Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk

In which case, album art at approx 500x500pixels is more than enough?

But we have moved on from that, people are expecting 1000x1000pixels and more which is nearly 10-1/2" (>26cm) square or, on some screens, a pretty nice fit on some (HD) screens for near full screen (vertically) and too big for many others.

People are scanning at much higher resolution than screen resolution and the artwork is more than capable at being scanned at these higher resolutions so why the negativity at the ability to display it without losing quality at bigger than print size?

For those albums where metadata wasn't found on import, presuming the capacity to find metadata improves over time, I would like the option to import later. Ideally, one would be proactively prompted when such an oportunity exists, perhaps with user controlled frequency (batching). It would be particularly beneficial if Sooloos recognized data that you'd manually entered (such as cover art) and offered the option to overwrite.

If Sooloos is aware of higher quality cover art, it would be nice to be prompted with the option to improve.

Functionality similar to iTunes Match would be nice, to synchronize across multiple Sooloos sites (for those lucky to have such), and perhaps even to offer a Meridian cloud backup option. This might also be used to improve metadata functionality with meta analysis across users.

I've previously seen a website that offers relationship maps for music. Pieces of music were represented by bubbles with bubble size being proportionate to the degree of association. Association was by multiple means - genre, artists in common, inspired by, song writer, and so on. It might offer an enhancement to the music exploration experience.

Oh...I like the maps idea. I did one for my LinkedIn profile. Would be neat to see one for my music.

I've had a conversation with them along these lines and they do not feel that the metadata is rich enough to fill the associations needed. However, I was not convinced by this argument and still think it would be a great idea even if the relationships were not 100% there.

For me the following would be great (these are for Core, Control:XX and iOS Core Control App).

- Better handling of multi-disc albums. When imported with Control:Mac it never seems to catch the "disc m of n", so I put it in manually. It would would then be great if the discs were put together into a set for you.

- Power [Zone] off button to go with the vol+/- and mute

- Track-level metadata, natch. At least acknowledge there might be a track artist and an album artist.

- Less of tendency in the iOS app to go back to the start of the view when you've scrolled through multiple pages and created a set because of the problem above!

- Scheduled backups which can be done from Core to a NAS without needing a PC running Control:XX to be connected (After all the Core is a PC in its own right).

- Fewer random restarts when importing from Control:PC.

Don't get me wrong, I love my MC200 (and have re-discovered lots of stuff whilst re-ripping and importing) and wouldn't be without it now. I suspect I don't explore it as much as some of the rest of you (yet!)

Ian

As has been previously asked, the ability to adjust track picks on the fly from Core Control on the iPad would be a real boon.
Chris

Further to Ian's comment about doing the association thing even if the metadata isn't 100% there, it would be a phenomenal opportunity to have all of us crowdsource improvements in the associations.

The sites that currently do this are doing it at a very crude level. There's enough (at least at the album level) meta data in MDMS to do it far better as is, and with crowdsourced refinements, it might get incredibly good.

What everyone else said, plus (regarding the iPad app):
1) info about the number of albums in a focus
2) info about total playtime and time left in a playlist
3) sorting of artists by family name, as I believe is possible with the touchscreen MDMS. I want Nick Cave filed under C not N.
4) html like features in the review tab, with the possibility of hyperlinks

And regarding Control:PC:
1) it should look a lot more like Core Control, but in a web browser. I don't want to click four times to edit some metadata, and then click save.
2) you would expect it to give album info by double clicking on the album cover in the top left while playing music. But it doesn't.
3) the possibility of mass editing data. After ripping all my cds, I found that Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds were called simply Nick Cave. Correcting this should be a lot easier.
4) importing metadata from sources like last.fm, allmusic, discogs or whatever should be an option. This should not overwrite the metadata that is already in the system, but should be complementary.

I second most things already mentioned.

For me, to be able to edit within the iPad Core Control app would be a major step forward.

Such as:-
Track names,
pick tracks... my own selections
copy and paste reviews.
To be able to edit metadata errors created on import as I find them... without going into a secondary software.

Non of this stops me from enjoying and living my music but would enhance the experience and make it more personal to me.

Just feeding back,
Darren

If I go to Artists starting with a letter and then select and album I really don't want to end up at A again when I go back ...

Just a thought.

+1

Also second the idea of track level metadata. I find iTunes Genius FAR superior to Meridian Streaming in its ability to put together a playlist of songs that really go well together. I find Meridian Streaming a little too "all over the map" in this regard (i.e. if I ask it to swim in albums similar to the one I'm listening to). I'm assuming this difference in playlist creation ability has something to do with track level metadata not being available with Meridian. Right now, if I want to generate a good playlist I use iTunes Genius to create the playlist and then I duplicate that playlist in Core Control.

I'm not too familiar with the capabilities of other interfaces but I also second the notion of Meridian keeping their eye on what others are doing to feed into their ongoing software development.

The iPad app should be a playback zone, that would be a huge step in the right direction,
with the proliferation of reasonable Bluetooth speakers, this would allow background music or non-critical listening anywhere in the house.

Playlist building should be a drag and drop exercise, along with favourite track flagging while it's playing

And of course track level data, then Focus and Swim would work properly

I'd like a standardisation of the information on screen across the various programs, such as playtime, number of tracks selected etc.

Then, it's about time the PC & Mac software were upgraded to emulate the Control:15 but without the touchscreen.

Finally, as this is a wish list, I'd love to see an on-line feature providing information similar to Spotify, similar music or artists, shared playlists, curated recommendations for new music with a link to Rhapsody or even better Spotify.