Asking for advice regarding music collection, format and iTunes

Hello everyone. So I’ve used iTunes to organize my music for a while, since I had an iPod 3 64gb. But the iPod recently died on me, and I have 1 TB of music in mp3, m4a and apple lossless. I just reformatted and, strangely, iTunes refuses to update my Genius results (that I used to create playlists) and takes an unveliabable ammount of time to add more files.

So far I’ve tried:

-Reforming the iTunes Library.
-Rebuilding the mp3 and the vbr headers with Foobar (I have an untouched copy on another drive of the entire library)
-Checking file permissions, access, etc.

Still, things haven’t changed. And now I’m wondering what to do next. The only reason I’m sticking with iTunes is the few iTunes LP albums I got, and I suppose it’s a funcionality that no other program could use. Still, it’s too dumb to keep using it just because that. I’ve been thinking that transcoding the mp3s to m4a might do the trick, but obviously it’s gonna degrade the quality, even a little bit.

So I’m asking, what would you do? What other programs might do the trick and better? I tried Media Monkey, but it seems unstable and somehow not robust enough. Been thinking about JRiver. What’s your experience? Thanks in advance.

If you’re not going to use iTunes, I highly recommend spending some time playing with Foobar2000.

foobar2000 (http://www.foobar2000.org/)
Operating System
Windows XP – SP2 or newer, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012.

foobar2000 Free Encoder Pack
foobar2000: Free Encoder Pack (http://www.foobar2000.org/encoderpack)

a bunch components that are handy: foobar2000: Components Repository (http://www.foobar2000.org/components)
ABX Comparator 2.0
AC3 decoder 0.9.7
ASIO support 2.1.2
Binary Comparator 2.0
Decoding Speed Test 1.2.3
Dolby Headphone Wrapper 1.4.1 (but requires you locate "DolbyHP.dll" manually, extract from Cyberlink’s PowerDVD)
DTS decoder 0.3.3 (for DTS-CD, lossy DTS; not recommended for losless bluray audio DTSHDMA)
Effect DSP 0.15
Fake Gapless DSP 0.3
File Integrity Verifier 1.1.2
Foobar2000 Advanced Controls 0.6.7.4
Game Emu Player 1.181
HDCD Decoder 1.15
Meier Crossfeed 1.0 (for fun expirmenting)
Monkey’s Audio Decoder 2.1.7 (decoding for Monkey’s Audio files (.APE) as well as APE Link files (.APL))
MusicBrainz Tagger 0.3
TAK Decoder 0.4.7
R128Norm – EBU R128 Compressor/Normalizer DSP

Foobar did catch my eye, but does it do organization? Or do I have to manually manage the new albums?

Browse the components, there’s lots with different functions.
Foobar2000 has official components and a lot of third-party components (not to be confused with adware/shareware/trialware).

It can load playlists.
It has a library manager, but not sure how you want to organize.

I have all my music on externals so using any organizing or any media manager is useless to me.
I can’t have it scan and keep a list of media as the externals are always on different USB ports.

I wouldn’t know much about how FB2K organizes music (static libraries).

"media library viewer" components
foobar2000: Components Repository (http://www.foobar2000.org/components/tag/media+library+viewer)

Other categories for components:
playback control (http://www.foobar2000.org/components/tag/playback+control)
User interface (http://www.foobar2000.org/components/tag/user+interface)
playlist management (http://www.foobar2000.org/components/tag/playlist+management)
Columns UI panel (http://www.foobar2000.org/components/tag/Columns+UI+panel)

There’s also iPod manager 0.6.9.7 for ipod users.

Using it would help you understand a lot more.
There’s other FB2K users here. Probably with static libraries that would know better.

The only thing static for is the installation of Foobar.

could also using jriver media center or jukebox. media center more option, but jukebox free. very good for multiformat, having library, and themes

(also supporting replaygain/r128)

Ok, will try both. What I want is a good player, that I just drop the folder somewhere and it gets sorted, that kind of thing.

I just drop the folder somewhere and it gets sorted, that kind of thing.

It should sort in disc/track order.
Disc 1, track 1
Disc 1, track 2
Disc 2, track 1
Disc 2, track 2
etc.

But, FB2K honors all sorts of playlist files, so really get those going.
Playlists are solid with FB2K.