How to manage multiple iPhones with MM5?

[Ollonii]

My wife and I have a modest music collection of around 5,000 albums built over the years. It's all stored digitally on a server. The structure of the audio files is simple: M:\Encoding\Artist\Album\Track. I find this intuitive and extremely easy to manage whenever I want access to the actual audio files (I know many others might not find it so).

We both have iPhones and iPads and would like our preferred music on them (especially the phones). I've set up one directory per device on the server. Each of the device directories has a directory structure similar to the master directory,
M:\Device\Artist\Album\Track, where the Track is actually just a link to the actual audio file (in the master directory).

It's never been easy or straightforward moving albums to Apple devices - iTunes usually "almost" worked so MM has been my go to for ages. But recently, everything seemed to stop working as it used to.

Is there an easy way to keep my existing audio files and their existing directory structure that will allow me to simply copy a directory and all its subdirectories and files to an iphone? I've tried the sync-list approach but I don't see how to select a specific artist or album directory. Selecting a specific folder and then using "Send to..." doesn't include sending it to a connected iphone.

Any help or input on how you manage this would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

[Lowlander]

No, Apple enforces it's own file system, this is not customizable. What you want to do is possible on Android.

[Ollonii]

Thanks for the reply. I think I perhaps misstated my question.

I used to be able to add files and folders to the manual sync list quite easily. Then I'd use iTunes or, usually, MM to do the actual sync (that is, dealing with Apple's file system requirements). Recently, I seem to have lost that ability.

Is there a way to do that with MM? That is, manually sync specific directories? It seems that MM will only allow me to add "directories" that are under whatever I included in my "library" search paths. And when I include my device directories, with all their links, MM just ignores the links (possibly as duplicates) so I can't add the device directories to a sync-list.

It seems to me that MM has all the "smarts" to do what I'd like, I just can't find the steps to take to accomplish it

[Lowlander]

Are you asking to Sync from one device directly to another? That's not possible. You'd first need to copy to the PC, then Sync to another device.

If it's about locations on the PC, then you can select them for files in the Library.

[Barry4679]

We both have iPhones and iPads and would like our preferred music on them (especially the phones). I've set up one directory per device on the server. Each of the device directories has a directory structure similar to the master directory,
M:\Device\Artist\Album\Track, where the Track is actually just a link to the actual audio file (in the master directory).

It's never been easy or straightforward moving albums to Apple devices - iTunes usually "almost" worked so MM has been my go to for ages. But recently, everything seemed to stop working as it used to.

Is there an easy way to keep my existing audio files and their existing directory structure that will allow me to simply copy a directory and all its subdirectories and files to an iphone? I've tried the sync-list approach but I don't see how to select a specific artist or album directory. Selecting a specific folder and then using "Send to..." doesn't include sending it to a connected iphone.

Any help or input on how you manage this would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

Like LowLander I am have trouble understanding your question.

I think that you are saying that you have setup a folder structure, for each phone, of links to the tracks that you want copied to the phone.

You don't need to do that. It sounds a real pain to setup and maintain that.

The MM5 sync facility is your friend here. ... nb. I don't have Apple devices. There may be some limitations for those.

• MM5 will setup a separate profile for each phone when you first connect the phone to MM5
• In that profile use the "Sync List (Library --> Device)" tab in the "Devices & Service" node for the phone
• use the Sync list to select tracks for albums to be synced. There are multiple selection criteria options, by album, or by artist, or by composer etc. Each phone will have its own criteria options. So each phone gets its individual music choices.
• once that is set up, run MM5 sync to the device ... the selected tracks and album art will be copied to the phone. MM5 can reduce file sizes on the fly, for the copies, if the tracks on your server are large lossless versions.
• to refresh the music on the phone. make some changes to what you have checked .. MM5 will add newly checked items, and housekeep by removing unchecked items

Apologies if I have briefly described something that you already understand.

You can forgive yourself if you didn't understand that. They have more less buried this facility by providing only opaque substandard lazy documentation (IMO).

Ask more questions if you need any help getting this going. It can be a bit of a hurdle in the beginning, but it is worthwhile persevering. It is MM's best feature IMO. It is a step change ahead of what you appear to be doing currently.