# iTunes - is it really this bad?



## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

Hi - I won a really nice iPod Touch yesterday. Very impressive. 

So I decided to put some music on it, and I load iTunes 9 onto my PC (Windows 7, 64 bit, Windows Experience Index of 5.7). Installation goes well, and I launch iTunes and it starts locating my music.

I have about 28,000 legal MP3 files on my PC, all ripped from my CDs.

Well, iTunes has gone nuts. It's doing something called "gapless analysis", and it's running SO slowly that it's painful. I then stopped that process and tried to copy over one album to the iPod.

This too took forever. 

I don't get it - copying an album over with my Zune takes 30-60 seconds. This took about 3-4 minutes.

-------------------------------------------

Even worse - I woke up this morning to see that iTunes has started to copy some CDs over to another directory. I have a lot of space, but not enough to make another copy of 28,000 songs!

Oh yeah, no cover art either. Other media players have worked perfectly (WMP, WMC, Zune, Tversity, Twonky, J River, etc)

I'm ready to remove (#$*(& iTunes and go with J River for syncing.

Is iTunes really as bad as it seems, or am I just missing something.


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## matt (Jan 12, 2010)

The gapless thing is trying to figure out the dead spots so you don't have to sit for 20 seconds of silence between songs. Kinda dumb IMHO.

The copy to a new folder thing is because somewhere an option is checked to let itunes manage your music folder. Go turn that off, unless you think you will like it. It will copy everything into your itunes music folder and organize it for you by artist automatically.

You should just mail that iPod to me


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## davring (Jan 13, 2007)

I was not familiar with the whole iPod, iTunes workings at all until I bought my iPhone. I had my doubts at first with iTunes, but I let it organize all music(6500 titles) and it actually worked out quite well. Still getting used it.


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

wilbur_the_goose said:


> Hi - I won a really nice iPod Touch yesterday. Very impressive.
> 
> So I decided to put some music on it, and I load iTunes 9 onto my PC (Windows 7, 64 bit, Windows Experience Index of 5.7). Installation goes well, and I launch iTunes and it starts locating my music.
> 
> ...


Let me get this straight... you had Zune and you stooped to iTunes?

MMMMMM.. what were you thinking?

Zune = Audiophile Music Lovers

iTunes= Half Deaf Masses

Larry


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## ShapeGSX (Sep 17, 2006)

Yes, iTunes is horrible. I have a 3.0GHz quad core with 6GB of RAM, and iTunes still manages to stall out for seconds at a time when clicking on icons in the user interface.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

LarryFlowers said:


> Let me get this straight... you had Zune and you stooped to iTunes?
> 
> MMMMMM.. what were you thinking?
> 
> ...


Wow, Zune just lost a third of their market...

I wonder, how much different is iTunes on a Mac. Thinking about it, Office for Mac generally is pretty bad from what I've heard. Apple writing a Windows program is likely no different.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

iTunes has to be the worst user interface that has been so widely accepted. I still have to get my wife to explain how to do certain things on it for my iPhone.

And generally she has to experiment with it before finding the solution.

(disclaimer: I've been anti-Apple until the iPhone / iPad and she's a SQL developer)


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Hard to say as I don't use iTunes very much at all on my PC... but it seems to be smoother on the Mac. That said, it still leaves a little to be desired at times.

I started on my Mac with an empty library... so I didn't encounter the problems the OP has with trying to migrate an existing large library... but that sounds familiar with other programs and "importing" libraries of existing content. Sometimes there is a bunch of issues/delays when migrating from one program to another.

Not defending iTunes here... but maybe a better approach would be (in the future) to try migrating just a portion of the existing library and see how that goes. I have a lot of music in CD and MP3 form, and I wouldn't dream of trying to import it all into iTunes in one swoop.


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## dmurphy (Sep 28, 2006)

dpeters11 said:


> Wow, Zune just lost a third of their market...
> 
> I wonder, how much different is iTunes on a Mac. Thinking about it, Office for Mac generally is pretty bad from what I've heard. Apple writing a Windows program is likely no different.


iTunes on the Mac works really, really well. It's just smooth as silk.

Sorry that you guys are having problems, but those of us on the Mac side of the house enjoy how easy this stuff all works.

The Gapless Analysis is one of those things that seems silly until it doesn't.

For example, think about Dark Side of the Moon... that just SCREAMS to not have pauses between tracks. It's intended (and really works) to be played as a single album, not a series of tracks.


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## cdizzy (Jul 29, 2007)

I just started using iTunes after I picked up an ipod touch a couple weeks ago. First, I don't remember ever going through the "gapless analysis". Of course, I don't have 28,000 songs either.

Second, syncing takes me only 10-15 seconds. Sometimes it's longer if I make a lot of additions or changes. 

I had to mess around with the song titles, albums, and artists on a majority of my music to get the album art to download. Some of it was already imported in but it was somewhat blurry and I had to delete it so that I can get iTunes to grab a better resolution image. 

Overall, I really like it now that everything is set up. The genius feature is really cool if you get around to trying that. Oh, and the iTunes remote app on your touch works really well.


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## cdizzy (Jul 29, 2007)

dmurphy said:


> iTunes on the Mac works really, really well. It's just smooth as silk.


My brother has a Mac and I can 2nd this statement.


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## DCSholtis (Aug 7, 2002)

dmurphy said:


> iTunes on the Mac works really, really well. It's just smooth as silk.
> 
> Sorry that you guys are having problems, but those of us on the Mac side of the house enjoy how easy this stuff all works.
> 
> ...


I can 3rd your statement. Except for the Dark Side of the Moon part.  I'm more of an Ozzy guy. :lol:


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## ShapeGSX (Sep 17, 2006)

The odd thing is that iTunes is Apple's ambassador to the Windows computing world. It is their chance to show "the other side" what awesome coders and software designers they are. And iTunes on the PC is just awful.

Hell, I have to run a separate program just to update iTunes whenever I add a ripped CD to my music library. Somehow they have never added a "watch these folders for additions" option.


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## dmurphy (Sep 28, 2006)

ShapeGSX said:


> The odd thing is that iTunes is Apple's ambassador to the Windows computing world. It is their chance to show "the other side" what awesome coders and software designers they are. And iTunes on the PC is just awful.
> 
> Hell, I have to run a separate program just to update iTunes whenever I add a ripped CD to my music library. Somehow they have never added a "watch these folders for additions" option.


Well, I just click the magical "Import" button in iTunes to rip & import in a CD. It's pretty easy.

When I have music that isn't in the iTunes library, I just drop them into the iTunes window. It automagically imports.

Of course, that's on a Mac.


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## cdizzy (Jul 29, 2007)

ShapeGSX said:


> The odd thing is that iTunes is Apple's ambassador to the Windows computing world. It is their chance to show "the other side" what awesome coders and software designers they are. And iTunes on the PC is just awful.
> 
> Hell, I have to run a separate program just to update iTunes whenever I add a ripped CD to my music library. Somehow they have never added a "watch these folders for additions" option.


Not sure what your issue is. When I put a CD in the drive, iTunes opens and shows a list of the tracks with a checkbox next to it allowing me to choose which songs I want to rip. Then I hit the import CD button and within a couple minutes it's done.


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## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

Larry,
trust me - I'm not giving up my Zune's (I have 2 of them). I won the iPod Touch during a blood drive. The iPod is pretty darn cool and has great wireless capability, assuming you can find a hotspot. 

I'll tell you, the Zune software gets an A+ compared to iTunes' D-.

Anyway, I think I'm going to purge iTunes and go with J River, which syncs to iPods just fine.


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## ShapeGSX (Sep 17, 2006)

cdizzy said:


> Not sure what your issue is. When I put a CD in the drive, iTunes opens and shows a list of the tracks with a checkbox next to it allowing me to choose which songs I want to rip. Then I hit the import CD button and within a couple minutes it's done.


I don't rip through iTunes. I use Exact Audio Copy and LAME mp3 encoder. EAC will read a CD over and over to ensure that the data is correct and not influenced by scratches or dust.

If you use anything other than iTunes to rip the CD (and there are tons of better programs to do so), iTunes won't automatically add it to the library.

I also organize my library myself rather than let iTunes handle it.

This is the reason that 3rd party programs like iTunes Folder Watch exist:
http://albumbrowser.klarita.net/itfw.html

Frankly, though, they shouldn't have to. iTunes should just be able to monitor folders. That's the kind of thing that computers are good at.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

iTunes on the Mac is pretty simple to import songs from a CD. I've been slowly going through my CD library picking my favorite songs to import, and in some cases adding the whole album.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

wilbur_the_goose said:


> Larry,
> trust me - I'm not giving up my Zune's (I have 2 of them). I won the iPod Touch during a blood drive. The iPod is pretty darn cool and has great wireless capability, assuming you can find a hotspot.
> 
> I'll tell you, the Zune software gets an A+ compared to iTunes' D-.
> ...


For reasons I don't understand, until you mentioned it I never heard of J River.

Since the death-by-Yahoo of MusicMatch and really from upgrades beyond MM v6 we have not been able to find a piece of software that effectively manages my wife's collection of 40,000 plus tracks of MP3s. We particularly mourned the loss of effective multiple library management.

So just because of your mention of J River, I looked it over and we're going to try it. Thanks for mentioning it.


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## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

phrelin - let me know how it works for you.


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## Fluthy (Feb 9, 2008)

I use MediaMonkey to load songs to my iPod. It works pretty nice and I think it much easier to use.


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## kikkenit2 (Oct 26, 2006)

wilbur_the_goose said:


> Oh yeah, no cover art either.


There is an option somewhere to find album art but it won't find every one. Neither did zune. I then call up each album that has no picture in allmusic.com and paste their album art into itunes.


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## mstanka (Jan 26, 2003)

I had the same issue when I got my first iPhone. I hated iTunes, now I don't so much mind it really.

The only thing that i can recommend is start the import and let it do the gapless "thing" overnight. Once it is done it does not have to do it again, except for when adding new music.

I hope that this helps.

Michael.


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## Greg Alsobrook (Apr 2, 2007)

wilbur - Silly question... but did you make sure to download the 64-bit version of iTunes?? http://support.apple.com/kb/DL925

Other than the slowness, everything you've mentioned can be customized.

The gapless playback is indeed a very nice feature. It's just not something you knew you needed because no other software out there does it. But it can be turned off.

iTunes will pull in cover art... and can also pull in the missing information on untitled tracks.

If you don't want to iTunes to duplicate (arrange in its own way) all of your music, then go into the Options and look for something along the lines of "Copy files to iTunes Media Folder when importing". That's what it's called on a Mac anyway. I'm sure its very similar in Windows.


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## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

iTunes is slow on windows, no real getting around that (especially to start up). I have seen some machines it mysteriously seems to work quickly on, but overall it is slow. It is one of the longest programs to start up on my computer (even longer than photoshop, etc.!) and always has been, even with different fresh installs.



Greg Alsobrook said:


> wilbur - Silly question... but did you make sure to download the 64-bit version of iTunes?? http://support.apple.com/kb/DL925
> 
> Other than the slowness, everything you've mentioned can be customized.
> 
> ...


Greg is right on, for some clarification:

On windows these things are under Edit -> Preferences

-To turn off the gapless stuff go to the Playback tab and uncheck "Crossfade Songs"
-To make sure it does not mess with your audio files, go to the Advanced tab and make sure "Keep iTunes Media folder Organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" are unchecked. With those two unchecked it should not mess with your music files locations at all. DONT make the iTunes Media Folder location where you music is. It should be its own folder called iTunes in your My Music/Music folder. It does in fact ask you about the copying files to the itunes library when you first start itunes after a fresh install, but you might have missed it.

You should have no problems with it setup that way. I have used WMP, iTunes, Foobar, and even Zune at times side by side for a long time and never had any issues. You just have to make sure that iTunes automatic track organizing stuff is off.

Also note that the iPod Touch is very slow to sync in comparison to the hard drive players like the normal Zunes and iPod Classic/Video. The flash based players tend to take longer to copy music.


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## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

Grentz - great info.. Thanks.

I'll reload the 64bit version and see what happens.

BTW - JRiver doesn't work with the iPod Touch.


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