Bryston Manic Moose Interface

[James Tanner - Bryston]

Bryston Manic Moose Interface

Hi Folks,

A thread for a discussion on our “Manic Moose” interface for our digital products – BDP’s etc.

Like most interfaces some of our customers love it and some find it lacking in certain areas. So, I would like to get feedback from those of you using it as to what you like and what you find troublesome. That way we can try and address the issues and make it better going forward.

I know some of you use ROON and other 3rd party interfaces with our BDP’s etc. so let us know what you prefer about those interfaces. I use Manic Moose exclusively because I have all my music in 'Folders' whereas ROON does not allow for that type of library setup.

Thanks for your input – much appreciated.

james

[John Jordan]

Hello James-

i use Manic Moose and for the most part like it. So far just using it to play my collection of ripped CD's. i like that it will work from any internet connected machine. It works fine from my 2008 Mac Pro/ 2010 Mac Pro laptop and 2011 iPad. It is a little slow with the old iPad but that's to be expected. Lighting fast its the other machines. i'd also like to try Rigalian
but my older machines will not support it.

Now a few improvements:

1. A way to set preferences to ignore certain words in artist names. For example, The Beatles would read Beatles and be alphabetized under B not T. The Rolling Stones under R not T.

2. Listings not case sensitive. Example: Sly and the Family Stone will show in different group than Sly And The Family Stone (uppercase T and A).

3. A little hip cup from time to time in "Artist View." Example clicking on Bruce Springsteen, the albums for Jack Bruce came up. Clicking on JJ Cale and Eric Clapton, Clapton's albums came up.
I changed the metadata to JJ Cale and EC and all was corrected. With the "Bruces" I went to Song View and found the listings correct. Went back to artist View and all was correct there too and has been since. no need to change any metadata.

All in all, these are just minor concerns. A some point, I'll give FM radio a try and also been eyeballing Qobuz.

Thank You!

[Parabellum]

Hi James,

With my BDP-2, I am using Rigelian on my iPhone and I listen only from my own ripped CD collection stored on the internal SSD. I find Rigelian to be very clean and easy to use on a phone. I haven't tried the iPad version yet. However, when I sit in front of the computer, I really like to have a browser tab opened to control the BDP. While there may be a function in Rigelian, I use the web interface in conjunction when I load up some more music on the internal SSD. For example, when copying new music, I have to go to the MPD on the webpage and update from there. Next, I close Rigelian on my iPhone and re-open it right after. Then the new albums are displayed. I do not have extensive experience with the MPD as it is not my primary player. One thing I really like though is that it is completely synchronized with Rigelian. And it's very stable. In MPD, I wish the displayed titles could stream from one direction otherwise with long titles we cannot see everything. Personally, I would prefer to see the album covers in larger images like Roon or JRiver for example instead of the small icon on the right menu list. Maybe multilingual support would be nice. In the right menu display list, the "É" is shown as "?". Because of this, it is at the very end of the library in Rigelian. While very functional, I find the overall design a bit rough on the edges but this is a matter of personal taste. I value function and stability first but an eye-pleasing interface makes it more appealing to use.

Regards,

[gbaby]

[QUOTE=John Jordan;1007845]

Now a few improvements:

1. A way to set preferences to ignore certain words in artist names. For example, The Beatles would read Beatles and be alphabetized under B not T. The Rolling Stones under R not T.

2. Listings not case sensitive. Example: Sly and the Family Stone will show in different group than Sly And The Family Stone (uppercase T and A).


/QUOTE]

This has more to do with the software you use to import your music rather than Manic Moose. By way of example, I use to use iTunes to import music and if I imported the Beatles, it would list everything under T or The Beatles, The Temptations, The Supremes. Now I use dbpoweramp and it list as Beatles, The; Supremes, The, etc.

[unincognito]

[QUOTE=gbaby;1007879]

Originally Posted by John Jordan

Now a few improvements:

1. A way to set preferences to ignore certain words in artist names. For example, The Beatles would read Beatles and be alphabetized under B not T. The Rolling Stones under R not T.

2. Listings not case sensitive. Example: Sly and the Family Stone will show in different group than Sly And The Family Stone (uppercase T and A).


/QUOTE]

This has more to do with the software you use to import your music rather than Manic Moose. By way of example, I use to use iTunes to import music and if I imported the Beatles, it would list everything under T or The Beatles, The Temptations, The Supremes. Now I use dbpoweramp and it list as Beatles, The; Supremes, The, etc.

That is certainly one way of doing it, but I do agree that it would be nice if our database management software also had the option to do this as well.

Chris

[John Jordan]

gbaby-

Your point is taken. I too use dbpoweramp to rip CD's and have learned to be careful to exactly match the metadata of each artist so the albums are in the same folder. For whatever reason, early on I changed Beatles, The to The Beatles etc; my version of OCD I imagine.

I also import all of my digital music into iTunes mostly because it allows one to print a complete list or save a list as a pdf. iTunes calculates the number of albums as well.

In iTunes preferences, a word such as "The" can be ignored and therefore The Beatles appear under B. This was maintained in Amarra back when i used a laptop as a digital server.

While here, I concur with Serge that a more "eye pleasing interface" would be very nice. Perhaps something similar to iTunes or one of the others mentioned.

Again, these minor issues aside, I am pleased with the Moose. More importantly, the customer support at Bryston is always outstanding!

[Ollie]

I predominantly use it streaming tidal and on my iPad.
I don’t like having to scroll to the bottom to select tidal and than having a folder like structure to get to my music.
To search I have to scroll back to the TOP of the page, type a song or artist and the scroll back to the bottom to find the results which again is not very user friendly.
To be honest there is nothing l like about the interface and it could write pages of it. My suggestion is to go look at Tidals interface and some how bring that into the fold. Can the tidal app be integrated as the main interface instead of using manic moose? I can stream music from tidal to my other devices but I have to use manic moose on bryston.

[hdvidguy]

Originally Posted by Ollie

To be honest there is nothing l like about the interface and it could write pages of it. My suggestion is to go look at Tidals interface and some how bring that into the fold. Can the tidal app be integrated as the main interface instead of using manic moose? I can stream music from tidal to my other devices but I have to use manic moose on bryston.

I have Tidal web page set as a URL for Manic Moose.

But I have to agree, I much prefer the Tidal app interface. It shows much more content, latest playlists etc. I always use the Tidal app to search up music, playlists etc. to make new playlists for Manic Moose.

Sometime during one of the BDP SW updates, I lost all my playlist pics. Now I just see black box with the playlist name. Would like to have pictures back.

[James Tanner - Bryston]

Hi Chris,

"Like @gbaby, I have no major issues with Moose on my BDP-2. It sounds very good with my BDA-3 pairing.

Cover art files display fine, no glitches there. Moose allows me to browse, select, move, and play my musik files.

If I want a fancy art gallery/graphics, I go to the National Gallery or Orsay LOL."

CanadianMaestro