Newbie (possibly dumb) questions..
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Hi,
A couple of questions, from a new Mac user, that I can't find answers to despite searching the forum and googling.
I'm a long time Swinsian user who is reluctantly moving away because playing tracks in Swinsian, from my NAS music library, randomly deletes tracks.
So, after a little research, Strawberry seemed the best bet as a replacement. I have added my NAS folders and my collection is now updated, after about a day.
My questions:
How do I simply play an album? I appear to be only able to play playlists? Do I have to create a playlist for each album?
I have over 11,000 albums and over 200,000 tracks but the Context for my collection shows only about 28,000 tracks and 2,000 albums. Is this because it is still working through my files? Even though it doesn't appear to be updating the collection now.
Thanks in advance.
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I can answer the first question. Yes, you need to open the album in a playlist. I also have a Mac that I used with iTunes for years (not familiar with Swinsian) and it takes a little getting used to, but Strawberry is very "playlist-oriented".
If you right click an album in the library you will see different options to "append to current, "replace current" or "open in new" playlist.
You can also play around with Settings>Behavior>Double clicking a song will... to choose how you want the songs or albums to open.I created and saved an empty playlist I call "Play from Collection" which I keep on the left hand side of the Playlist pane, next to the Collection pane. If I want to listen to an album I select that playlist and double click the album in the Collection. My double click settings are for "append to playlist" and "always start playing". When I'm done with the album I just clear the playlist. You may choose something else.
Play around and find what works best for you. Of course this approach is not as elegant as those players that visually showcase the currently selected album, but it gets the job done.
I have no idea why Strawberry is not showing all your albums. It can take awhile to update the collection, so maybe that's it. When I moved to Strawberry, I pointed it to my music collection folder, which originally came organized by iTunes; Artist>Album>Track - Title.extension. Strawberry figured out everything, even my Compilations folder, which shows up as "Various Artists".
Be careful if you use Strawberry's "Organize Files" feature, as it sorts out everything according to the path you assign it. The default may not be the same naming system you are used to.
There is a bit of a learning curve in Strawberry, but it's worth the diligence to figure it out. Good luck!
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Possible reasons songs are not picked up could be hidden folders, incorrect permissions or unsupported audio format.
Check and see if there are some differences between those that are not picked up and those that appear in the collection.
When you find a file that is not in the collection try dragging the file from finder to the playlist window and see if you get an error message.
