apple newbie - music setups?

ketan

this is the lamest thread in many ways... i've been a lifelong Apple hatter but just traded in my Android for an iPhone (got an SE).  i h*te iTunes but am resigned to having to learn it or whatever the stock music app is on there.  will I be happy?  (i'm a Winamp guy!)  what other apps are good for musicing on your iPhone? 

what are the best musical instrument apps?  digi-congos?

here, this should sweet'n things up:

Okem

You can sync winamp to an iphone easily enough. Then iOS has an app simply called Music for playing music, so no itunes involved. 

Or move towards a streaming service like Spotify, Apple music, Amazon etc.

I don't get whole fanboy need to love / hate either apple or android. Why not just pick the platform that suits your needs best and move on. 

ketan

I'm not concerned about streaming - I just want to be able to manage and listen to my digimons like the file-system-obsessed PC person I've always been. So I want to be able to move files around to different folders at times and change files around in playlists on the fly.  

I don't get whole fanboy need to love / hate either apple or android. Why not just pick the platform that suits your needs best and move on. 

Haha - fair enough.  My hate stems from my inability to figure out how to do the most basic things when I use my wife's computer and phone.  

I'm still on the lookout for digi-bongo and digi-congo appz and the such too.  Any fun sequencer things?  

cai

Why did you make the switch? I don't think you're going to like it much.

Edit: This is a fun app to play with http://www.syntheticbits.com/funkbox.html i probably got the recommendation from soul strut now i think of it. I've tried iMPC but it kept crashing for me - deleted it.

ketan

Thanks for the tip, Cai

Phones are getting way too big for me... I chose my last phone because of how small it is (Moto X) and now that it's dying, I can't find anything other than the SE that is the same size or smaller.  I figure it's not THAT big a deal to switch platforms... I just never got the hang of managing music via iTunes.  

Fred_Garvin

It's not that it's a big deal... but if you are this guy:

ketan said:

the file-system-obsessed PC person I've always been... I want to be able to move files around to different folders at times and change files around in playlists on the fly.

...you may end up disappointed with iOS.

iTunes is not the worst way to go, but it's not exactly a good piece of software, either. In true Apple fashion, it likes to force you to do things its way. Its file management has never been very good, and its file support is still very limited, among other issues. It could also be argued that newer iterations are as much (or more) focused on selling product as they are on playing music. 

What I find most bothersome is not the individual issues, it's that iTunes has been around for over a decade, and yet there's been no substantial improvement in functionality. And there's no motivation for one, since iOS users have little alternative.

I'm not an Apple hater in any way. I just find them disappointing. They have a history of overpromise and underdeliver, and that's gotten worse with time.

On the plus side (for me), I still have my old pre-iOS iPod, which I've had for ten years, and it works well. 

Okem

ketan said:

I don't get whole fanboy need to love / hate either apple or android. Why not just pick the platform that suits your needs best and move on. 

Haha - fair enough.  My hate stems from my inability to figure out how to do the most basic things when I use my wife's computer and phone.  

I know that feeling, the odd occasion when I have to use a Windows laptop I find them poorly made and a pain to use. But it's swings and roundabouts really. If you're used to one system it's generally going to be easier to use that. I used Windows PCs for years until I had training on a Mac so it made sense to make the switch, can't say I'd want to go back. But Apple definitely have their downsides. As a company they seem to be moving away from anything that isn't mobile technology, they haven't updated their desktop range in years and they're now years behind others. I'd switch to Ubuntu if it weren't such a steep learning curve to use. 

Jimster

Fred_Garvin said:

It's not that it's a big deal... but if you are this guy:

ketan said:

the file-system-obsessed PC person I've always been... I want to be able to move files around to different folders at times and change files around in playlists on the fly.

...you may end up disappointed with iOS.

iTunes is not the worst way to go, but it's not exactly a good piece of software, either. In true Apple fashion, it likes to force you to do things its way. Its file management has never been very good, and its file support is still very limited, among other issues. It could also be argued that newer iterations are as much (or more) focused on selling product as they are on playing music. 

What I find most bothersome is not the individual issues, it's that iTunes has been around for over a decade, and yet there's been no substantial improvement in functionality. And there's no motivation for one, since iOS users have little alternative.

I'm not an Apple hater in any way. I just find them disappointing. They have a history of overpromise and underdeliver, and that's gotten worse with time.

On the plus side (for me), I still have my old pre-iOS iPod, which I've had for ten years, and it works well.

Media Monkey will work with an iphone and that's how I put the music on the wife's iphone.

I watch her use it in the car to play music via bluetooth and that interface is shocking... Tiny buttons that require Sherlock Holmes to locate for a non-Apple chap such as I.

Isn't there one with big, f*ck-off PLAY and SHUFFLE buttons?

Beatsoup

I lasted one day with an iphone after realizing every piece of media you transfer in and out must be done through itunes. Android is so much better for that, hook it up through usb and drag and drop like a thumb drive.

There must be third party ways to transfer with an iphone... I felt like a child using the iphone and apple had the keys..

cai

Beatsoup said:

I lasted one day with an iphone after realizing every piece of media you transfer in and out must be done through itunes. Android is so much better for that, hook it up through usb and drag and drop like a thumb drive.

There must be third party ways to transfer with an iphone... I felt like a child using the iphone and apple had the keys..

Thats correct. Files for other media players (such as 8player Lite) are loaded when you are syncing your phone in iTunes, but the files appear in the third party app, not in your Music app.

@ketan If iTunes really grinds your gears you should explore these types of apps..

DOR

Fred_Garvin said:

On the plus side (for me), I still have my old pre-iOS iPod, which I've had for ten years, and it works well. 

cai

Just a quick PSA

If you are running any version of iTunes lower than 12.5 on your laptop or computer

Don't bother installing the new iPhone OS 10.0.2

Not compatible..

ketan

I mostly like the phone at this point.  It's the same as using my old Androids, in essence.  Except I wish Google Calendar had a wedgie type thing instead of just the icon to open the app (any good calendar apps that project your Google calendar as a widget?). Also, the listening to of music is soul crushing as a former Android user (I h8 u appl), but I'm using MediaMonkey and tag editing to try to get my music more clearly organized on this TURRRIBLE bloated Music app, and learning to change how I listen to music a bit. 

Thanks, this thraed was helpful.

aka

On the music listening tip, the jetAudio app has come a long way and also includes the Bongiovi music enhancement thing. I swear by it now. MP3 game still needs to be impeccable but mp3tag can help with that (in Windows anyway). 

Junior

I'm not a kneejerk Apple hater but I had an iPhone way back in the day and the thing that killed me with it was the lack of a proper equaliser (and the fact the settings were not accessible within the music player itself).

I now have an iPhone 6S for work and was curious to see what had changed but it still looks like there is no proper equaliser and the player itself is on a par with the appalling PlayMusic app. Am I missing a trick here or is it still that poor?

On a side note Ketan, advice too late to help but I'm also a fan of smaller phones and the Sony Xperia Z compact series are really good in this regard. Small, powerful, and decent camera and media playback.

ketan

Junior said:

On a side note Ketan, advice too late to help but I'm also a fan of smaller phones and the Sony Xperia Z compact series are really good in this regard. Small, powerful, and decent camera and media playback.

Yeah, I was actually going to get that! But my network didn't offer it so I was going to have to pay $$$.  

aka

Junior said:

I now have an iPhone 6S for work and was curious to see what had changed but it still looks like there is no proper equaliser and the player itself is on a par with the appalling PlayMusic app. Am I missing a trick here or is it still that poor?

The music player is that bad. The trick is jetAudio. 

https://appsto.re/ca/hJUv1.i (I've got nothing to do with the app, just a satisfied user!)

Okem

As far as home listening players go I'd love to have this https://roonlabs.com/ but just can't justify the price. 

But I hear jriver is the standard app for most serious digital music nerds. 

Junior

aka said:

Junior said:

I now have an iPhone 6S for work and was curious to see what had changed but it still looks like there is no proper equaliser and the player itself is on a par with the appalling PlayMusic app. Am I missing a trick here or is it still that poor?

The music player is that bad. The trick is jetAudio. 

https://appsto.re/ca/hJUv1.i (I've got nothing to do with the app, just a satisfied user!)

Cheers aka, I will give it a look as it would be nice to have the option to just use the my work phone when travelling on business....

That roonlabs looks very pretty M*rk but what does it do exactly? I see the Wikilinking part of that but what else do you get for the megabucks?

Jimster

Okem said:

As far as home listening players go I'd love to have this https://roonlabs.com/ but just can't justify the price. 

But I hear jriver is the standard app for most serious digital music nerds. 

I had a look at Roon after reading this. Wow.  The expensive answer to a question no-one is asking.  I mean, I kinda know about the music I've got already.

Okem

I like roon's basic premise that simply looking at a basic folder is dull, uninformative and uninspiring. If you only ever have music in a digital release, unless you then google and find the information yourself, you don't have anything like the information you had on an lp sleeve. The internet puts that all information at your fingertips but not necessarily in a convenient or helpfully structure way, this app hopefully offers that.

For example, you're starting out getting into jazz & you download some Miles Davis, you have no idea of the other great artist involved in that release. You'd have to look it up and either commit it all to memory or save a link in a separate app. This is all too disjointed for 2016 IMHO. 
I have have a pretty large digital collection that I have amassed over the years, something like 90,000 songs, that covers numerous genres, sub genres and micro genres, with thousands of artists. I just don't have a good enough memory to remember all those names and connections. Every music library app I've come across has been poor at handling very large libraries or multiple genres, so I've stuck to browsing by folder, which is unsatisfactory. If I open Misami Tsuchiya, and it tells me that he was the guitarist / lead vocalist of Ippu-Do, and also has connections to Japan, Bill Nelson, Ryuchi Sakamoto, Duran Duran etc, then the experience is exponentially enriched. Same for (picking at random) The Flamingos, Model 500, Tartit, Pauline Anna Strom, Julianna Barwick, Young L, mmm, Hopeton Lewis, Doris, Dino Saluzzi, Thomas Esterine, Chuck Person, Spencer Nielsen etc etc, instead of just names and basic connections you have the option of their entire history at your fingertips. Also you could go into label discographies, producer discorgraphies, studio connections etc etc. The possibilities of harvesting the huge amount of information available on the internet and presenting it in an attractive and easily available application seem obvious to me. 

For me, that is what a music library app should be doing. You have cataloging software that will do this for your physical collections, but there's little financial motivation for a digital version it seems. Most who offer a remotely similar service do it through basic streaming service connections and whilst their libraries are getting better and better I still prefer my personally curated selection, that contains plenty not available on Spotify.