Best program to organize and play classical mp3 library?

[felval]

Hi all,

I was wondering what program everyone uses to organize and play his or her classical digital music collection.

I currently use iTunes.  The program is awesome but it is missing a crucial component for classical music. (IMO).. the "browser" area doesn't let one filter by composer.  Is there any program that allows this?  How about one that keeps opus numbers and key signatures in a seperate column?

Just wanted to see what others were using.

[Kassaa]

What do you mean with filter by composer? You can rightclick on the bar above the browser with Artist, Album etc and click on composer.

There isn't a program which can filter opus numbers because the opus numbers and key-signatures aren't in the ID3-tags.

[musik_man]

You can use other fields for stuff like that.  All my genres are the composer names.

[felval]

I'd thought about using the Genre field to filter composers but then I'd lose the Genre sort field.  I wish iTunes would let the user customize which fields one wanted to "browse" with.

[Kassaa]

BTW, I also use dBpowerAMP, which is faster than iTunes. I also use iTunes because I have an iPod 

[xvimbi]

Unfortunately, as much as I love iTunes, it is not quite ideal for organizing and playing Classical music. One would need a dedicated database, which would not be difficult to design using programs like FileMaker and such.

For whatever its worth, PlaylistMag occasionally runs features on Classical Music. Check out the links below. Make sure you go through the comments, because they often contain more useful information than the articles themselves.

https://playlistmag.com/features/2005/03/classicalipod/index.php
https://playlistmag.com/features/2005/03/tagclass/index.php
https://playlistmag.com/weblogs/todayatplaylist/2005/04/jointracksyou/index.php

Have fun!

[fred smalls]

REAL PLAYER IS AMAZING! IT DOES EVERYTHING! I LOVE IT!
Great for organising songs by artist, genre, album and ripping cds onto your hard drive. Also, it can find a match for ANY classical piano cd!
WOW!

[Kassaa]

REAL PLAYER IS AMAZING! IT DOES EVERYTHING! I LOVE IT!
Great for organising songs by artist, genre, album and ripping cds onto your hard drive. Also, it can find a match for ANY classical piano cd!
WOW!

No, stupid resources killing adware program.

[fred smalls]

No, stupid resources killing adware program.

Say what?

[kilini]

Real Player is bundled with spyware and adware. It is memory intensive. It is HORRIBLE.

Just thought I'd clarify.

[musik_man]

I'd thought about using the Genre field to filter composers but then I'd lose the Genre sort field.  I wish iTunes would let the user customize which fields one wanted to "browse" with.

I actually started putting the Composer in the Genre field, because I had difficulty deciding how to do the genres.  Genres like 'Classical', 'Romantic', and 'Baroque' wouldn't be much use in sorting through 100 CD's.  But when I tried more specific terms, they were confusing and hard to remember.

[felval]

Thanks for the advice.  One other thing... when viewing my files in a standard WinXP folder, why isn't the "composer" field available in the ID3 tag columns as it is in iTunes?

[Kassaa]

Thanks for the advice.  One other thing... when viewing my files in a standard WinXP folder, why isn't the "composer" field available in the ID3 tag columns as it is in iTunes?

Because Windows XP doesn't work with id3-tags.