Years ago, The Laird ripped all of our CDs to a NAS. Then we rearranged the computers and I never got around to getting the NAS hooked up. After the move, I did, although it took more effort than expected: I had lost the power supply, but Chris’s found one for me. It’s running an ancient version of SMB that even Microsoft considers too insecure to use, but it can be turned on – until the next reboot, which automagically shuts it off again. Anyway, copied everything off it and turned it off again. It’s all on the new computer, now.
The Steam music player is functional enough, but the interface is horrible. VLC, which I downloaded for video, is dandy for playing a song, but not so great at a managing a library of them. I’m currently trying MusicBee. I got the Win32 version because I loathe the Microsoft Store.
I’m also finding that, with so many audio devices (hooking up the Oculus added one more), the “let Windows manage the default” is not working well. The Advanced Audio Settings is great, but one cannot create a shortcut to it. Or at least I haven’t figured out how.
To the point of this post: I have just over 17,000 tracks. It’s difficult to pick something to listen to. The album The Best of Billy Squier has 16 tracks. Who the heck is Billy Squier? I tripped on MamasDon'tLetGayCowboys.mp3, which is quite good (in a Weird Al sort of way), but where did that come from?!? I suppose I can listen to it all on random. MusicBee lets you rate the currently playing song. Building that up over time might work. Then sort into playlists. This could take years. Let’s see: 17,000 tracks x 3 minutes/track = 51,000 minutes / 60 minutes/hour = 850 hours / 24 hours/day = 35.4 days. That’s not so bad, but one does need to sleep, so let’s say 8 hours/day, which is about four months.
Marked Up 