[Seth C]

Hi there,

I have a problem with managing my digital library.

This is my setup:
Readynas Duo running Squeezecenter 7.3.2, streaming FLACS and MP3s to Squeezebox receiver, controled by ipeng on iPhone.
I use Itunes on my desktop PC to manage my MP3 library & playlists located on the Readynas Duo. Squeezecentre scans the itunes library file every night. FLACS I just drop in a watched folder on the NAS.

PROBLEMS:
Itunes is horribly slow and unresponsive with it's MP3 library on the NAS. Deleting & importing files takes an age and is practically unworkable. Ideally I would like to swap to Winamp (or similar) to manage my library which has no problem accessing the files on the NAS very quickly.
How do I swap to Winamp when I need to migrate all my playlists, ratings etc from Itunes? Also if I do switch to Winamp, how can I keep my Iphone MP3s in synch?
Also, if I switch successfully, how will squeezecenter import / synch the library & playlists from Winamp - at the moment it rescans the Itunes library every night.

Another (maybe unrelated) problem is that for some reason the Squeezecenter scan of the Itunes library does not pick up certain tracks, so they remain inaccessible to my squeezebox, another reason for trying to drop Itunes.

Very frustrating and I can't seem to work out a solution, everytime I use the winamp 'import Itunes database' option it seems to freeze and I simply cannot work out where it thinks it is importing from, as it gives no options to point it to the specific itunes file.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Seth

[Seth C]

OK I'm beginning to answer my own question here.

I've found a solution.

Basically I now have 2 copies of my Itunes MP3 library. One on my desktop computer that I can manage using Itunes, and because it is local (not on the network) iTunes runs OK i.e. not painfully slow like it did on the network.

I then use SyncBack to backup the whole Itunes library, including the music folder, to the network drive where squeezecenter is running. Squeezecenter (as it always has done) accesses and scans this mirror of the itunes library. The backup is an incremental backup so only a few files have to be changed each night to keep the library mirrored on the network drive.

I didn't think this would work originally cause I thought that squeezecenter would get confused by the path for each file given in the itunes xml, but it doesn't as you can point it directly to the itunes music folder and I guess this overrides the path in the xml.

Seems like weird solution to have to keep 2 copies of the entire library, but it works and I can also keep my iphone and ipod synched up easily.

Would still love to give up Itunes and switch to winamp or mediamonkey, but with ipods, iphones and squeezecenter I still can't really see a better solution.

Oh - one problem not yet solved - still some tracks do not get added to the squeezecenter library after scanning iTunes library. Any ideas?

Cheers
Seth