12:09AM
Review - TuneRanger
I have a confession. I’ve had iPods for years and own more music than I care to admit. While I did get it all ripped into iTunes a long time ago, I’ve never really been an iTunes power user. That has been changing the last few months though. Recently I’ve started making smart playlists and autosyncing lists to get more out of my music library. This is great but it has also exposed a problem. Fancy playlists depend on good metadata like how you’ve rated a song or when the was the last time you played it. Since I have portions of my library on my laptop and a big library on the family desktop (not to mention an iPod and iPhone), keeping all of this data in sync could be a real chore. This problem gets magnified when my wife and kids get involved. I like Hannah Montana as much as the next dad, but that doesn’t mean she gets to share space with Thelonius Monk and Debussy on my iPod.
While at Macworld this year I found a small company named Acertant Technologies that had a booth right behind the Apple area, that section where all of the best little developers seem to land. Anyway, I met Manny Menendez who showed me an application he developed for precisely my iTunes problems called TuneRanger.
TuneRanger connects all of your iTunes libraries. It then compares the libraries and allows you to share data between them. This doesn’t just include the music files but also all of the metadata.
When you first open TuneRanger it gives you a window that shows your local iTunes library and any other libraries on your network. It then gives you drop down lists of playlists on both libraries and gives you several options. When choosing what to sync you have a variety of filters available including duplicate files, license IDs, file types, genre, artists, album names, and song titles. You can also instruct TuneRanger to trash files marked for deletion or move them to a different folder for later review and deletion.
You can force one library upon another or synchronize them. Once you give TuneRanger its instructions it does a preliminary analysis and gives you a dialog telling you what it is going to do and offering you a chance uncheck any specific action. Once you tell it to go, TuneRanger then does the syncrhonization. This doesn’t just work with other computers in your network. It also works with your iPod. You can actually pull music off your iPod and place it in your iTunes library with TuneRanger. TuneRanger is also multiplatform so if part of your library is on a Vista or XP box, you still can synchronize. Since I’ve purged all PC’s from my home, I was unable to test this feature.
Before using TuneRanger, I treated our desktop computer as the source for all iTunes music. All music had to be ripped on that machine and all iTunes purchases had to be made on that machine. I then had to manually copy the stuff I wanted over to my laptop usually losing all metadata. TuneRanger has really liberated me of this whole process. I can now finally use the iTunes button on my iPhone or buy music on my laptop. It is no trouble to then later upload it to the desktop computer with TuneRanger. It really is that easy.
The application costs $29.99 and includes 5 single platform licenses so you will have no trouble getting it on all of the Macs in your household. There is also a free trial available at www.acertant.com. You should be warned though, since getting TuneRanger on my Mac, I’ve spent a lot more money downloading music.
Reader Comments (66)
Just purchased TR through Smith Micro. We have 2 MBP, one G4 and one IBM running XP. The two MBP are on Leopard and the G4 is running Tiger. HELP! I can't even get two of these computers to sync, much less 4. I changed the firewall settings as instructed, but no go. There is no contact number for TR support, so I am stuck waiting for help. If anyone is willing to help me out, I would greatly appreciate it. We are leaving on a trip soon and I would love to compile all of the separate music that we have all accumulated and be able to enjoy all of it!
Well, I just tried the trial of this app, and it didn't really do what I expected. I have two libraries I want to merge. One is on a windows machine, the other on a Mac. Both machines store their music files on a USB Harddrive that is attached to an AEBS.
I installed the app on both machines, and had no problems initiating the sync, but when it actually tried to copy files, every one errored out saying "Failed copying X -11160: File not found."
I downloaded the trial for my pc and mac and have no trouble with them finding eachother to sync, but the sync takes more then a minute for each song on the playlists i'm syncing. I already had all the songs copied on both machines as a starting point, but the playlists take forever to copy. Is there a seting i'm missing somewhere, or is it possible there is a network bottleneck between the two connections.
I recently purchased TuneRanger, and disliked...not worth the money. TR is excruciatingly tedious.
I have used Tune Ranger for a few months with a PC and iMac on an ethernet connection, and with a Mac laptop for travelling. I synch with two iPods.
During the initial file transfers I moved about 8000 selections, and Tune Ranger would hang in the middle for no apparent reason. However, by restarting, it cleverly knew where it stopped, and successfully continued the transfer.
This product assures I have three complete, original, compatible versions of my music database. It's excellent.
My concern at present is how to synch the smart playlists. It seems they are not transferred, requiring me to re-create them on each computer. Does anyone else experience this, and if so how do you deal with it?
I've read the reviews listed above and I'm now confident in making the TuneRanger purchase. I do have one question regarding the need to copy over playlists and TuneRangers apparent inability to do so. Should this be an essential function for TuneRanger? It seems to me that the biggest competitor for TuneRanger is the innate ability for iTunes to share its library (and playlists) with other networked computers. Granted, I guess it would be nice to have an exact copy of your library on every computer in your home, but isn't this essentially a waste of storage space and time (for file management)? My intention is to use this software to copy my library from my Mac to my PC and then convert the AAC files to MP3 (using iTunes) to place in a share folder for my home's media center. I do appreciate the review though...Thanks!
Anybody know if this will work with Apple TV? I have a Airport Extreme (no hard drive connected), aTV, MBPro, iMac and 2 XP machines, all running different libraries and it's killing me. I'd like to put a master library together (on a drive off the Airport would be ideal) and have every PC in the house use it.
I agree with Tim... i just want to be able to edit the library on different computers. Accessing the audio via network. Does this make sense?
I would love to use this program, however, it hangs on my PB G4. I am running 10.5.4. When TuneRanger starts it appears to try to do some DNS lookups. But since the address is private of course this fails and that's where it stops. Any updates or anyone else seeing this problem. The alternatives are SlingShot and Syncopation unless I just continue to use Unison. Thanks.
I have had TuneRanger for three days. I have 150 gigs of music. I decided to move it all back to my mac and hoped TR would do the job. It is still doing the job. 2 and a half days. It is taking forever. what the? I have gigabit ethernet.
Second issue. On my pc I am trying to set the album artwork so that it is attached to the song. It works then crashes. Fatal error. I redo the process. Time consuming as it researches all the 150 gigs of music and analyzes again each time taking 20 minutes for that. Then I have to uncheck what caused the crash then it works for more files then crashes again. Repeat. Repeat. It is taking forever. I am hoping that when the mac transfer is done, should have done it manually that would have been faster, that I can do the album attach on the mac without flaw. The website is useless. No support whatsoever. Wish I could return this software but the store has a no return on software policy. So I'm stuck with it.
I have about 180GB library on WinXP, 80GB Video iPod. So I cannot use "normal" iTunes sync. Will TR allow me to sync iPod ratings back to computer?
Here's why I want to try TuneRanger. Could someone tell me if this will work?
I have an OLD iPod with a full drive - 15gig - of music. It's synch'd to iTunes via my MacBook at home.
I want to transfer the full content of this library to my work computer (Windows XP Pro) and THEN... I am intending on buying a new 3G iPhone. Will I be able to then upload from the Windows iTunes to my new iPhone?
My dream is this - I have my cell, my text messaging, my personal email, my contacts, my work calendar AND all my music... ON ONE DEVICE!! Am I thinking this through? If so - I'll be downloading TuneRanger ASAP!
Thanks - Tommy
I have a problem with this app. I admit I may be a bit more paranoid than most, but here is what I found.
Every time you fire this app up it starts talking to a host esellerate in the Digitalriver domain. I watched the entire conversation in Ethereal and Sniffer.
Nowhere in the documentation or license is this spelled out. This is very sneaky, and I feel, quite suspicious. You guys think its cute when you start sending hidden traffic to your commerce sites? I hope you change this and take a more security-wise acceptable path. Until then I have had the Acertant folks process a refund, and it is coming off my machines.
Sorry boys....MY data, MY traffic...NOT YOURS. You want me to allow stuff to and from your servers? Are you completely nuts?
What about impact on Apple TV? Does TR remove those pesky locks that prohibit purchased music to load onto slide shows? And does it handle WAV or AU recordings and convert to MP3?
I have 3 ipods. can I delete my whole itunes library then get all music and playlists from 3 ipods back into a single itunes library?
I've downloaded the trial but can't get my macbook pro to find my new imac though they are connected through my wireless time capsule network .I have file sharing on.I tried connecting them directly with an ethernet cable but still no luck
i have about 5 hard drives of songs..id like to consolifate on a one T drive and use on itumnes...will TR help me consolidate the 150,000 plus songs, remove duplicates, etc on the one drive that would be my itunes source??
I tried using Tune Ranger to consolidate my library, and ran into a big problem: It does not read foreign language files, so it "read" all my Japanese pop songs as being defective. I had told the software to delete defective files, so I lost all my music. So if you have any non-English tunes in your library, be careful!
The question is, will it consolidate huge, external drive based, libraries of song files (with no language issues)
I am pretty sure it will do this--when I lost my foreign language songs, I was trying to consolidate two external drives--one of about 250 GB and another of about 750GB--and an internal drive onto a larger external drive. It seemed to work as far as consolidating them goes, except that I lost a lot of foreign language songs (as mentioned above, Tune Ranger said they were corrupted files). It also took several days for the process to run (which would be expected, if you think about the size of the files).
My problem was that I ran out of space for the consolidated file (in the end, it exceeded the size of any hard drive that I had available) so I ended up stopping the full consolidation.
wow looks like a wiki needs to be started on this topic alone.
Wondering if someone can provide insight.
Wife has a PC, I have a Mac. All our music is on a network drive in our home, and both our iTunes is setup to read/save music files onto the same Network Drive.
At initial import everything is fine, but if I buy a song or if she buys a song, the other iTunes library does not get updated because iTunes doesn't have a "Watch Folders" options (seriously why isn't this available).
So we have one copy of music, accessible on each iTunes. We don't use "shared" libraries because we can't manage our iPod music from a shared library, and we both want to do it on our own computers.
So the big question, will TuneRanger sync the iTunes library file? Or will it try to re-copy the music from machine to machine which seems like it would screw up everything by creating tons of duplicates.
Thanks for the links, Clay. They do seem to be for something slightly different: synchronizing music between two computers, rather than having two computers access a shared library.
This is a classic problem that a database server handles very well. None of the solutions I've found take that approach, so my guess is a good solution doesn't exist yet. Other solutions are possible, perhaps something like what revision checking systems use (RCS, CVS, Subversion), where files are checked in and out. Hmm, that might work well.
For your problem of synchronizing music and folders, you might just use a general backup utility like SuperDuper, which does that quite well. It wouldn't read the MP3 metadata, but the important stuff is kinda built into the file structure.
Joe Kwon: "will TuneRanger sync the iTunes library file"
That's what it does. It also syncs the media files if they are not there. If multiple iTunes point to a common share on a NAS or server then the media files would be there and they would not be copied. NO file duplication.
Q: Will TuneRanger sync iTunes libraries and playlists that use a common share on a server or a NAS without duplicating files on the NAS?
A: The answer is yes as long as all sync clients in the group point to the network share in exactly the same way. The key is in the iTunes preference setting iTunes->Preferences->Advanced->General->iTunes Music folder location which must point to the shared directory containing all the music and video files on the NAS. This setting must be the same for all iTunes libraries to be synchronized. Another critical setting is "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" which must be checked ON for everything to work properly.
TobyF: Sounds like what you are looking for is a music server like Firefly where both the database+metadata and the media files are on a server. TuneRanger support a hybrid solution where the iTunes library+playlists+metadata are local to multiple clients but the bulk of the contents, the media files, are centrally located on a server. For iTunes users who buy DRM'd media this is the only realistic way to go at this time until Apple redesigns the database to support multiple simlutaneous iTunes clients opening a central database. Until then, syncing the local databases without unnecessarily duplicating the media files with something like TuneRanger is the only way to go as far as I know.
I'm having a problem copying playlists. If I run TuneRanger with the option "Make iTunes equal to Remote", all my remote playlists are copied to the local iTunes. Here's the problem. The new playlist on the local iTunes is not in the same order as the remote playlist. All the songs are there, but they play in the order they were copied instead of using the original playing order.
How can I copy playlists and preserve the original playing order of the list?