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Better Jukebox Software for Bigger Libraries?

jimjenkins1975 asks: "I recently ripped and encoded my entire CD and Vinyl library, as well as merged my home and work computer's libraries (I work at a music company so my work library is very very large). It resulted in well over 750 GB of MP3's. I was hoping to get away with using iTunes to manage this, however the XML database file has grown very large, and the application itself is non-responsive or very sluggish at best, once it has loaded up (a process that takes several minutes itself). Is there another application (preferably for Mac, but I do have a PC) with similar features out there that can handle a library of this size with aplomb?"

2 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Amarok in Linux by rhythmx · · Score: 5, Informative
    As a GNU/Linux user, even though I refuse to run KDE, I have had the best luck with Amarok. My archive (only about 150 GB) is nearly entirely rips of my albums. It has just about the best interface I have seen for dealing with a large (and sorted) archive. The features I like most are album cover manager, last.fm integration, ipod-style (artist->album->track) menus, the wikipedia info and lyrics based on context, and the random-album play mode.

    There is a gnome equivalent but it is not quite as stable. I can't speak for the MacOSX crowd, but when in Win32 (rare these days) I reluctantly choose to use Winamp.

    Some tips from my experience:
    • Be an ID3 tag-nazi - No player can compensate for 750 GB of badly named media. MP3Tag is your friend for batch editing ID3 tags.
    • Sort all your files using a resonable naming system. I use '/path/to/archive/%Artist%/[%Year] %Album%/%02Track% - %Title%.%Ext%'. This comes in real handy for writing scripts to deal with an archive to large to manage by hand.
    • Backup. Backup. Backup.
  2. well over 750 GB of MP3's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Torrent, please?!