[Silvaire]

Headphones is a total crap shoot for albums with long names and foreign characters. But when it works, it saves me a lot of time. I've tried working with the author to fix some bugs, but he's been MIA awhile with real life stuff so it has been slow going.

My biggest issues with Headphones are support for Japanese artists (it should use the field available on MB that has the English translated name so as to not screw up file names), long file names, and finally, the author needs to contact nzb.su and work out how to unban its service from its site. It happened a long time ago, and I think the author of headphones was working on bringing it into compliance without hammering the API, but nothing ever came of it, and it is still banned. Also has some UI bugs where you request something as wanted, and it'll say failed or something, then you refresh browser and it is correctly tagged as wanted, but that's more minor.

So, while I use it, and love the potential of it, it's not quite there yet, but in my opinion, still useful for getting new music, if not quite ready for comprehensively managing a large already-existing music library. But maybe one day it will get there.

[tinybilbo]

I've tried it here and there, and although I like the interface I find it really struggles to actually find anything. I put an artist in, and it grabs the artist data OK, but it finds little or no albums for those artists...makes grabbing them a little tricky!
I understand that the MusicBrainz server is limiting access for things like Headphones and that is some of the reason. Until Headphones does something sensible like query AudioDB (they use the same headphone logo...a clue perhaps) or Discogs then I'm going to leave it alone as it's next to useless for me at the moment.
I'm steadily approaching middle-age, so I automatically think most music these days is crap anyway.

I donated to access the headphones server, they were down for a bit, but now they are back up, plus I think a few free mirrors have since appeared.

If it's not picking up the the albums from newgroups, then your search provider is probably not too good, I use NZBs.org.
I find that the torrent option also works but grabs a lot of incorrect albums (usually compilations).

On the whole if I add a reasonably known artist it finds about 80% correctly and rest is either missed or some garbage album.
I added Adam Ant the other day and it found all of his albums (Now you know that I am also "middle aged" )

Headphones is a total crap shoot for albums with long names and foreign characters. But when it works, it saves me a lot of time. I've tried working with the author to fix some bugs, but he's been MIA awhile with real life stuff so it has been slow going.

My biggest issues with Headphones are support for Japanese artists (it should use the field available on MB that has the English translated name so as to not screw up file names), long file names, and finally, the author needs to contact nzb.su and work out how to unban its service from its site. It happened a long time ago, and I think the author of headphones was working on bringing it into compliance without hammering the API, but nothing ever came of it, and it is still banned. Also has some UI bugs where you request something as wanted, and it'll say failed or something, then you refresh browser and it is correctly tagged as wanted, but that's more minor.

So, while I use it, and love the potential of it, it's not quite there yet, but in my opinion, still useful for getting new music, if not quite ready for comprehensively managing a large already-existing music library. But maybe one day it will get there.

I've seen that Rembo10 is back replying to issues on his Github page, as well as his server being back up.

I'm of the same mind as you about Headphones, It almost great, but not quite there, I just use to grab an artists discography and it gets most of the albums, the rest, I have to find manually.

It is still extremely helpful though, I was just curious to see if people were using it the way I think it's intended (like sickbeard), as a complete database/library with automated searching and downloading.

On a side note do you use anything to catalog your albums?, I download them (via Headphones or manually), and then run them through picard (I'm about to switch to beets - because it can automatically add replaygain), and then just dump them in my Music directory.

[JesusOnEez]

I donated to access the headphones server, they were down for a bit, but now they are back up, plus I think a few free mirrors have since appeared.

If it's not picking up the the albums from newgroups, then your search provider is probably not too good, I use NZBs.org.
I find that the torrent option also works but grabs a lot of incorrect albums (usually compilations).

I'm not even getting to the point of searching for NZB. I enter an artist, it finds the artist but never finds their albums (or maybe 1 or 2 if I'm lucky). So far as I'm aware this is all done (with a standard set-up) by scraping that data from MusicBrainz which I know is a problem as it limits API calls. I've never got to the point of marking an album as wanted for it to then use my indexer (NZBMatrix.eu) to grab the NZB and send it to SAB.

I wasn't aware the Headphones server was back up and running. Would you mind PMing me the link to the donation page and/or server?

EDIT: Never mind, found it.

[Silvaire]

I've tried it here and there, and although I like the interface I find it really struggles to actually find anything. I put an artist in, and it grabs the artist data OK, but it finds little or no albums for those artists...makes grabbing them a little tricky!
I understand that the MusicBrainz server is limiting access for things like Headphones and that is some of the reason. Until Headphones does something sensible like query AudioDB (they use the same headphone logo...a clue perhaps) or Discogs then I'm going to leave it alone as it's next to useless for me at the moment.
I'm steadily approaching middle-age, so I automatically think most music these days is crap anyway.

I donated to access the headphones server, they were down for a bit, but now they are back up, plus I think a few free mirrors have since appeared.

If it's not picking up the the albums from newgroups, then your search provider is probably not too good, I use NZBs.org.
I find that the torrent option also works but grabs a lot of incorrect albums (usually compilations).

On the whole if I add a reasonably known artist it finds about 80% correctly and rest is either missed or some garbage album.
I added Adam Ant the other day and it found all of his albums (Now you know that I am also "middle aged" )

Headphones is a total crap shoot for albums with long names and foreign characters. But when it works, it saves me a lot of time. I've tried working with the author to fix some bugs, but he's been MIA awhile with real life stuff so it has been slow going.

My biggest issues with Headphones are support for Japanese artists (it should use the field available on MB that has the English translated name so as to not screw up file names), long file names, and finally, the author needs to contact nzb.su and work out how to unban its service from its site. It happened a long time ago, and I think the author of headphones was working on bringing it into compliance without hammering the API, but nothing ever came of it, and it is still banned. Also has some UI bugs where you request something as wanted, and it'll say failed or something, then you refresh browser and it is correctly tagged as wanted, but that's more minor.

So, while I use it, and love the potential of it, it's not quite there yet, but in my opinion, still useful for getting new music, if not quite ready for comprehensively managing a large already-existing music library. But maybe one day it will get there.

I've seen that Rembo10 is back replying to issues on his Github page, as well as his server being back up.

I'm of the same mind as you about Headphones, It almost great, but not quite there, I just use to grab an artists discography and it gets most of the albums, the rest, I have to find manually.

It is still extremely helpful though, I was just curious to see if people were using it the way I think it's intended (like sickbeard), as a complete database/library with automated searching and downloading.

On a side note do you use anything to catalog your albums?, I download them (via Headphones or manually), and then run them through picard (I'm about to switch to beets - because it can automatically add replaygain), and then just dump them in my Music directory.

I use a combo of Headphones, MP3Tag, and Foobar to get my collection under control. It's probably not the most efficient and I'm open to suggestions but I've never really found anything that is truly set-it-and-forget-it. I'm hoping Headphones improves in that direction. I generally use MP3Tag to embed cover art for things that Headphones seems to miss, so they show up on my Android and iOS devices, which can sometimes be...erratic. Foobar is my music player of choice and I also use it to fix any other tag issues, and to add Replaygain.

I tried Picard in the past and recall having some issues with letting it have free reign.

[jakks]

Any way of finding out what my VIP server password is since Ive had to reinstall headphones and cant remember

[Silvaire]

Contact the dev.

[CBers]

As the forums are down, I suppose we need to post here again.

Any release notes for the latest updates please ??

[Username2045]

And it seems as if the VIP mirror is also down, any one else? Just in case it's only me down.

[madas]

Down for me too..any ideas?

[HarryRosen]

server is down for upgrades, rembo said it would be back soon. you can follow it on headphones github

[madas]

its back now

[WelshPaul]

Hi All,

As a new user of Headphones could I check a couple of things with you:

Firstly I donated and got a username, etc, but when I try to use that mirror all I get is for example:

Code:

2013-05-24 17:36:43    WARNING    Attempt to query MusicBrainz for AC/DC failed (caused by: HTTP Error 401: Unauthorized)

If I switch back to the standard MusicBrainz mirror it sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Is this normal for the more experienced users, and is it just a case of keep trying until things work? I've emailed the dev but without reply as yet (though only yesterday, so I am a little impatient).

My second question is there doesn't seem to be any way of really knowing if it's working or if it's bombed. Is intermittent refreshing or checking the log the only way of knowing?

This isn't a crticism of the dev, as it's obvious the package works for many people and sounds quite a feat of cat-herding to keep it running at all. Just trying to make sure I've not missed something in the set up or whether I've joined at the moment things are being overhauled and this is likely to be causing some issues.

Thanks

----------
EDIT: Dev just emailed to say he is still working on server and is checking the problem.

----------
UPDATE: 27-05-13 Seems that Rembo has fixed as today it's working perfectly - and I'm loving it..

[gibxxi]

The trouble with the way Headphones matches tracks is that different releases.....

I am getting the same issues, I re-tagged my entire collection via musicbrainz picard everything is now perfectly tagged including the Musicbrainz id's (it was a dire state before and will never be using anything else to tag my music again), I still have a fair few albums that are not matched to the correct releases, its all a bit odd as I would have thought it would search for the release tag first then move on to the next best... its nothing a quick switch over release wise doesn't fix but it would be good for it to work first time

I still love the program its great and makes life nice and easy for grabbing new music especially after going VIP

Just seen this. I can't work with Picard, it makes my head spin. So being used to MusicMatch Jukebox (back in the old days) and now MediaMonkey I prefer to stick with that. Luckily enough there is a MusicBrainz Tagger script floating about on the MediaMonkey forums, which works, although it's not been updated in a while as far as I can tell and will sometimes choke if fields in your MP3 tags are blank / missing. But it gets the job done for me. Its called MusicBrainzTaggerNGS (v1.25).

[jakks]

Just wondering how easy it would be so headphones creates artist/album metadata? so it would automatically create the following files

artist.nfo
fanart.jpg
folder.jpg
album.nfo

I guessing all this can be pulled using something similar to the universal artist scraper / universal album scraper or http://www.theaudiodb.com?

Thanks

[phreaq]

Hi folks,

I'm somewhat familiar with Headphones, but just added it to my synology box, and I'm getting some permission errors during post processing. I did a search, but couldn't find an answer for my issue.

The error I am getting is: Error trying to change permissions on folder: /volume1/music/renamed - to be added/Artist

Now some background.

1. I'm using the build from the synology community.
2. My 'Music Download Directory' is pointing to a folder on my WHS. I have used the synology 'mount remote folder' feature to use see it with the synology
3. My 'Path to Destination Folder' is also pointing to a folder on my WHS. Again, I used the 'mount remote folder' feature.
4. When it attempts to post process, it does create a folder called 'artist' in the destination folder, but only one file copies over, and it's not named correctly.
5. It does delete from the download directory.

I'm new to synology/linux, so any (simplified) help would be greatly appreciated