I have all my music, ripped from CDs, on a NAS. As such I can access it from multiple devices. I have one in the garage, bedroom, living room, etc.
The one in the garage is based on a linux box and happens to have "Clementine" for a player. I noticed an option "Play 50 songs at random" so I tried it. Played some stuff I didnt even know I had, albeit in a strange mix!
So if the NAS music collection is simply a database, there must be different ways to access the data in the way you want. Are there players that can do this in a sophisticated way?
If Clementine can play 50 songs at random, how about 50 songs by Miles Davis at random? I didnt see that option...
How about 50 songs released between 1972 and 1976? Turn my NAS held collection into a 70's radio station for a couple hours?
How about 50 songs all in the key of "G". 50 songs with so much bass content? 50 songs with all female vocals? 50 songs recorded in monaural? 50 songs that are instrumentals? 50 songs that were digitally mastered? Play me a set of 50 songs that (insert whatever you can think of)
I realize in the day of Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz, Pandora, Beam_me_up, Scotty, there may be no commercial potential for anyone to create such a player for personal, closed content on a home system. It would only be "nice to have".
On the other hand, why isnt one of my powerful PCs busy figuring out all the different ways it could present the content of my music data base - for all my players to make use of - while it sits there basically doing nothing as I type this? I went through a few of the LMS "categories" - stuff like "jazz rock" which is apparently different than "jazz-rock" and found most of the populated selections to be a joke - as in c'mon, you're kidding me.
Anyone know anything that comes even remotely close to what I'm thinking?
Thanks!
The one in the garage is based on a linux box and happens to have "Clementine" for a player. I noticed an option "Play 50 songs at random" so I tried it. Played some stuff I didnt even know I had, albeit in a strange mix!
So if the NAS music collection is simply a database, there must be different ways to access the data in the way you want. Are there players that can do this in a sophisticated way?
If Clementine can play 50 songs at random, how about 50 songs by Miles Davis at random? I didnt see that option...
How about 50 songs released between 1972 and 1976? Turn my NAS held collection into a 70's radio station for a couple hours?
How about 50 songs all in the key of "G". 50 songs with so much bass content? 50 songs with all female vocals? 50 songs recorded in monaural? 50 songs that are instrumentals? 50 songs that were digitally mastered? Play me a set of 50 songs that (insert whatever you can think of)
I realize in the day of Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz, Pandora, Beam_me_up, Scotty, there may be no commercial potential for anyone to create such a player for personal, closed content on a home system. It would only be "nice to have".
On the other hand, why isnt one of my powerful PCs busy figuring out all the different ways it could present the content of my music data base - for all my players to make use of - while it sits there basically doing nothing as I type this? I went through a few of the LMS "categories" - stuff like "jazz rock" which is apparently different than "jazz-rock" and found most of the populated selections to be a joke - as in c'mon, you're kidding me.
Anyone know anything that comes even remotely close to what I'm thinking?
Thanks!
Roon can do a lot of what you are looking for. You can focus on aspects of your collection. For example, I can select jazz from 1955-1962 on the verve label, and with a rating of 4+ stars. That limits me to 7 albums of the 2273 albums in my collection. Then I can take those 7 albums and hit shuffle, or play them sequentially etc.
What you can't do is sort by music in a specific key or with specific instruments etc.
I can add albums from Tidal or Qobuz to my local library and it would also be included in the search, but by default focus does not go outside your library.
Roon radio takes a song or an album or an artist or a genre and builds a similar to playlist from that seed. It can either stay within your local library or go out and also select from Tidal or Qobuz as well. In my experience it works very well and makes some very enjoyable mixes.
The big drawback is that Roon is not free. But neither was all my audio gear, and Roon allows me to get more from all my music.
Sheldon
What you can't do is sort by music in a specific key or with specific instruments etc.
I can add albums from Tidal or Qobuz to my local library and it would also be included in the search, but by default focus does not go outside your library.
Roon radio takes a song or an album or an artist or a genre and builds a similar to playlist from that seed. It can either stay within your local library or go out and also select from Tidal or Qobuz as well. In my experience it works very well and makes some very enjoyable mixes.
The big drawback is that Roon is not free. But neither was all my audio gear, and Roon allows me to get more from all my music.
Sheldon
Thanks, Sheldon, for your reply to my topic.
It seems I'm quite stuck in the 2007's... I looked about and most players development stopped over a decade ago. I guess over the past decade eveyone's piled onto the "paid service" model and never looked back - hence, why bother further developing something that cant possibly compete?
I guess while I'm farting around with adding a 2nd 2T HDD into my NAS, setting it up for RAID-1, ripping CDs with EAC - everyone else is enjoying listening to all their stuff "auto-magically" on any device, anywhere and at any time. By paying into someone's subscription based cash-flow model...
Maybe one day I'll grow up and lay it out monthly or yearly like most others do for a full music service. It's the way the world's going with everything these days. Cant wait till the very OS running on your PC or other compute based device has a monthly charge too - I can see the stockholders at MS drooling over that one, as they test the idea with other MS products you used to "buy-to-own". Of course, I do pay something on a recurring basis for my phone and internet and I give $5 monthly to the Jazz Groove...
The paradigm I grew up with is you take a physical media and put it in a player. I've dared to make that into "you make an electronic selection". I guess the Jazz Groove - for me - is "you press play and much of the time, you're delighted listening". I see for only ~$100 / yr, I could have that from within my own local collection - and all the similar stuff I dont happen to own as well.
It seems I'm quite stuck in the 2007's... I looked about and most players development stopped over a decade ago. I guess over the past decade eveyone's piled onto the "paid service" model and never looked back - hence, why bother further developing something that cant possibly compete?
I guess while I'm farting around with adding a 2nd 2T HDD into my NAS, setting it up for RAID-1, ripping CDs with EAC - everyone else is enjoying listening to all their stuff "auto-magically" on any device, anywhere and at any time. By paying into someone's subscription based cash-flow model...
Maybe one day I'll grow up and lay it out monthly or yearly like most others do for a full music service. It's the way the world's going with everything these days. Cant wait till the very OS running on your PC or other compute based device has a monthly charge too - I can see the stockholders at MS drooling over that one, as they test the idea with other MS products you used to "buy-to-own". Of course, I do pay something on a recurring basis for my phone and internet and I give $5 monthly to the Jazz Groove...
The paradigm I grew up with is you take a physical media and put it in a player. I've dared to make that into "you make an electronic selection". I guess the Jazz Groove - for me - is "you press play and much of the time, you're delighted listening". I see for only ~$100 / yr, I could have that from within my own local collection - and all the similar stuff I dont happen to own as well.
Last edited:
JRiver Media Center operates using the "old" purchase once model. I've been using it for years to play media from my NAS and locally. It's quite comprehensive and flexible. It runs on Win10.
JRiver has an extensive tagging system that can be customized to your own preferences. It will be able to do all that you ask (e.g play 50 songs in key of c) as long as that information is provided in the tags. Download a trial version and give it a go.
If I understand correctly, LMS doesn't generate any tag data, it all supplied by the user. How are you populating your tags?
EDIT: I think if LMS doesn't find any tag data it may try using your directory structure/filenames.
Last edited:
Foobar2000 is still very much alive and kicking. With foo_facets (and adding the odd custom column if required) you should be able to do what you want. A 2000s solution for a 2000s problem.
As pointed out, however, all the information (metadata) already has to be present in tags in your audio files. You may have to introduce your own custom tags, which not all file formats will support equally. I have been in need for an "origin country" field for years - this would be simple enough in FLAC (which will support arbitrary tags like other "modern" formats like OGG etc.), but then I'd have add a 'TXXX' custom tag to the MP3s for my MP3 player (if Foobar couldn't do it, MP3Tag may), and then convince tagnavi_custom.cfg in Rockbox to do anything useful with it (that's the biggest question mark at this point). And then I wouldn't want to disturb the time stamps on the files either! (MP3Tag can do that though.)
Tagging is one of those things that aren't too hard when adding new releases individually but can become a challenge if you find you have to retag hundreds or thousands of existing albums.
Automatic classification of large amounts of music according to specific criteria (way beyond standard tags) is no mean feat and a job for AI. Some broadcasters have been resorting to using supercomputer time to classify their collections grown over decades.