Awesome to have confirmation that the developer update really will happen – and thanks for your own workaround in the meantime!
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Does iVolume work with Catalina Music app?
- Thread starter steve62388
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Awesome to have confirmation that the developer update really will happen – and thanks for your own workaround in the meantime!
So does this allow iVolume to actually modify the tag in Music? Or is iVolume editing the tag in the XML file? Because if it's the latter then this won't actually do anything because Music doesn't use the XML file anymore.
I appreciate what John is trying to accomplish here, but I wound up replacing my current library with a library years & years old, and only by Time Machine was I able to restore it. I don't doubt for a moment that I made a mistake somewhere, but I'm a reasonably intelligent person and I followed the instructions closely and wound up with a near disaster that, fortunately (for once), Apple Chat was able to resolve. I'd love to get my iVolume working but right now I'm having PTSD from the last two hours. My advice on the above is that you better have a really really really good idea what the hell you're doing, because the xml file is the whole ball of wax.
iVolume 3.8.0 with Catalina compatibility is available. (Just launch the current version it should tell you an update is available). There is a trick in the FAQ to get your settings back, so don't panic when your groups, etc. disappear the first time you open it!
For God's sake, what's the trick? Can someone explain it as though I'm eight? I've read the FAQ and it's not clear. It says: "You can rename your old file containing your previous settings and results to the name of the new one. The files are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/de.ivolume.mac/de.ivolume.IDENTIFIER.plist
You may look at their modification dates to identify the right ones." "Rename" the old file what, exactly? And where is it "stored" exactly? How did just playing Music become this complicated?
You may look at their modification dates to identify the right ones." "Rename" the old file what, exactly? And where is it "stored" exactly? How did just playing Music become this complicated?
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For God's sake, what's the trick? Can someone explain it as though I'm eight? I've read the FAQ and it's not clear. It says: "You can rename your old file containing your previous settings and results to the name of the new one. The files are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/de.ivolume.mac/de.ivolume.IDENTIFIER.plist
You may look at their modification dates to identify the right ones." "Rename" the old file what, exactly? And where is it "stored" exactly? How did just playing Music become this complicated? Thank you for any help.
Lars666, along with the confusion referred to above in my other posting as to retaining the old manual settings, I had the same problem with iVolume 8 constantly crashing when I tried to run it. I contacted the developer, Manfred, who was very good about responding right away. He asked, "Does it always crash or just for individual songs when iVolume analyzes through your library? When it crashes only for individual songs, restoring your old library settings to the new iVolume might help." But my experience was that it was crashing repeatedly until I just gave up. I'm going to try & direct him to this thread, so if others are having the problem, they may want to weigh in.
Could very well be a single track – however, can't put my finger on it as it simply crashes after a few minutes of calculating. As it always works fine for a few minutes with every new try, this would hint against a "faulty" single track (assuming that the order of tracks when running iVolume again stays the same – in this case, it should have crashed immediately after the first crash as the bad track would be the next one). Didn't have any problems like that with the old version and iTunes.
To be honest, I take this as a final sign to try out beaTunes – which seems to do the same thing very good and is much more cared for with updates and fixes.
Thanks for this, Lars. I had the same experience: Each time I tried to run the program, it seemed to analyze a few more tracks before crashing. So it didn't seem to be hung up on a single track, but I can't rule out the possibility definitively. I don't know beaTunes. Are we sure it works with Catalina? I have to say that the last time playing Music was easy for me was iOS 11 more than a year ago. 12 was problematic and 13 more so.
beaTunes works with Catalina and sounds very promising – I'll definitely try it out, but want to strip all iVolume changes and id comments before running it, just to be sure ...
beaTunes
Smart software for library management, music analysis, and playlist creation. For Windows and macOS.
www.beatunes.com
What I am not 100% sure of yet is if beaTunes also works for Apple Music / iCloud library or only changes the id3 tags in the "physical" files which won't be respected e.g. by the iOS Music app with matched or previously uploaded, unmatched files (which won't be directly taken by my hard drive when synching). If this is only an isolated id3 tag thing, I have to stay with iVolume of course ...
Thanks for the confirmation – I thought so, too, but was confused by the name of the option "Use Album Replay Gain for iTunNorm tag". Was wondering if this maybe means that the other mode doesn't rewrite the iTunNorm tag at all, but I am no native speaker ...
Any insight on this? I've also been scratching my head trying to figure out what it means, but I haven't figured it out. I sent a tweet to the developer earlier today about it, but haven't gotten a response yet.
So I just downloaded 3.8.0. Curiously it didn't show as an update in my App Store. I had to manually search for iVolume and update it that way. I wonder if it has been 'pulled' because of the crashing bug (see below) or my install of Catalina is borked?
I just set up again, I only had one album exception and the rest of my songs I adjust individually. So I didn't encounter any of the copy over settings drama.
I too experienced regular crashing. I found that when I selected to adjust 'Tracks of current group' on first run it managed 500 or so, and thereafter it crashed every 100 or so. I got around this by selecting the songs in iVolume and then adjusting 'Tracks selected in iVolume'. No more crashing with one exception: it repeatedly crashed on one particular file, I examined it further and it had some corruption, excluded that one and no further problems.
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Hey Matt. Here's what the developer wrote to me a few days ago about retaining one's old iVolume settings. It's more expansive than the "explanation" on the website's FAQ page but my right-brained intelligence is still a bit stupefied by it. Also, the constant crashes when you run the app referred to in the posts above still haven't been addressed in a satisfactory way, in my opinion, so using Time Machine I've reverted back to 7.5 until there's an 8.1: "iVolume saves the settings for each library in the folder: ~/Library/Application Support/de.ivolume.mac (where the tilde symbol (~) stands for your home directory on your Mac). Try to find and open that folder. Therein you find files in the format 'de.ivolume.XXX.plist' (where XXX is the corresponding library identifier, a bunch of numbers and capital letters). If you have used iVolume with just one library yet, there should be only one such file, but after having used iVolume 3.8.0 there should be two now, because your library has a new identifier when using iVolume 3.8.0. When looking at the modification date of the files, you should be able to tell which file was created with the old iVolume and which one was created with the new iVolume. To use the old file with the new iVolume, you have to rename it to match the new identifier: quit iVolume; write down or copy the file name of the new file; move the the new file to the trash; rename the old file (or a duplicate of it) to the name of the new file. If there are more than two plist files, it might get a bit more tricky and you have to look closer at the modification dates or make more experiments." (That "make more experiments" part is what freaks me out.)
I use iTunes, iVolume, and iCloud Music Library to burn customized CDs on a 2013 MacBook Pro running Mojave and share the library on an iPad. As Mojave will eventually become obsolete I would like to continue working with (and adding to) my Music Library using Apple Music in Catalina on my new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. I know I will need an adapter to connect my Apple USB SuperDrive to the new MacBook but I don't know how to save all my iVolume adjustments in Version 3.7.5 so they will appear in Version 3.8.0 in Catalina on the new MacBook. My knowledge of the new Apple Music is limited so I'd appreciate some guidance if my question makes sense. Thank you.
So I'm just posting back in case a reader stumbles across this in future.
I am no longer experiencing crashing with iVolume 3.8.0 and Music 1.0.3.1. Music has been updated since we encountered this crash, but iVolume has not. This suggests the problem was in Music, not iVolume.
For those who still really like iTunes there is an app that lets you install iTunes on macOS Catalina its called retroactive https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive
I nearly passed on this software because of misleading reviews. Thankfully I didn’t! Common complaints are that it’s too expensive, it crashes often, and isn’t compatible with new operating systems. I’ll address each issue here: The software works so well that it’s the best $30 I’ve ever spent; I have a 17,000 song library and it only crashed a few times (and when it does it’s not a big deal as you simply restart where it left off); and, it worked perfectly on my Mac using Catalina OS. Honestly, the quality of the volume leveling is amazing. I always listen to my music in random shuffle mode and the irregular volumes of my ripped MP3 files has been a major bane for years. I’m ecstatic with the results of this software.