas etc.

Yes. I use Apple Music to decide what version of a long work like an opera or set of string quartets etc. I want to purchase later on CD. Download a few performances (the entire albums) from AM and then ilsten to them over time; finally go buy the discs of whatever performance I've come to prefer.

I use a completely separate library for Apple Music, started from scratch, since in the end it's just a collection of "samples" to me, even though they're full length works. Makes AM worth every dime to me not to buy some opera that I end up realizing I can't stand one of the singers, or some set of sonatas that some guy takes too fast for my preference.

All my stuff ends up on iPod classics. I rotate assorted selections onto other mobile devices.
 
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More wibbling.

My usual point of entry for looking for a work in my collection is the composer, so the Composer tag has to work. But the Sort Composer tag is unevenly implemented, so I can't rely on it. So my Composer field has to be "Lastname, Firstname van" to get a consistent list. Anything that isn't classical, I empty the Composer field.

For a while I tried Apple Music, but I found that (if I'm remembering the problem right) their metadata clobbered my metadata. I was getting arbitrary sorting problems: if Apple music decided the composer was "Firstname van Lastname," then by golly it was going to be filed under F no matter what, and so were the rest of my works by that composer - that is, the Apple metadata overrode mine on tracks that had nothing to do with Apple Music. And there was no way to prevent that, except to utterly and completely banish Apple Music from my world.
 
Apple's music players have never risen above mediocre sound quality. I have bought plenty of them starting from the iPod Mini right through to the iPod Classic. Having tried a Sansa Clip and now owning a couple of Fiios I really could not care less what Apple does now. Streaming through an iPhone is fine for what it is but is a pretty poor music experience.

I tried a Fiio player and didn't like the user experience. The sound quality was great but it was painfully slow to load song and scroll through them. My Fiio froze on me when I tried to scroll through my song list. Syncing through iTunes is so much easier than drag and drop.
 
I tried a Fiio player and didn't like the user experience. The sound quality was great but it was painfully slow to load song and scroll through them. My Fiio froze on me when I tried to scroll through my song list. Syncing through iTunes is so much easier than drag and drop.

Dunno. I have the X1 the X3ii and scrolling through both is as fast as on my iPod Classic. It takes a fraction of a second longer to load a song but since the players spend most of their time playing songs, I will happily put up with their dim, small screens. I just wish they had beefier batteries.
 
Dunno. I have the X1 the X3ii and scrolling through both is as fast as on my iPod Classic. It takes a fraction of a second longer to load a song but since the players spend most of their time playing songs, I will happily put up with their dim, small screens. I just wish they had beefier batteries.

Maybe I bought a dud or a crappy SD card. I had to put the SD card into my Mac to load it at a half decent speed. Putting the card into the player was a pain as a tray would have made it easier and would have sealed the slot from the outside world. Also if I wanted to switch the player to be a DAC/amp on my desk for headphones I had to unplug from my Mac, change the setting on the player and plug it back in. I should have just need to change the setting and that's it. Either way it definitely was not an Apple-like plug and play type of experience for me.
 
Also if I wanted to switch the player to be a DAC/amp on my desk for headphones I had to unplug from my Mac, change the setting on the player and plug it back in. I should have just need to change the setting and that's it. Either way it definitely was not an Apple-like plug and play type of experience for me.

You realise that is how plug and play works, right? You unplug and reinsert into your Mac so that it repolls the USB bus and realises that what was formerly a data carrier on one port is now a DAC. You could try running a Terminal command to force a repolling of connected USB devices but unplugging and reinserting is quicker anyway.
 
yea i get why the iPod is dying... but I never want the REAL files to die and the whole streaming thing is sad to me. I am a professional musician and NEED the real files... I often need to manipulate the files, take out the bass, change key, slow it down to figure out something... and you obviously can't do this with streaming.

I have a massive library of around 150k songs.

I also was getting excited cases the quality of the music was going to improve. With storage and bandwidth getting larger and cheaper we could start using high quality files that sound WAY WAY better than CD's and obviosouly light years better than MP3's... but alas they have now kept the quality down by going the streaming rout.

I have to think the actual files will always be available but i could be wrong.. the record companies are RAKING in the money on the streaming thing... (long story) and in theory thats good for the whole business... but the artists that are far down stream are getting screwed....
 
I don't buy downloaded music. My collection is nearly 115,000 "songs", and I have no interest in letting someone else decide what I listen to with streaming music. Also, too many areas that I visit (like the woods) get no internet, and streaming is impossible. I was hoping for a little more glitzy iPod to be forthcoming from Apple. Instead, us dedicated iPod users got the shaft. I am increasingly disappointed in Apple.
 
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I own a 2nd generation iPod Touch. Use it everyday to play music at the gym and for walks. Would love a dedicated high quality music player. Haven't been able to pull the trigger on a newer device because they are so out of date tech wise.

There is a market to be tapped here. Not everyone wants a cellphone.
 
what would it hurt to create dedicated music pod with 256+gb. discontinue all iPods and make an iPod classic pro. market iPhone se to iPod touch users. consolidate nano, shuffle, & touch into classic pro. people would still buy internet based phone.

thoughts??? or suggestions???

Why not use your old iphone without a sim card? However the first 256 gb phone wasn't until recently... it atleast makes use of the old iphones!
 
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