Itunes 4.1 Reviews

iTunes 4.1 allows you to create and manage your own personal digital music library. You can import music from CDs, buy and download music from the iTunes Music Store, burn your own CDs or DVDs, transfer music to your iPod, and much more.

The good: Windows version has been released.

The bad: Heavy memory usage in comparison to another Digital Music Jukebox such as WinAmp 2.91.

Rating: 8/10

iTunes plays on Macintosh, plays on Windows, and plays on all iPods.

The best software music jukebox in the world comes with a music store that’s open 24/7, sits on your desktop — and is a smash hit with music fans, professional musicians and the entire music industry. What’s more, it works on both Macs and Windows-based PCs.

View: Review

#65933

I give it 9/10 because IT WIPED OUT MY IPOD WHEN I SYNC'D IT, and because I don't care for the buttons they used on the title bar. People were saying that the sound was a little "flat", well, I opened the equilizer and do you know what the settings where on, "flat"! I've had a nice experience with 10% CPU processes and 12MB of RAM being used. Convenient, simple and worth every second of a 56 minute download. Two thumbs up!

#65938

I give a 9/10, I really like the features and runs good on my computer, the comparison features vs resources, the features are more important for me.

#66014

Lined up next to RealOne, MusicMatch, and Windows Media Player, iTunes for Windows clearly shines. From its speedy load times to its sleak interface, iTunes is definately going to rock the Windows world. While iTunes does lack some features found in other Windows media players, being Apple's first iTunes release, I'm hopeful these features will surface in future releases.

Missing Features:

1. iTunes lacks support for album folder. jpg files so that album covers already in the album's directory on the hard drive wwon't show up within itunes.

2. There is no 'Always on Top' option to tunes.

3. iTunes will not search existing audio files on the HD and add/correct missing information to ID3 tags.

4. Once you browse away from the current playlist, there is no way to retrieve the current list of music playing, unless you manually saved the playlist.

5. Filenames of imported content have little room for customization, so if you want the filename to include such information as the artist's name in the filename, you're out of luck unless you add it manually. (eg: 01-Artist's Name-Track Title)

6. iTunes only supports the iPod portable audio player, so if you have another portable player, you'll have to stick to your current media player to transfer files to it.

7. The iTunes store supports only AAC. While this format provides superior sound quality compared to MP3, it's about as useful to MP3 players as WMA is.

#66139

Personally it runs great on my computer. It's using quite an amount of memory at times (sometimes it runs between 14-15MB of RAM, and sometimes at 45-46MB .. don't know why), but that's okay cos I have plenty to spare.

The only thing I don't really like it is that the Library lacks certain features. For instance, it should allow me to delete the file from my music folder. The 'Clear' function merely removes it from the library database. There should be a delete function as well. (Perhaps there is, but I missed it?)

Hopefully it gets better with every update.

My rating: 9/10.

#66155

There is no reason whatsoever iTunes needs to use as much ram as it does, and i find it very unpresonsive at times running on my Athlon XP 2500+ with a gig of ram.

It sounds no better then Winamp just as iTunes winamp has to be configured correctly too. I have a 5.1 Klipsch set hooked to the computer so don't try and tell me garbage about how I need better speakers iTunes is not better in that area,

I also did not like the fact that with no warning it reoganized my music library for me when i switched the location to my MP3 folder. I don't like my music in folders... well now it is...

And for every artist that didn't have an album now every artist has an "Unknown album" folder. On the mac it gives a warning before doing this.

It's a shotty port. It runs like Quicktime for PC and that's the last thing I was hoping for. There is no reason this program should be running better on my 500mhz iBook then it runs on my PC.

I dunno.. i may end up using it.. because i like iTunes, but i sure hope they fix some of the sh##.. also

why offer system tray icon if you're going to require me to keep the taskbar one too?

#66200

I think it adjustes it's self to how much RAM you have. I have 128MB and it idles at 12MB. If that's not the problem, then make sure your not having sound check running, that does consume alot.

#66201

Originally posted by wizard@Oct 17 2003, 09:15 PM

I think it adjustes it's self to how much RAM you have. I have 128MB and it idles at 12MB. If that's not the problem, then make sure your not having sound check running, that does consume alot.

Yeah I know how to use the program. and it's not very responsive.

#66224

Originally posted by Ben@Oct 17 2003, 10:55 PM

Yeah I know how to use the program. and it's not very responsive.

indeed. no better than winamp. yes yes, nice colors, nice icons, etc but no better than winamp.

I believe it just needs a 'revision' to fix some problems.

just my two cents.

respect.

#66235

Well, I just installed it this morning and I do think I like it so far.

I'm not to frilled about the title bar or the style of the min/max/close buttons, but I think I can live with it so far.

The sound quality seems pretty good, almost as good as QCD with with iZotope Ozone enhancer plugin.

I think it might be a keeper.

Grusic

#66237

Turn on the sound enhancer. It will bring out the 3D texture from the music time.

I get about 2% cpu usage and less than 8mb memory usage on my P4 2.2Ghz workstation with 512mb ram.

It's an IBM Netvista.

#66247

Rating 11/10

I love this app, apple exceeded my expactations for the windows port. Its become my media player, its amazing, simply amazing. Nothing short of a masterpiece lol. I could go all night about the app, but i'll stop myself. Integrating the apple store, cd burning, mp3 burning, AAC converting, and online radio. Its saved about 1 gig of space by converting my music library. Rock on apple :own:

#66249

STOP POSTING OUTSIDE OF THE ITUNES FORUM@!

god, is it REALLY that hard?

#66281

Welll, I just burned my first CD using iTunes/Win. It was pretty damn easy.

Bling,

Grusic

#66308

To address a few of your complaints:

"iTunes lacks support for album folder. jpg files so that album covers already in the album's directory on the hard drive wwon't show up within itunes"

True, but just how much do you expect the app to do for you? Just drag that .JPG onto the song that it belongs on, or add it through the Info box for the song. Pretty easy if you ask me.

"iTunes will not search existing audio files on the HD and add/correct missing information to ID3 tags"

Again, we go back to the question of 'How much do you expect this app to do for you?'. If you have missing ID3 tag info, it's probably because you got the songs from some 13 year-old on Kazaa. That's the risk you take when downloading 'free' music. Basically, you're asking iTunes to do the work that you don't want to do. You just saved yourself hundreds of dollars by pirating music, I don't think fixing the faulty ID3 tags is too high of a price to pay.

-godpunk

#66320

Originally posted by guiness@Oct 17 2003, 01:11 PM

1. iTunes lacks support for album folder. jpg files so that album covers already in the album's directory on the hard drive wwon't show up within itunes.

2. There is no 'Always on Top' option to tunes.

3. iTunes will not search existing audio files on the HD and add/correct missing information to ID3 tags.

4. Once you browse away from the current playlist, there is no way to retrieve the current list of music playing, unless you manually saved the playlist.

5. Filenames of imported content have little room for customization, so if you want the filename to include such information as the artist's name in the filename, you're out of luck unless you add it manually.  (eg: 01-Artist's Name-Track Title)

6. iTunes only supports the iPod portable audio player, so if you have another portable player, you'll have to stick to your current media player to transfer files to it.

7. The iTunes store supports only AAC.  While this format provides superior sound quality compared to MP3, it's about as useful to MP3 players as WMA is.

Missing Features? Um, ok...what-ever.

Let's break it down:

1. Are you too lazy to drag them into iTunes yourself? i have over 550 artists and over 220 albums and I'm not complaining.

2. Why should there be? You have a taskbar, right? Even ObjctBar can find iTunes.

3. Not iTunes problem.

4. Huh? Do you mean you selected songs to play and didnt make a playlist, and you're mad 'cause iTunes didnt do it for you?

5. Why do you need long filenames? iTunes ID3 does much more than name a file, it gives options for coverart, comments, and more.

6. You say that as if any other music player is better than iPod.

7. then convert the files back to mp3's at your leisure. As far as i am aware, iPod can play AAC.

Really, i dont see all these issues having any validation except consumer greed and laziness.

p.s. dont take this as a personal attack. it isnt. It may be opinionated and crass, but it isnt an attack.

#66327

Okay, I did a little review of iTunes 4.1 on my site; it's nothing great, but it's not too shabby either.

I'll update it later with RAM/CPU usage stats and stuff like that.

You can check it out: here.

#66408

Well, after reviewing iTunes for Windows for a good length of time I have decided I do *not* like it much.

Sure, it's got the music store, but that's not an issue for me.

Sure, it's got easy CD burning, but that's not as issue for me.

Sure, it's genuine Apple software, but that's not as issue for me either.

From my prospective, it's missing one very important thing. Great sound quality.

It's lacking in the area. QCD with it's default mp3 decoder plugin or the MAD decoder plugin and the iZotope Ozone analog modelling DSP plugin give me a much richer sound on my system. And yes, I have checked out iTunes "sound enhancer" option. It distorts that sound very easily.

Also, I get annoyed at iTunesWin lack of CDDB auto-tagging for my media files.

And also, QCD with Duckies' great iTunes skins just looks better to me.

Also, and this really annoys me, iTunesWin is a memory hog. It takes a huge amount of ram on my system not mention it's *helper* programs and services to do.

I can get most of the functionality of iTunesWin using QCD and it's great plugins, minus the Music Store, and still use way less RAM.

So, at this point, I giving it a thumbs down.

Grusic

#66698

on the decoder comment:

iTunes uses the official licensed decoders from Frauheimer himself, so I doubt some free/open source one would be better.

I think its your imagination, the decoders really make almost no difference in sound.

Check your EQ settings.

#66701

contra:

I didn't ask you what you thought.

And as for my imagination, I work in the music industry. My ears have been professionally trained to check sound quality. Also, I don't appreciate your comment about my imagination because quite frankly you don't even know me and the statement came across as condescending.

As for different decoders producing different sound quality, this is a fact not fiction. Different decoders will emphasize or de-emphasis certain portions of the audio frequency spectrum. Sometimes this is done because the author feels a different algorithm will produces more musically pleasing signal processing results.

I'm pretty sure Frauheimer programmed his decoder to be ISO compliant, which is fine, but ISO complance does not always produce the most musical of results. Also, Frauheimer is an engineer not a muscian. Given that mindset, he would chose accuracy over musicality.

Also, if you re-read my statement carefully, you will see I was refering to a combination of processing going on the the audio stream, not just the decoder alone.

At this point in time, QCD and it's various decoding/DSP plugins gives me more options to shape the sound the way I want to, iTunesWin doe not.

Grusic

#66704

iTunes for windows does indeed sound 'flat' and hollow. Every other media player sounds the exact same with the default EQ setting, yet iTunes sounds likes it's 'off in the distance'. Apple needs to fix this, cause it's really hurting my ears, and others ears I'm sure. I can't really explain whats wrong, but something is. I think of myself as a kind of audiophile, I know what sounds good and what doesnt, and iTunes just doesnt sound right.

Chris

#66774

It's odd, really...

My best mate was a professional singer (not a pop singer, a proper, classical singer), and has acheived all the accolades possible in the UK. As you can imagine, he's very much an audiophile, and he thinks that, on his £6000 stereo system, iTunes/Win sounds better than any other mp3 software on his PC...

#66779

Stevie BM - just because someone can sing and afford a £6k stereo doesn't mean anything when it comes to listening.

Try using standard QCD setup and compare with iTunes (Eq off, vol on max, DirectSound on both). If you cannot hear a difference then either your speakers or soundcard are poor quality, your ears are shot, you are deaf or your PC has some other problem.

Once you start using the EQ you are adding distortion.

QCD with MAD and ASIO set to 24-bit played through an M-Audio Revolution card sounds significantly better to me.

I suspect that it is all down to Apple just not got the hang of the DirectSound system yet. Once they figure this out then there should be no diffrence between any of the main media players.

#66795

I think you missed my point.

The point of him having a £6k stereo is that it's an ideal listening environment,

What makes him qualified to judge the quality is that he's one of the most accomplished singers in the country.

He's a true audiophile. That was my point.

I know about distortion of sound with EQs. He still says that iTunes sounds better than QCD/Winamp/WMP (although marginally so).

At the end of the day, though it also depends on exactly what you're listening to, your personal preferences, and your listening environment...

#66799

iTunes, hands down winner,

It runs with great sound quality, classical, pop, piano, jazz, natural sounds even voice.

Sorry to QCD, WMP and Winamp all to the folder named 'yesterday...'

One thing about iTunes, i wanna have aqua like buttons in main window.......

maybe STEVIE BM could.....

#66807