Classical Mode: help needed!

[Stephen Healy]

The current version of the folder view is not our final vision for it; its first implementation was relatively functional after which we would gauge how much it was realistically being used by customers. We do agree that it could benefit from a visual improvement for the reasons you have outlined above; it's the one mode where you can really categorise and structure things is a customised way that you have chosen, in a way that is relatively simple compared to lots of metadata editing etc. So, this certainly is not off the cards. I do think it also extends beyond Classical users; folders can categorise in all others sorts of ways that users decide, such as by decade, or by Alphabetical grouping (A folder, B folder, etc).

As an aside regarding the erroneous 'Schubert', do note you can edit the Artist page and try an alternative lookup for the correct composer version, and you can add/remove text as you see fit from the bio section and also upload your own image of the artist.

 

[Stephen Healy]

5. A general point is that the app should be able to detect all metadata tags and allow one to group and/or search by them. Things like "Conductor", "Orchestra" - or whatever else is found in the music library.

We do have a browse by tags mode, and these tags can also be applied as a filter on the Albums view. The bigger challenge/question here is how those tags get applied in the first place. I noticed in one of your examples that you sub-divided some Beethoven albums by genre using separated folders - what if we had a mechanism/ability whereby the parent folder names could be inserted as tags into the library?

 

[d.c.palmer]

We do agree that it could benefit from a visual improvement for the reasons you have outlined above; it's the one mode where you can really categorise and structure things is a customised way that you have chosen, in a way that is relatively simple compared to lots of metadata editing etc. So, this certainly is not off the cards.

Hi Stephen,

Thank you so much for your kind consideration, which is greatly appreciated. It is also really nice to see the company actively engaging with its users and responding to feedback: an excellent sign!

Thanks also for the tip about editing Artist details in this way (though it would be good to have a preference not to automatically load data from the internet; I’m probably in a tiny minority on this one though).

Best wishes,
David

 

[d.c.palmer]

I noticed in one of your examples that you sub-divided some Beethoven albums by genre using separated folders - what if we had a mechanism/ability whereby the parent folder names could be inserted as tags into the library?

Yes, this might help, though it could be overkill in a general case.

For example, in my Naim/Minim Server app, when I browse by Artist, the app always uses the same subcategories - Albums, Tracks, Genres…

- That might be fine for a very-prolific “Artist” (e.g., Beethoven) but becomes tedious for less-prolific ones (e.g., Bax) as I have to keep drilling down through a burdensome hierarchy to find a small number of works.

I hope this makes sense!

 

[DanCollier]

Hi Stephen,

Thank you so much for your kind consideration, which is greatly appreciated. It is also really nice to see the company actively engaging with its users and responding to feedback: an excellent sign!

Thanks also for the tip about editing Artist details in this way (though it would be good to have a preference not to automatically load data from the internet; I’m probably in a tiny minority on this one though).

Best wishes,
David

One other small point in addition to Stephens, when you rip a CD, you can do so in assisted mode so you can edit the metadata prior to it saving on the system. Just go to Disc Ripper via the system page and you can switch modes.

 

[d.c.palmer]

I probably ought to note that many "Classical" listeners tend to break up their "Albums" into separate works. Of course, this is less important if the concept of "Work; Movement" exists; but even then, a given recording might contain works by different composers, which we might wish to have grouped separately. This then raises the concern about how the resulting "Albums" are listed...

Apple Music fixes this with the concept of "Album Sort" tags, for example:-

Album: Concerto Grosso Op. 3 No. 1, HWV 312
Sort by: Handel: Orchestral: Concerto Grosso Op. 3 No. 1

Album: Serse
Sort by: Handel: Opera: Serse

Album: La Resurrezione
Sort by: Handle: Choral: La Resurrezione

etc.

Here's a screenshot from Apple Music on my Mac showing how the sorting is defined:-


(Note: I'm using "Album Artist" synonymously with "Composer", as this gives the best results with Apple Music. Fortunately, Apple Music also supports "composer" and the concept of "Work; Movement".)

Now, I don't know if "Sense" supports these "sort as" tags; if not, it would be handy to add them!

 

[d.c.palmer]

On a completely-different topic, is there any support for saved (PDF) sleeve notes and/or libretti?

- I'd like to be able to save my libretti and sleeve notes in the same folder as my "Album" and be able to access them when playing the music.

I think this might be of general interest, though those of us into vocal, choral and operatic works have the greatest need for accessing our PDF libretti.

Thanks for your consideration

 

[rarebot6]

On a completely-different topic, is there any support for saved (PDF) sleeve notes and/or libretti?

- I'd like to be able to save my libretti and sleeve notes in the same folder as my "Album" and be able to access them when playing the music.

I think this might be of general interest, though those of us into vocal, choral and operatic works have the greatest need for accessing our PDF libretti.

Thanks for your consideration

Yes, there is. Just drop the pdf into the same folder as the music files and they will show up in Sense as 'booklets' in album view. I do it all the time.

 

[d.c.palmer]

Yes, there is. Just drop the pdf into the same folder as the music files and they will show up in Sense as 'booklets' in album view. I do it all the time.

Great! Thank you so much.

 

[d.c.palmer]

I'm going to have to return my loaned Innuos in the next few days, and will then wait until your iOS app is "Classical Friendly" before considering an actual purchase. Do we have a timeline for progress on the software side please?

In the meantime, I'm finding that Audirvana - running on an M4 Mac Mini - comes fairly close to matching the Zen NG, sound-wise (not quite as authoritative, but with a rather more "Classical Friendly" app). The tradeoff here is price vs user-friendliness, so it's over to you…

 

[Stephen Healy]

Classical library mode will still take a little while, its initial rollout is going to be more towards the end of the year, and the full scope of all of its features and facilities may not all come in one big go, but get gradual expansions and refinements over subsequent updates. It's still going through design iterations currently.

 

[guardajoias]

Classical library mode will still take a little while, its initial rollout is going to be more towards the end of the year, and the full scope of all of its features and facilities may not all come in one big go, but get gradual expansions and refinements over subsequent updates. It's still going through design iterations currently.

It's nice to give us regular updates...

 

[d.c.palmer]

Classical library mode will still take a little while, its initial rollout is going to be more towards the end of the year, and the full scope of all of its features and facilities may not all come in one big go, but get gradual expansions and refinements over subsequent updates. It's still going through design iterations currently.

Thanks, Stephen - but I would really urge you to prioritise some of the suggestions, in particular, the folder view and the support for "Work" and "movement" tags.

Other software is vastly superior in this respect. Indeed, no less an authority than Stereophile magazine explicitly took you to task over the lack of support for "classical" music in a recent review. So this is really an issue of critical importance for your company. You're selling really-expensive hardware, and the software needs to be up to scratch: it's all you have for a "user interface".

Sorry to sound critical, but with prices for your "Next Gen" (and above) hardware at such high levels, expectations are high!

 

[Stephen Healy]

Thanks, Stephen - but I would really urge you to prioritise some of the suggestions, in particular, the folder view and the support for "Work" and "movement" tags.

Other software is vastly superior in this respect. Indeed, no less an authority than Stereophile magazine explicitly took you to task over the lack of support for "classical" music in a recent review. So this is really an issue of critical importance for your company. You're selling really-expensive hardware, and the software needs to be up to scratch: it's all you have for a "user interface".

Sorry to sound critical, but with prices for your "Next Gen" (and above) hardware at such high levels, expectations are high!

I assure you, it is well understood! It's been on our agenda for a long time. All the feedback that has been posted here has been shared with the dev team for discussion. This thread exists for the very purpose of determining the base requirements of the feature as a whole, now begins the journey of making that a reality. It does take time however, so it's difficult to give a precise ETA whilst the feature still takes shape. We also plan to add some other quite big features along with the same update that need to be worked on too.
Do note that the same update will be rolled out to even the entry PULSEmini, so the price level is more a determination of sound quality rather than equating to getting more software, but indeed we want the software to be on a level that matches the high-end. There is also the option for Roon as a user 'interface', and we keep an open mind to allowing possibly even other control software in the future - we've had requests for Audirvana, for example.

One question we do have is around editing metadata across classical discs. Having both concepts of discs and works makes everything a bit convoluted, especially when editing. Discs can have multiple works, and works can be spread across multiple discs, which makes everything either messy or very verbose. If you had a 'multi-disc' album that had that, would you just remove the separate disc-level and instead treat it as one large album for better continuity across the works? Does separating the discs actually provide a lot of benefit here?

 

[d.c.palmer]

One question we do have is around editing metadata across classical discs. Having both concepts of discs and works makes everything a bit convoluted, especially when editing. Discs can have multiple works, and works can be spread across multiple discs, which makes everything either messy or very verbose. If you had a 'multi-disc' album that had that, would you just remove the separate disc-level and instead treat it as one large album for better continuity across the works? Does separating the discs actually provide a lot of benefit here?

Personally I would be quite happy to skip the disc tag, since that's purely a limitation of the source medium…

However - and it's a big however - track numbering would then be an issue (e.g., track 1 on disc 2 would end up appearing before track 2 on disc 1, and if they're from the same work, this would be very annoying).

- You might either have to intercept disc numbers and prepend them onto track numbers (e.g., track 1-01, track 2-01, etc.) or be prepared to renumber tracks on multi-disc recordings.

(Aside: in the Classical world, we don't generally refer to "Albums" - that's a pop world phrase; instead, we refer to "Recordings").

Back to disc numbers: I end up having to renumber some of my tracks, as I often break some recordings down into their individual works, especially if they're by different composers.

I hope this helps.

 

[Stephen Healy]

Personally I would be quite happy to skip the disc tag, since that's purely a limitation of the source medium…

However - and it's a big however - track numbering would then be an issue (e.g., track 1 on disc 2 would end up appearing before track 2 on disc 1, and if they're from the same work, this would be very annoying).

- You might either have to intercept disc numbers and prepend them onto track numbers (e.g., track 1-01, track 2-01, etc.) or be prepared to renumber tracks on multi-disc recordings.

(Aside: in the Classical world, we don't generally refer to "Albums" - that's a pop world phrase; instead, we refer to "Recordings").

Back to disc numbers: I end up having to renumber some of my tracks, as I often break some recordings down into their individual works, especially if they're by different composers.

I hope this helps.

Yes, this is rather what we are thinking currently. It's exactly as you say, the 'disc' structure is just circumstantial to the medium the recording came in, but in terms of cohesively browsing and structuring Works, it is not particular useful. In a way, the Works themselves would somewhat take the role of the 'disc' and the movements being the tracks that belong to them.
But either way, our worry was if removing the Disc Number format would pose any big problems to users, because our perspective so far is that they are more restrictive and limiting than helpful when it comes to Classical. We would prefer Sense to be more pragmatic in terms of being intuitive to use and play the music, rather than just total duplication of a physical collection.

 

[d.c.palmer]

In a way, the Works themselves would somewhat take the role of the 'disc' and the movements being the tracks that belong to them

Interestingly, Audirvana displays a "Disc" icon for each work in a multi-work recording, so I suspect they've used the disc concept internally to implement the Album/Work/Movement hierarchy.

 

[guardajoias]

I assure you, it is well understood! It's been on our agenda for a long time. All the feedback that has been posted here has been shared with the dev team for discussion. This thread exists for the very purpose of determining the base requirements of the feature as a whole, now begins the journey of making that a reality. It does take time however, so it's difficult to give a precise ETA whilst the feature still takes shape. We also plan to add some other quite big features along with the same update that need to be worked on too.
Do note that the same update will be rolled out to even the entry PULSEmini, so the price level is more a determination of sound quality rather than equating to getting more software, but indeed we want the software to be on a level that matches the high-end. There is also the option for Roon as a user 'interface', and we keep an open mind to allowing possibly even other control software in the future - we've had requests for Audirvana, for example.

One question we do have is around editing metadata across classical discs. Having both concepts of discs and works makes everything a bit convoluted, especially when editing. Discs can have multiple works, and works can be spread across multiple discs, which makes everything either messy or very verbose. If you had a 'multi-disc' album that had that, would you just remove the separate disc-level and instead treat it as one large album for better continuity across the works? Does separating the discs actually provide a lot of benefit here?

I think we need to see both works and disc. As you say, the work is the most important aspect, but:

1. Releases do come out as discs (or sets of discs) and there is a coherence in those too: a concert by a conductor or a soloist,
2. Sometimes a collection that is quasi a "playlist" by a soloist that are intended to be listened to as such. This is especially important for smaller works that do not necessarily come in many movements,
3. Collection of symphonies for example often come as a multi-disc set and keeping that information is useful

I do not see a contradiction between them. The works are collected on discs/releases/albums and as log as we can navigate (browse and search) through the albums as well as the works, and as long as the now playing shows both the disc or disc set and the work and movement, all is fine. The way Sense treats multi-disc sets is fine currently. We just need to add the works and movements.

Roon is not a solution and you should not even think of sending your classical music clients to Roon. Very nice that yo accommodate those who like it, but what I look for is proper management of classical music in Sense. It is high time indeed and I very much look forward to it! (Audirvana has many qualities — mostly to bring out quality sound out of a regular computer — and is indeed currently more advanced for classical music, but its interface has a lot of issues of its own imho. You can do much better!)

 

[Stephen Healy]

I think we need to see both works and disc. As you say, the work is the most important aspect, but:

1. Releases do come out as discs (or sets of discs) and there is a coherence in those too: a concert by a conductor or a soloist,
2. Sometimes a collection that is quasi a "playlist" by a soloist that are intended to be listened to as such. This is especially important for smaller works that do not necessarily come in many movements,
3. Collection of symphonies for example often come as a multi-disc set and keeping that information is useful

I do not see a contradiction between them. The works are collected on discs/releases/albums and as log as we can navigate (browse and search) through the albums as well as the works, and as long as the now playing shows both the disc or disc set and the work and movement, all is fine. The way Sense treats multi-disc sets is fine currently. We just need to add the works and movements.

Roon is not a solution and you should not even think of sending your classical music clients to Roon. Very nice that yo accommodate those who like it, but what I look for is proper management of classical music in Sense. It is high time indeed and I very much look forward to it! (Audirvana has many qualities — mostly to bring out quality sound out of a regular computer — and is indeed currently more advanced for classical music, but its interface has a lot of issues of its own imho. You can do much better!)

It's not out of the question to keep the Disc level in - it's whether the experience would be cleaner and simpler by having them removed, otherwise it can get a bit text/detail heavy. I do know in some cases that actual names are sometimes assigned to individual discs, though this would also be tricky as there is not actually an ID3 tag to technically support this, it would be a level of detail unique/captive to the Sense database. I can see a use-case for this too!

 

[pending]

I agree it's important to retain the CD's disc number and track numbering, particularly since this corresponds to a booklet's liner notes, libretto and translation. Without the original track numbering one would be lost. (Perhaps at some point in the future everything will be released only in digital-only formats, but we're not there yet.)

In thinking about this issue, it was helpful to see how various recordings of the same work are displayed on Qobuz. For example, Wagner's Ring cycle famously includes 4 operas, each which contains scenes and acts. Virtually all of the recordings are organized using the original disc number and track number. I do not currently use Apple Music, Idagio, or Audirvana but perhaps they too could be referenced.

Of course many classical releases are contained on 1 disc only, in which case the disc number is irrelevant and often is omitted.

Another way Innuos might approach this would be to mirror an existing source, such as the MusicBrainz Classical Style Guide, which provides clear documentation, guidance, and examples on implementation.