Helium Music Manager (News archive)

Written review of Helium Music Manager

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:22:48 +0100

FindmySoft has written a thorough review of Helium Music Manager. They have also included a short movie showing some of Helium Music Managers features.

Read the review and watch the movie here: http://helium-music-manager.findmysoft.com

Rediscover your music collection!

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:25:22 +0100

Today we present Helium Music Manager 8.5 beta.

This version comes with fixes and improvements since the last build, as well as new major features which are described below.

Discover your music; find artists and tracks you forgot that you have

We are very excited to introduce the new Discover artists and Discover tracks views for the Music Browser.

Discovering artists

Select any artist from your music collection and choose the Discover artists command to browse artists that are similar to your selected artist. Helium Music Manager will instantly search for similar and related artists in your music collection.

From each artist discovered you can click on that artists name to discover more artists.

You can also click on the number of tracks label to see the a tracklist with tracks from this artist, allowing you to instantly listen to tracks from newly discovered or forgotten artists.

Discovering tracks

Clicking a track in the tracklist from the Discover artist function will take you to the Discover tracks view which allows you to find similar tracks related to the selected track.

As for the Discover artists function, related tracks are found by fetching tracks from similar artists in your music collection.

The resulting similar tracks allows further discovering of more tracks and artists.

A fun way of browsing your collection

The new views are designed to be easy and fun to use. The results are fetched in the background and when downloaded they will be presented in a visually appealing manner with smooth animations and transitions.

Editing information for multiple artists

We have created a new tool that allows you to edit the information for multiple artists simpler and quicker.

The tool comes with a new download feature which will download information from multiple online sources as well as merge it with the existing information with just one click.

Other major improvements

The new Device synchronization tool now supports different settings of what you would like to synchronize related to which destination folder that you have selected
Generating of MusicBrainz unique song IDs are now made using the official tool and works both quicker and better
Improved speed when downloading from all plug-ins
Multiple improvements to the tag reading engine, these changes relates to reading of broken tag-frames found in files tags with random applications
Improvements to the Music Browser user interface
Improvements to the Windows Media Player importing function so that illegal paths are handled better
Updated Russian, German and Czech translations

Apart from the above mentioned fixes we have also completed all tickets reported by users since Helium Music Manager 8.4 was released.

Download this release from the Customer Center.

New versions of our free tools available

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:14:17 +0100

Today we have released updated versions of Helium Audio Converter, Helium Audio Joiner and Helium Audio Splitter.

These new versions comes with several minor improvements, bug-fixes and language updates.

All new versions can be downloaded by clicking this link

Update for Helium Music Manager 8.4 available

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:23:03 +0100

An update for Helium Music Manager 8.4 is now available.

This version of Helium Music Manager contains corrections and improvements since the last release, mainly related to the Music Browser and Device Synchronization.
This version also adds some corrections related to tag-reading and writing.

We recommend that all users update to this new version.

Helium Music Manager 8.4 now available

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:08:40 +0100

Helium Music Manager 8.4 is now available officially.

This version focuses on multiple improvements for the Music Browser, a new Device Synchronization tool which integrated with iTunes.

We have also added a much more dynamic way to control which fields the capitalizer should affect as well as which capitalization type that should be used for a specific field, instead of using one type for all.

New features

New rendering technique for all Music Browser pages which gives much better browsing speed
User interface enhancement enhancements using CSS3 (requires Internet Explorer 9) for Music Browser pages. Many pages are also "cleaned up" and comes with minor new functions and improvements.
New Charts page in the Music Browser which allows you to more easily reach charts.
The Summary, Now Playing and Windows Gadget are also using the new rendering techniques and also comes with user interface improvements.
The Synchronize device tool has been reworked to support a new simpler to use user interface, support for more format conversions as well as a new synchronization mode which will allow you to synchronize data to a new iTunes playlist. This specific iTunes playlist can be synchronized to any device via iTunes, therefore giving support for synchronizationto any iPod/iPhone device no matter of which iOS/iTunes version that are installed.
The Capitalizer can now be configured per field, if it should be used as well as which capitalization method that should be used.
New comparison mode for the Find duplicates tool plus various improvements.
Support for Custom parameters used whilst transcoding files.
AAC support in Update Library.
Autosynchronization with the Helium Music Streamer
Updates to German and Polish languages.

Bug-fixes and improvements

The Discogs plugin supports the API version 2, giving much better performance, search results and returned data.
The Amazon plugin has been updated so that it properly works again together with various performance optimizations.
AKAs are properly downloaded from supported plug-ins.
The workflow when downloading multiple Artist informantion has been much improved. Data is now merged so that no prior data is lost plus that the end user has the possibility to exclude artists before the background downloading starts.
Improvements for Album Artist handling in the Tag Editor.
Multiple improvements in the tagging engine to read "custom" tag-frames from other applications
Corrections when Ogg Vorbis file times are read.
Performance and bug fixes for SQL Server Compact databases.
Equalizer presets are now properly stored and restored between sessions.

We recommend all users upgrade to this version.

Helium Music Manager 8.4 beta 2 now available for registered users

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:56:51 +0100

Helium Music Manager 8.4 beta 2 is now available for all our registered users.

This version contains many fixes and improvements as well as some major changes/improvements:

The Music Browser has been improved further. CSS3 is now used to render content and the pages has been optimized and some of them redesigned to take advantage of this technique. To be able to use CSS3 you will need to have Internet Explorer 9 installed on your machine. Some of the pages has also been visually tuned as well as the workflow has been improved.
New Charts page in the Music Browser which allows you to more easily reach charts.
The Now Playing and Summary templates has also been revided to use CSS3.
The Discogs plug-in now has the option to include all or just exact images in the result.
Improvements when downloading multiple artist information so that the contents are merged with existing data.
AKAs are properly downloaded from supported plug-ins.
The iTunes synchronization will now allow you to select a transcoding folder so that contents does no longer need to be re-transocded.
The iTunes synchronization now fully runs in the background.
New comparison mode for the Find duplicates tool plus various minor improvements.
Support for Custom parameters used whilst transcoding files.
AAC support in Update Library.
Improvements for synchronizing BPM tag-frames.
Improvements for Album Artist handling in the Tag Editor.
Corrections when Ogg Vorbis file times are read.
Improvements for quicker abortion of a long running process when using the Audio Analyzer.
Improvements for the FreeDB plug-in which will perform multiple retries during a query.
Corrections and minor improvements for the new capitalizing system.

This Helium Music Manager version will not perform any database updates and will therefore be backwards compatible with Helium Music Manager 8.3.
We still recommend all users to create a backup of their database before using it with Helium Music Manager 8.4.

Helium Music Manager 8.4 beta 2 is available from our Customer Center which you access by clicking this link.

Helium Music Manager 8.4 beta now available for registered users

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 07:52:29 +0100

Helium Music Manager 8.4 beta is now available for all our registered users.

This version contains many fixes and improvements as well as some major changes/improvements:

The Music Browser is using a new technique which results in much better performance.
A few user interface simplifications and minor issues has also been impemented.
The Now Playing, Summary views as well as the Gadget are also now rendered using the same new technique as the Music Browser.
The Capitalizer can now be configured per field, if it should be used as well as which capitalization method that should be used.
The Synchronize device tool has been reworked to support a new simpler to use user interface, support for more format conversions as well as a new synchronization mode
which will allow you to synchronize data to a new iTunes playlist. This specific iTunes playlist can be synchronized to any device via iTunes, therefore giving support for synchronizationto any iPod/iPhone device no matter of which iOS/iTunes version that are installed.
The Discogs plugin supports the API version 2, giving much better performance, search results and returned data.
The Amazon plugin has been updated so that it properly works again together with various performance optimizations.
Performance and bug fixes for SQL Server Compact databases.
Equalizer presets are now properly stored and restored between sessions.

This Helium Music Manager version will not perform any database updates and will therefore be backwards compatible with Helium Music Manager 8.3.
We still recommend all users to create a backup of their database before using it with Helium Music Manager 8.4.

We would also like to wish all our users a merry christmas and a happy new year!

Helium Music Manager 8.4 beta is available from our Customer Center which you access by clicking this link.

Helium Music Streamer 1.5 released

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:13:45 +0100

A new version of Helium Music Streamer is now released.

This version fixes issues with the error message "Wrong database version".

It also contains a few new features:

Share functions for Facebook and Twitter.
Ability to set currently playing track as favourite (artist, album or track favourite).
Updated configuration tool, which:
- can now easily change the port that the Helium Music Streamer is running on.
- can set impersonation options to run the Helium Music Streamer as a different user (good when having music stored on a network storage).
- automatically connects to the Helium Audio Server (available from the Customer Center for all customers).
Transcoding of tracks is now automatic for unsupported formats and does not need the Helium Web Service any longer.

Download this new release from the Customer Center.

Update for Helium Music Manager 8.3 available

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:55:30 +0100

An update for Helium Music Manager 8.3 is now available.

This version of Helium Music Manager contains corrections and improvements since the last release and a few new improvements:

Full support for AAC files.
Possibility to select all duplicate files in a group except the "best match" (bitrate and song length is prioritized) for easier deletion in the Duplicate finder.
Improvements for Social network support.
Improvements for MySQL and SQL Server Compact database handling.

We recommend that all users update to this new version.

New versions of our free tools available

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:36:14 +0100

Today we have released updated versions of Helium Audio Converter, Helium Audio Joiner and Helium Audio Splitter.

These new versions comes with improved support for AAC files, bug-fixes and language updates.

All new versions can be downloaded by clicking this link.

Helium Music Manager 8.3 is now available officially

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:18:28 +0100

Helium Music Manager 8.3 is now available officially.

This version of Helium Music Manager contains corrections and improvements since the last release (Helium Music Manager 8.2). It also comes with new functionality to easily connect to the Helium Audio Server (Premium and Network versions only).

We have also released a updated version of Helium Music Streamer which also comes with bug corrections and minor improvements since the last version was released.

We recommend that all users update to these new versions.

Helium Music Manager and iTunes 10.5

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:09:56 +0200

Helium Music Manager is not fully compatible with iTunes 10.5 because of recent changes made by Apple.
To maintain compatibility with Helium Music Manager and synchronize to iPod/iPhone iOS 3.x devices we
advise not to upgrade to the most recent iTunes version.

If you are using Helium Streamer for iOS, you can upgrade iTunes to the most recent version and to iOS 5 on your device.
Helium Streamer for iOS is verified working well on iOS 3.x, iOS 4.x and iOS 5.x.

If you are experiencing a startup error which says that iTunesMobileDll cannot be loaded properly, do the following:

Open Tools > Options > Advanced > General
Checkmark "Deactivate iPod devices (may speedup startup time)"

Helium Music Manager will after that no longer try to connect to iPod/iPhone/iPad devices and therefore the error message will not be shown.

New version of Helium Music Streamer and new product for existing customers

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:07:57 +0200

A new version of Helium Music Streamer is now released. It includes lots of improvements and the biggest news are listed below:

Easier installation and configuration
Album listings are now grouped by CD
New interface look for the left sidebar
Possibility to play and enqueue all files from a Smart Playlist
Possibility to play and enqueue all files from a Playlist
New path browser which lets you browse your items by their physical path
Corrected possible multiple occurances in the artist list
Improvements for subtrack handling
Corrected so that the favourite tracks are shown per user
Improvements for file downloading
Releasetype icons shown in the album lists
Favourite overlay icon shown shown for artists and albums
Enqueue next feature available from various views and lists

Existing customers can download it from the Customer Center.

New product - Helium Audio Server

Helium Audio Server is a simplified installation of the database engine SQL Server 2008 Express.

By installing Helium Audio Server you will get the best available performance for Helium Music Manager and the Helium Music Streamer as well as simplifying setup and configuration.

Existing customers can download the Helium Audio Server from the Customer Center.

Updated version of Helium Streamer for iOS now available

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:11:07 +0200

An updated version of Helium Streamer for iOS has been released.
This new version contains bugfixes, minor improvements and updates for iOS 5.

This new version can be downloaded for free from AppStore.

Click here to read more about Helium Streamer for iOS.

Update for Helium Music Manager 8.2 available

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:53:08 +0200

An update for Helium Music Manager 8.2 is now available.

This version corrects all reported problems since the prior Helium Music Manager 8.2 version was released as well as important corrections related to SQL Server Compact databases. We recommend all our users to update to this release.

Note:

If you are using the SQL Server Compact database and are experiencing problems we advise you to create a new, empty database and re-add your music there. This should solve any prior issues.

Helium Music Manager 8.2 now available

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 11:59:29 +0200

Helium Music Manager 8.2 is now available!

This version focuses on a few new social media features, simplification of tools and bug fixes (mainly related to the new database engine SQL Server Compact).

New features

The internal player now has a function which allows you to mark the playing track as a favourite track, favourite album or favourite artist.
A new share function is available from the Internal Player which enables you to share the playing track easily to Facebook and Twitter.
The CD-Ripper comes with a new simplified interface for selecting the output format, which enables ripping to more formats.
The Windows Gadget comes with support for Lyrics.
Improvements to the Add files failure dialog: Play, Properties, Delete and Open folder commands are now available.
Hungarian translation is now included.
Updates to German and Czech languages.
Support for MixMeisters BPM tag field.
Updated database drivers.

Bug-fixes and changes

SQL Server Compact Local ID Compatibility problem which could prevent importing/adding of files is now solved.
SQL Server Compact size limitation (256 MB) is now increased to 2047 Mb.
Please note that we do not recommend SQL Server Compact databases to be used with more than 35,000 tracks because of performance reasons.
SQL Server Compact corrections in the Music Explorer.
Unicode fixes for MySQL databases. Sometimes filenames could be incorrectly added to the database when the filename contained unicode characters.
Updates to the Music Browser’s album page, which previously could have problems displaying the track list of albums with more than 50 tracks.
Corrections when working with Smart Playlists. Sometimes when using randomized results, the content could be repeated.
Correction for MusicBrainz PUID generating.
Improvements to database importing as well as improvements to the error handling during import operations.
The field encoder could incorrectly be available in the Tag Editor, which is now not possible.
Improvements to the search view so that it performs less refreshing.

We recommend all users upgrade to this version. If you use SQL Server Compact as your database format and experience problems with data, our recommendation is that you create a new database and re-import your data from your previous database which should resolve the problems. For further assistance please contact our support.

New versions of our free products available

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:30:55 +0200

Today we have released updated versions of Helium Audio Converter, Helium Audio Joiner and Helium Audio Splitter.

These new versions comes with bug-fixes, updated encoder/decoder related DLL files and language updates.

For all versions, Hungarian is now available as an additional language.

All new versions can be downloaded by clicking this link.

Customer support closed until Monday

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 14:19:53 +0200

From today and until Monday, our customer support will be closed because our support and development team are away for a beer conference and Segway tour in Berlin.

You can contact us as usual during this period, but we will not be able to answer and assist you until the start of the next week.

Regards, Intermedia Software

Helium Music Manager 8.1 now released!

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 20:15:25 +0200

We are today proud to present our official release of Helium Music Manager 8.1.

Helium Music Manager 8.1 comes with several updates and new features, the most important are listed below:

New database engine

The new database engine in Helium Music Manager 8.1 is more stable, better optimized for improved performance and more up-to-date compared to the database engine previously used.

We have also decided to move away from the obsolete database format Access to SQL Server Compact 4.0.

SQL Server Compact 4.0 is a more lightweight and competent format than Access which also enables users of Helium Music Streamer to operate with the new default database on 64-bit systems, something Access could not do.

When using MySQL, the MyODBC layer is now no longer needed, enabling you to have an easier, improved and better integrated MySQL setup with the added benefit of much improved performance.

SQL Server also comes with several optimizations which enable database requests to deliver data quicker.

The migration process from Access to SQL Server Compact is fully automated and uses the new and improved importing functions.

Music Browser improvements

The Music Browser (Premium and Network versions) contains several enhancements such as improved and quicker paging functions, revised statistics page
and support for per-user-favourites which is available from the statistics page (this applies specifically to the Network version when multiple users are configured).
The new favourites lists enables you to quickly and easily browse your favourite artists, albums and tracks from the Music Browser.

Convert to format

Our Convert to format tool has been extended with support for many new formats. The end-user interface has also been simplified to make this process
much easier for the end-user.

Join audio files

Helium Music Manager 8.1 comes with a new tool which allows you to join multiple audio files into one single file.

The tool can handle all music formats supported by Helium Music Manager as input formats and can output files into many different formats.

The end-user can select if any silence should be added between tracks as well as whether a CUE file should be created.

Split audio file

Similar to the new Join audio file tool, Helium Music Manager 8.1 comes with a new tool which allows the end-user to split one large audio file into several smaller files. It allows you to create tracks in the following ways:

By loading a CUE file
Creating a specific number of tracks of equal length
Create tracks of the same lengths
Create manually defined tracks by specifying start and end offsets
Creating tracks from existing subtracks

The end-user can select between many different output formats.

Favourite folders in the Music Explorer

A end-user can quickly select if a specific folder under Library folders in the Music Explorer view should be a favourite folder.

Folders marked as favourites can easily be reached from the right-click menu and are stored per-user in Helium Music Manager's database (Network version).

New Helium Music Streamer version

If you own a Helium Music Streamer license you will need to update to the most recent release of the Helium Music Streamer in order to continue using it after you have updated to Helium Music Manager 8.1. You can download Helium Music Streamer from the Customer Center.

Windows Gadget

The Windows Gadget (for Windows Vista and Windows 7) which allow you to easily remote control Helium Music Manager is back and graphically revised.

The gadget allows end-users to see artist, title, rating, album picture and playing time. Music controls for play/pause and skip between tracks is available.

Favourite and Suggested tracks can be accessed as well as artist biography and playing album details. The gadget is now included in Helium Music Manager's installer.

Free version improvements

We have enabled the equalizer fully in the free version as well as removed any bitrate limitations when using rip and convert function.

Summary

Apart from the above mentioned fixes, Helium Music Manager 8.1 comes with many bug fixes and improvements, reported by our users during this development phase.

We hope that everybody will enjoy this new Helium Music Manager release!

Helium Music Manager 8.1 RC now official!

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:01:08 +0200

We are today proud to present our official release candidate version of Helium Music Manager 8.1.

Click here to download Helium Music Manager 8.1 official release candidate.

Helium Music Manager 8.1 comes with several updates and new features, the most important are listed below:

New database engine
The new database engine in Helium Music Manager 8.1 is more stable, better optimized for improved performance and more up-to-date
compared to the database engine previously used.

We have also decided to move away from the obsolete database format Access to SQL Server Compact 4.0.
SQL Server Compact 4.0 is a more lightweight and competent format than Access which also enables users of Helium Music Streamer to operate with the new default database on 64-bit systems, something Access could not do.

When using MySQL, the MyODBC layer is now no longer needed, enabling you to have an easier, improved and better integrated MySQL setup with the added benefit of much improved performance.

SQL Server also comes with several optimizations which enable database requests to deliver data quicker.

The migration process from Access to SQL Server Compact is fully automated and uses the new and improved importing functions.

Music Browser improvements
The Music Browser (Premium and Network versions) contains several enhancements such as improved and quicker paging functions, revised statistics page
and support for per-user-favourites which is available from the statistics page (this applies specifically to the Network version when multiple users are configured).
The new favourites lists enables you to quickly and easily browse your favourite artists, albums and tracks from the Music Browser.

Convert to format
Our Convert to format tool has been extended with support for many new formats. The end-user interface has also been simplified to make this process
much easier for the end-user.

Join audio files
Helium Music Manager 8.1 comes with a new tool which allows you to join multiple audio files into one single file.
The tool can handle all music formats supported by Helium Music Manager as input formats and can output files into many different formats.
The end-user can select if any silence should be added between tracks as well as whether a CUE file should be created.

Split audio file
Similar to the new Join audio file tool, Helium Music Manager 8.1 comes with a new tool which allows the end-user to split one large audio file into several smaller files.
It allows you to create tracks in the following ways:

By loading a CUE file
Creating a specific number of tracks of equal length
Create tracks of the same lengths
Create manually defined tracks by specifying start and end offsets
Creating tracks from existing subtracks

The end-user can select between many different output formats.

Favourite folders in the Music Explorer
A end-user can quickly select if a specific folder under Library folders in the Music Explorer view should be a favourite folder.
Folders marked as favourites can easily be reached from the right-click menu and are stored per-user in Helium Music Manager's database (Network version).

Windows Gadget
The Windows Gadget (for Windows Vista and Windows 7) which allow you to easily remote control Helium Music Manager is back and graphically revised.
The gadget allows end-users to see artist, title, rating, album picture and playing time. Music controls for play/pause and skip between tracks is available.
Favourite and Suggested tracks can be accessed as well as artist biography and playing album details.
The gadget is now included in Helium Music Manager's installer.

Apart from the above mentioned fixes, Helium Music Manager 8.1 comes with many bug fixes and improvements, reported by our users during this development phase.

We hope that everybody will enjoy this new Helium Music Manager release!