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Importing an existing music collection?

JerryL

Well-known member
We have finally gotten the entire movie system implimented. I was always impressed with it, but for a little while it was kind of half hooked up so I never really showed it to my better half. Well, now that she has used it and is in awe of the ease she has with it, I am now thinking about the Music Player. We have a music server already, but its several years old and it never worked in our home because my wife deemed using it too complex. I think she was just put off by the overly busy interface. Plus this system, which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty, has been buggy and suffered crashes and even has tied up my network. My dealer and that manufacturer have tried their best but in the end I've never been that impressed with this. I even went so far as to buy a separate Macintosh, load it up with HD capacity and rip all my CDs (again!) as AIFF file format. So I have about 500GB of music in its native state. It would be a lot easier if I could move it over to the server. Does anyone know if Kaleidescape is allowing this currently?
 
They don't offer it currently. There's no way to import digital files (movies, music, or other) at this time.

I know they've heard this issue before... not sure about their latest thinking on it. Offering an import for MP3s (as well as photos, or video files) would seem logical, and NOT having it makes it seem lacking against so many other systems that do it.

However, Kaleidescape is VERY sensitive to doing anything that would seem to allow pirated content onto the system. They want to show that a system can be built that provides for amazing ease-of-use, great utility, that encourages more sales of entertainment content. I think we all know that's exactly what the system does today. That makes the import of already "ripped" (ok, imported) content a very tough call for them.

We'll have to stay tuned to see if market forces push this up in priority, or legal compliance ("posturing" even?) pushes it lower in priority.

Maybe as the court date nears for the DVDCCA vs. Kaleidescape suit, we'll get more of an indication. (Hint - the jury trial is due to begin in 2 weeks, though the final outcome could take years considering inevitable appeals on either side).

--josh
 
Good point Josh. I actually was thinking the same thing as to why they might not- but unlike DVDs, CDs do not have any copy protection on them. I will ask Kaleidescape, I can copy the collection in uncompressed AIFF, not MP3, to a hard drive and I can take digital photos of the boxes upon boxes of CDs I have in storage. But I think in the end I will be doing my own ripping and you know what- thats not so bad.
 
Jerry, just noticed this old thread and here we are a year later and we're... well, almost there. Kaleidescape now does the exact opposite of what you wanted... it lets you take music from Kaleidescape and move it to your iTunes. I've heard a rumor that transporting the other direction is something being considered. Stay tuned, you may actually get your wish some day.

--josh
 
I've made this suggestion to K more than once. While they are clearly the best of breed in the video server market with very few competitors at all, there are many players in the music server/streaming category. Some of those folks have been at it for a while and the category as a whole has come a long way, so many folks will have high expectations of K for music, not only because of teh price point but also because of how well they do movies. To that end, I think the ability to import existing music collections is long overdue.

Format compatibility issues do exist, but just about everybody supports MP3 streaming or importing. I used to blame the lack of functionality on the metadata problem. That is, K identifies imported CDs using AMG's music database to present users with a pleasant visual interface for browsing and playing back their music. When you are talking about external content taht has already been ripped, you never know how accurate or complete that data is. Beyond that, external content almost certainly does not contain items like album reviews, which K pulls from AMG along with the artist/album/track/etc metadata.

All that being said, I know of at least 2 music server products which also use AMG for metadata, but both of those also can accommodate the importing of MP3s. In both cases, they analyze the content and then match it up with AMG's database so that the displayed info for that imported content also comes from AMG. In that way, the user experience stays the same regardless of whether the music they are browsing/playing was ripped directly from CDs or were MP3s imported from an existing digital library. There are likely issues with content that can not be matched up with AMG's system, but that's to be expected. I'd much rather have the option and deal with exceptions than to be left with no option at all...

Jeff
 
Thanks guys- most of my collection is now re-ripped into the Kservers. The remainder is awaiting a rainy day :)
 
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