Steve Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 I've been playing around with MediaMonkey and it's a really cool piece of software for music management/playing music. I can't fucking stand iTunes (on Windows at least). Winamp is fine, but the library part of it could be much improved. Windows Media Player seems to want to update the album art even though I've disabled that feature, so I disabled the program altogether. I installed MediaMonkey and straight away I imported my library and had it looking just how I wanted - something I never managed with Winamp's library, even after tinkering about with it for ages. Screenshot of the main window: - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stevebluck/images/mm1.jpg It uses Windows 7 features so you can access the main player functions from the taskbar button: - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stevebluck/images/mm2.jpg You can also access the main player functions from the system tray: - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stevebluck/images/mm3.jpg It also has those little pop ups like Winamp has that appear when the track changes: - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stevebluck/images/mm4.jpg Overall, I'm really impressed with it to the point where I might buy a lifetime subscription to the Gold version. The free version is great, but the Gold version adds some pretty cool features such as the ability to have it lower the volume at set times and even turn off your PC, which is good if you listen to music while you're in bed. I've been using Winamp since I first had a PC, but I think I might finally switch to something else! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doppelkorn Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 My music's so disorganized I can't see myself needing that level of organization and Winamp's just a beast at dealing with video codecs. Out of interest Steve can MediaMonkey rip mp3s? It's Winamp's main failing as far as I can see (if you use the free version). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted March 24, 2011 Author Share Posted March 24, 2011 Media Player Classic Home Cinema is much better than Winamp for video. It has support for loads of codecs without actually installing codecs system wide, and it has features such as being able to shift the audio if it's out of sync, plus some good subtitle tools. The free version of MediaMonkey comes with a time limited version of an MP3 encoder, but you can replace it with the LAME encoder and remove that limitation without having to buy the Gold version. You can also burn CDs, but it's limited to 4X burning with the free version. One good reason to use this is if your music is disorganised BTW! It organises it all for you, and can tag the files and add album art based on selectable sources. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 I see media management as being one of the major perks for mac. iTunes is fantastic at sorting everything, especially once you figure out its idiosyncrasies - I don't know quite how different it is on windows but the main thing I found a stumbling block coming from windows was a reluctance to let the software take control. Once you trust iTunes to organise things for you it's fantastic. Sometimes I miss whipping the llama's ass, and I never use it for video, but on the whole, iTunes ftw for me. What irks you about windows iTunes steve? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimmy Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 i really like itunes, but i still wont let it sort it for me. my OCD is better than apples'. that applies when im at work on windows, or at home on my mac Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted March 24, 2011 Author Share Posted March 24, 2011 What irks you about windows iTunes steve?When you install it, it installs a bunch of other stuff at the same time and adds about half a dozen entries to Add or Remove Programs. I don't want Quicktime on my machine. It's slow and eats up RAM. It doesn't have codec support for all the formats I use out of the box and requires you to search out plugins. It doesn't, AFAIK, allow you to select sources for pulling in album art and other data, and it doesn't embed the art into the tag (in the version I used, it put album art into its own folder - very strange). iTunes uses a non-standard method for storing certain data in tags, which means it can't be read by other applications. Windows Media Player is OK, but as I mentioned above, it would constantly overwrite my album art with tiny files, even though I disabled that option and set my folder.jpg files to read only. Winamp is a really good player, but the library couldn't be set up how I wanted, or at least, I couldn't figure out how to do it. It would also connect to the Internet and display info about the artist I was listening to, and I couldn't see how to disable it. Sometimes it wouldn't find any info and you'd just get a spinning icon instead. It's got a bit too much crap integrated into it since AOL became the parent company. So far, MediaMonkey seems to do exactly what I want. Its fast and the program doesn't use a lot of resources. It looks alright (there's a choice of skins - some of them are awful though) and it supports all the formats I use out of the box. I like the options for displaying and sorting my library, and it has all the options I need for searching and filtering. It has a ton of options and features, and you can use it to sync to all kinds of different devices. If I did need add-ons and scripts, they're all in one place on the website - maybe it's the same with iTunes now, but when I used it, it wasn't. It's also a lot more customisable than iTunes as you can drag menus around where you want, add or remove buttons to/from menus etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 ....a reluctance to let the software take control. Once you trust iTunes to organise things for you it's fantastic. Agreed, it took me about 4 years but I've let itunes do it's thing for about 6 months and it's so much better than trying to deal with lots of files all over. and it doesn't embed the art into the tag (in the version I used, it put album art into its own folder - very strange). It's a bit daft but if you add the album artwork another way in iTunes it adds it to the file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frost Posted March 26, 2011 Share Posted March 26, 2011 i've been using media monkey for 9 years now and doubt i will ever change. i have all folders in name order in windows explorer and get media monkey to display all the music in c:/ path order. works a dream and looks sweet with the zune skin for it and zune theme for xp. (i'll post a screen dump later) for 'films' i use media player classic home cinema, using the ac3 filter from the mega k-lite codec pack which makes the audio on the 'films' sound sweet with DTS. you can get an easy crack/seriel code for media monkey Steve, if you're feeling that way inclined. just try cracks.am or anywhere like that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted March 26, 2011 Author Share Posted March 26, 2011 I bought it in the end mate. I did download a crack for it (which I never actually used), but I don't mind supporting devs when the software is good and the price is right. I paid in US dollars to avoid VAT and it worked out at £25 for a lifetime license, so that's cool with me. Only thing I'm not really getting is how best to deal with singles. I've got my music split into genres, then I have folders for albums (with each album in a folder inside that) and folders for singles for each genre. I'd rather not have each separate single listed in the main window, but I don't know how to sort it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frost Posted March 26, 2011 Share Posted March 26, 2011 i don't have that many singles, more random song downloads so I've put all these in one folder in explorer. I've got media monkey to display in path order inside 'Album & Album Artist' so there is one chunk in the library where they're all kept. my library lists all the albums alphabetically because thats how they're arranged in explorer. cant explain it better then that really. basically organizing it in explorer makes it easy for media monkey to organize if you got it in c:/ path order. or you can use playlists. these can be useful Uploaded with ImageShack.us Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted March 27, 2011 Author Share Posted March 27, 2011 I've got it sorted now. I've removed all the buttons from the "View" toolbar except for these 2 views: - Album art with details: - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stevebluck/images/mm6.jpg Just album art: - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stevebluck/images/mm7.jpg That, combined with the tree on the left and the search box makes it easy to find what I want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doppelkorn Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 I think I've worked out why my music's so disorganised: I only have singles on mp3 really. This means that separating by artist and album is just painful, I need to separate by genre really which means manually retaggin everything. I tend to use Windows Explorer as my music organiser and Winamp as the player. Huh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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