Helium Music Manager (News archive)

Helium Music Manager 8.6.2 now available

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200

A new version of Helium Music Manager, 8.6.2, is now available.
This version contains corrections reported by users and the auto-reporting since after Helium Music Manager 8.6.1 was released.

The most important corrections are listed below:

Performance improvements when browsing the genre node in the Music browser
Various SQL Server Compact fixes, related mainly to actions which includes path and/or filename
Corrections for exceptions that could occur in the Music browser's startpage
Correction for albums and artists could be missing from the lists in the Music browser
Search related problems that could occur when searching with all fields from the search view are now handled
Extended exception handling when adding album pictures
Custom tag frames was not always properly saved for WMA files
Browsing favourite tracks with SQL Server Compact databases could generate errors
Improved error handling for SQL Server Compact databases in the album handling used when adding/updating tracks
Improved handling for volumes for SQL Server Compact databases
Corrections and improvements related to genre handling when upgrading databases from earlier Helium Music Manager versions
SQL Server Compact database problems when artist ids should be fetched are improved
Improved exception handling when deleting duplicate files
Updates for the Slovak translation file

Apart from the above corrections there are also several other fixes and corrections included in this release.

We recommend all Helium Music Manager users to update to this version.

Click here to download the version

Helium Music Manager 8.6.1 now available

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200

A new version of Helium Music Manager, 8.6.1, is now available.
This version contains corrections reported by users and the auto-reporting.

The most important corrections are listed below:

Filters are now properly saved/loaded from the database
Similar artists was not always returned when downloading artist information
Playlist entries could not always be removed
Correction for incorrect ratings when working with APE files
Scrollbars was missing in the edit artist details windows for certain tabs
The Artist view filter did not work fully when country was included in the filter
Bug correction for the Music browser genre page which sometimes could throw an exception
Corrections to the Music browser startpage (aritmetic overflow exception)
Various SQL Server Compact fixes, related mainly to actions which includes path and/or filename
Bug correction in the Polish language file

Hotfix for Helium Music Manager 8.6 now available

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200

A hotfix release of Helium Music Manager 8.6 is now available.

The main changes in this version is a correction for a possible startup problem as well as a correction for the Italian language which could cause exceptions.

We recommend all users which have had startup problems or similar to update to this version.

Click here to download the hotfix version

Helium Music Manager 8.6 and Helium Music Streamer 1.7 are released

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Helium Music Manager 8.6

This version comes with both major and minor improvements (as well as bug-fixes) since version 8.5 was released.

The most important changes are listed below:

Highly improved information downloading

With this version of Helium Music Manager we have focused on major improvements related to information downloading. The most noticeable changes apply to the downloading of album and track information as well as artist information.

Improvements in the Tag editor

Under the Download button in the Tag editor, there are now some new download alternatives:

Album and track information (automatic look-up):
This option will generate audio fingerprints for the selected files (if not already present) and use these fingerprints to create a fully automatic look-up of the album in the MusicBrainz database.
When the album is found, additional information will be downloaded from other sources (including Last.fm, Amazon and Discogs) using the album identity to get as much information as possible, in an exact way.
This means that you can identify and download information for all tracks from an album without the need of having any previous tags at all!
Track information (track-by-track, automatic look-up):
This option will also generate and use audio fingerprints to lookup each track in the MusicBrainz database and automatically download as much information as possible about it from multiple sources (including Last.fm, Amazon and Discogs).

You can also choose to automatically download artist information for all artists from the selected album/files in the same download batch.
The downloaded information will be merged with any possibly existing artist information in your database to ensure that you will get as much information as possible without overwriting existing information.
This function is also fully automated meaning that no additional clicks are necessary!

Of course, all the old download methods where you can choose which download sources you would like to download from is still available.

Improvements to the edit artist information tools

The edit artist information tools (where you can download artist information for one or more artists) now take advantage of audio fingerprints and multiple download sources (including Last.fm, Amazon and Discogs) to give you as much information back as possible, in the simplest possible way.

Multiple Genre support

Helium Music Manager 8.6 comes with support for multiple genres per track.
When you tag a track you can optionally choose more than one genre.
Multiple genre support applies to all core functions in Helium Music Manager, meaning that it has been transparently integrated into all tools.
An example is that if a track is tagged with "pop" and "rock" as genres, it will be found in searches when you search for either the "pop" or "rock" genre. Multiple genres are read and written to tags using semicolon separated genres, like Genre1;Genre2;Genre3, which means that it will work out of the box if you previously had tags like this.

Other improvements

Support for favourite folders under the My computer in the Music Explorer.
You can now choose to pre-listen to tracks played using the Internal player. When you pre-listen to a track, each played track will be played for a specific length of time and then the player will automatically change to the next track.
When visiting an artist page in the Music Browser, information for the artist can automatically be downloaded and populated in the background if any of the artist’s files contains a MusicBrainz artist identity. This means that you can automatically populate artist information by simply browsing artists in the Music Browser. To turn this feature on you will need to enable the Download artist information in Music Browser automatically setting under the Online information sources > General page in Options.
Support for the storing of artist, album and track MusicBrainz identities on tags.
Audio fingerprints (AcoustIDs) can be generated for multiple files in a batch by using the Action manager.
Each unique user in the network version can name their ratings.
Support for multiple artist WMA tags generated by dbPowerAmp.
Possibility via right-click to remove duplicate entries in a playlist.
Audio tracks can be compared using audio fingerprints in the Find duplicates tool.
Stored advanced searches can be accessed, edited and created from the Music Explorer.
The Discover artist function is now available as a toolbar button.
Improvements to the Convert to function so that all destination paths are verified before the conversion starts.
Performance improvements related to ID3v2 tag reading and writing.
Improvements to Podcast handling. Pictures are now downloaded and applied correctly.
Improvements to the new information download plug-ins.
Verifying that Helium Music Manager 8.6 works properly with SQL Server Express 2012.
New function in the housekeep database function which will remove orphaned genres.
Updated German, Swedish, Czech, Dutch and Italian languages.

Bug fixes

Various corrections in the Music Browser, mainly related to SQL Server Compact databases
Corrections for the start and genre pages in the Music Browser so that the new genre types are used properly when displaying data
Corrections to the album handling used during an Add files operation, mainly related to SQL Server Compact databases
Improvements for the send to Plays for sure/MTP device function which did not work on some devices
Corrections to the filters to that the new genre fields are always used
Improvements and corrections to the web service when working with an SQL Server Compact database
Bugfixes when removing a genre category from the Manage genres tool
Improvements and bug corrections to the search in the Music Browser which could return too few tracks
Bug corrections related to multiple WMA artists
The problem related to the new multi-genre support and could result in missing genres and tracks not showing properly.
Bug corrections to some Music Browser pages that could cause an error message when being browsed with specific data.
Bug correction related to album picture handling, an album picture could be placed in the wrong folder after applied manually via the Coverflow or Album view.
Correction to problems when enqueing similar tracks.
Corrections to tag reading of "special" Ogg Vorbis files containing modified versions of OggS sections.

Apart from the above mentioned fixes we have also completed all tickets reported by users since Helium Music Manager 8.5 was released.

Please note that this version of Helium Music Manager will upgrade your existing database and make it incompatible with Helium Music Manager 8.5. Therefore we strongly recommend that you to create a backup of your original Helium Music Manager 8.5 database before you use it with Helium Music Manager 8.6.

Click here to download Helium Music Manager 8.6

Helium Music Streamer 1.7

For those of you that also run the Helium Music Streamer, version 1.7 is available in the Customer Center.

News in version 1.7 are listed below:

Language support; Swedish and German are shipped with the default installation apart from English. Please contact us if you want to help to translate into other languages (free version of Helium Music Streamer is given to those who help).
Add to playlist support; All tracklists now have a toolbar action where you can add selected tracks to existing playlists.
Multiple selections in Play queue; It's now easier to handle the play queue since you can select multiple tracks at once to perform actions on.
Multiple selections under Paths view; Checkboxes are also added to the Paths view, allowing for easier adding of tracks to play queue or playlists.
New web service; It's now possible to use the Helium Music Streamer as a web service apart from Helium Music Manager. This allows easier setup for the Helium Music Streamer for iOS since the Helium Music Streamers web service will auto start with the computer. The web service is compatible with all methods that the Helium Music Manager supports, except the player related features (play, pause, stop, currently playing track information etc) of course. The web service in Helium Music Streamer enabled by default and is accessed from Helium Music Streamer for iOS in the exact same way as the Helium Web Service (IP address and port).

Helium Music Streamer 1.7 is only compatible with databases updated to Helium Music Manager 8.6.

Owners of Helium Music Streamer can click here to download this new release from the Customer Center (Products section)

Helium Music Manager 8.6 RC has arrived!

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

A release candidate version (RC) of Helium Music Manager 8.6 is now available.
This version contains no new features compared to the earlier versions, instead the focus has been laid on stability.

Thanks to our new auto-reporting system we have been able to identify and correct many problems, which are included in this release.
Click here to read more about the auto-reporting system.

In short, the bug fixes relates to the following major sections:

Various corrections in the Music Browser, mainly related to SQL Server Compact databases
Corrections for the start and genre pages in the Music Browser so that the new genre types are used properly when displaying data
Corrections to the album handling used during an Add files operation, mainly related to SQL Server Compact databases
Improvements for the send to Plays for sure/MTP device function which did not work on some devices
Corrections to the filters to that the new genre fields are always used
Improvements and corrections to the web service when working with an SQL Server Compact database
Bugfixes when removing a genre category from the Manage genres tool
Improvements and bug corrections to the search in the Music Browser which could return too few tracks
Verifying that Helium Music Manager 8.6 works properly with SQL Server Express 2012
Bug corrections related to multiple WMA artists
Updates to the Swedish language

We strongly recommend all users that have used any of the previous Helium Music Manager 8.6 beta versions earlier to upgrade to this version since it contains many bug corrections and minor improvements.

Click here to download Helium Music Manager 8.6 RC.

Helium Music Streamer beta also available

For those of you that also run the Helium Music Streamer, there is a release candidate version of next release (1.7) available for this product too, in the Customer Center. Helium Music Streamer 1.7 is only compatible with databases updated to Helium Music Manager 8.6.

News in version 1.7 are listed below:

Language support; Swedish and German are shipped with the default installation apart from English. Please contact us if you want to help to translate into other languages (free version of Helium Music Streamer is given to those who help).
Add to playlist support; All tracklists now have a toolbar action where you can add selected tracks to existing playlists.
Multiple selections in Play queue; It's now easier to handle the play queue since you can select multiple tracks at once to perform actions on.
Multiple selections under Paths view; Checkboxes are also added to the Paths view, allowing for easier adding of tracks to play queue or playlists.
New web service; It's now possible to use the Helium Music Streamer as a web service apart from Helium Music Manager. This allows easier setup for the Helium Music Streamer for iOS since the Helium Music Streamers web service will auto start with the computer. The web service is compatible with all methods that the Helium Music Manager supports, except the player related features (play, pause, stop, currently playing track information etc) of course. The web service in Helium Music Streamer enabled by default and is accessed from Helium Music Streamer for iOS in the exact same way as the Helium Web Service (IP address and port).

Helium Music Streamer 1.7 RC is available for download in the Customer Center.

New fully free version of Helium Remote now available

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

A new verion of our iOS application, Helium Remote is now available from AppStore.

This version contains several updates and corrections, many of them to work better with iOS5.1.
Another big new thing is that we have decided to let Helium Remote work with any version of Helium Music Manager, including the free version!

More infomation about Helium Remote click here

Helium Music Manager 8.6 beta 2 now available!

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Helium Music Manager 8.6 beta 2 is now available for all our registered users.

This version contains the following fixes and improvements since the initial beta version was released:

A major update to the automated database upgrade routine with improvements and better error handling. If you experienced problems with your previously upgraded database we recommend you to revert to a backup of your Helium Music Manager 8.5 database and then start Helium Music Manager 8.6 beta 2 to re-upgrade your database.
The problem related to the new multi-genre support and could result in missing genres and tracks not showing properly.
The import database routine now fully supports multi-genre importing.
Bug corrections to some Music Browser pages that could cause an error message when being browsed with specific data.
New function in the housekeep database function which will remove unorphaned genres.
Bug correction related to album picture handling, an album picture could be placed in the wrong folder after applied manually via the Coverflow or Album view.
Correction to possible problems when enqueing similar tracks.
Corrections to tag reading of "special" Ogg Vorbis files containing modified versions of OggS sections.
Improvements to the new information download plug-ins.
Updates to the Czech translation.
Updates to the Swedish translation.

Since this version contains bug fixes related to the database upgrade we strongly recommend all users that have previously upgraded their Helium Music Manager 8.5 databases to revert to their backup of the database and re-upgrade it with this version of Helium Music Manager.

Helium Music Manager 8.6 is available from our Customer Center which can be accessed by clicking this link

Free information for all!

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Today we are proud to present the first official beta version of Helium Music Manager 8.6.

This version comes with both major and minor improvements (as well as bug-fixes) since the last version was released.

The most important changes are listed below:

Highly improved information downloading

Improvements in the Tag editor

Under the Download button in the Tag editor, there are now some new download alternatives:

Album and track information (automatic look-up):
This option will generate audio fingerprints for the selected files (if not already present) and use these fingerprints to create a fully automatic look-up of the album in the MusicBrainz database.
When the album is found, additional information will be downloaded from other sources (including Last.fm, Amazon and Discogs) using the album identity to get as much information as possible, in an exact way.
This means that you can identify and download information for all tracks from an album without the need of having any previous tags at all!
Track information (track-by-track, automatic look-up):
This option will also generate and use audio fingerprints to lookup each track in the MusicBrainz database and automatically download as much information as possible about it from multiple sources (including Last.fm, Amazon and Discogs).

Of course, all the old download methods where you can choose which download sources you would like to download from is still available.

Improvements to the edit artist information tools

Multiple Genre support

Other improvements

Support for favourite folders under the My computer in the Music Explorer.
You can now choose to pre-listen to tracks played using the Internal player. When you pre-listen to a track, each played track will be played for a specific length of time and then the player will automatically change to the next track.
When visiting an artist page in the Music Browser, information for the artist can automatically be downloaded and populated in the background if any of the artist’s files contains a MusicBrainz artist identity. This means that you can automatically populate artist information by simply browsing artists in the Music Browser. To turn this feature on you will need to enable the Download artist information in Music Browser automatically setting under the Online information sources > General page in Options.
Support for the storing of artist, album and track MusicBrainz identities on tags.
Audio fingerprints (AcoustIDs) can be generated for multiple files in a batch by using the Action manager.
Each unique user in the network version can name their ratings.
Support for multiple artist WMA tags generated by dbPowerAmp.
Possibility via right-click to remove duplicate entries in a playlist.
Audio tracks can be compared using audio fingerprints in the Find duplicates tool.
Stored advanced searches can be accessed, edited and created from the Music Explorer.
The Discover artist function is now available as a toolbar button.
Improvements to the Convert to function so that all destination paths are verified before the conversion starts.
Performance improvements related to ID3v2 tag reading and writing.
Improvements to Podcast handling.
Updated German, Swedish and Italian languages.

Apart from the above mentioned fixes we have also completed all tickets reported by users since Helium Music Manager 8.5 was released.

Please note that this version of Helium Music Manager will upgrade your existing database and make it incompatible with Helium Music Manager 8.5.
Therefore we strongly recommend that you to create a backup of your original Helium Music Manager 8.5 database before you use it with Helium Music Manager 8.6.

Helium Music Streamer beta also available

For those of you that also run the Helium Music Streamer, there is a beta version of next release (1.7) available for this product too, in the Customer Center. Helium Music Streamer 1.7 is only compatible with databases updated to Helium Music Manager 8.6.

All registered users can click here to download these new releases from the Customer Center (Products section)

Hotfix for Helium Music Manager 8.5 released

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

We have released a hotfix for Helium Music Manager 8.5 which corrects a problem in the Music Explorer when expanding the genres node.
This hotfix also comes with an updated version of the Apple lossless player plug-in which corrects a few problems with some Apple lossles audio files that could not be played.

We recommend all users to update to this version.

The updated version can be downloaded from our download page or our Customer Center.

Update for Helium Music Manager 8.5 now available

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

An update for Helium Music Manager 8.5 is now available.

This version comes with the following updates:

Updated Italian language
Updates for Czech language
Device synchronization templates are now stored properly
Apply commands in the CD-Ripper now works properly
Summary and Now Playing panes now properly remembers their collapsed state
Adding and removing favourite paths in the Music Explorer

We recommend that all users update to this new version.

Helium Music Manager 8.5 now available

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Helium Music Manager 8.5 is now officially available!

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

This version of Helium Music Manager works well with Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Please note that it will require .NET framework 3.5, which is available as an additional Windows component
Major improvements to the FreeDB downloading function used when you rip Audio-CDs. The function is now quicker, more precise and less affected by server timeouts
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 different 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, Dutch, Hungarian 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.

Click here to download Helium Music Manager 8.5.

Updated versions of Helium Remote and Helium Streamer for iOS available

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Today we are releasing updated versions of the Helium Music Streamer for iOS and Helium Remote for iOS.

Helium Streamer for iOS comes with improvements related to iOS5 as well as improvements related to updates.
If an update to Last.fm, Playcounter, rating or another related operation cannot be processed at the moment due to a connection problem, it will now be cached locally and be updated when the connection is back again to ensure that no data updates are missed.
This version of Helium Streamer for iOS also comes with an updated version of the BASS library, used for playback.

Helium Remote for iOS comes with bug fixes and iOS5 support.

Click here to read more about the applications.

Both updates are available via AppStore.

Helium Music Streamer 1.6 now released

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Helium Music Streamer 1.6 comes with a couple of new features as well as bug fixes since last release. The most important news are listed below.

Discover artists

You are now able to discover similar artists in the same fashion as in the latest release of Helium Music Manager.

You can find the discover artists feature by either clicking on the Discover artists button on an artist page, or on the discover artists icon on the player, while playing a track.

Clicking on the discover artists link will load a page with the selected artist on top and a selection of similar artists below.

The similar artists are quickly found by using third party services such as Last.fm and Musicbrainz. The artists found by these services are then compared to your music library to see whether you have them in your collection.

All similar artists found will be listed underneath the selected artist.

Clicking on another artist’s link will browse away to that artist and find similar tracks. This enables you to browse for similar artists for eternity (or at least for as much similar artists there are in your collection).

More intuitive track selection using multiple selections

Clicking on any of the track links on the discover artists page will reveal a list of tracks from that artist. It also reveals another big update in this release; multiple selections.

Clicking on one or more checkboxes next to a track will reveal some menu options that you can execute on the selected tracks. Click on the button to reveal the actions underneath.

Multiple selections are available on all views where there is a track list available.

Download

This new release is available from the Customer Center for current owners of the product.

We hope that you will like these new improvements!

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

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

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.