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Ipod vs. Zune
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 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by omegaslayer on Sun Dec 31st at 4:54am 2006

-Jinx and wilson-
Could you elaborate more on how iTunes organizes your music in the way you dislike? I mean im looking at my iTunes folder right now, and it seems like its in a logical order. I mean who really cares how your music is organized if its all appearing in iTunes in an organized manner. I can understand the frustration with a program doing things behind your back...but to some extent all programs do that. At least iTunes doen't download software it *thinks* it needs (eg: internet explorer)

edit: ohh and due note: iTunes doenst rip your music off of your CDs, but it turns it into its own file format. Not too much of an issue if you get another program to rip em for ya, but it is annoying.



Posting And You



Quote
 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by Jinx on Sun Dec 31st at 5:09am 2006

I've heard of it moving around your music on you, to organize it in its own folders etc. I've even heard horror stories of people losing music because of iTunes.

This is old, but here's an example of how I have folders with complete albums organized:

http://www.cryotank.net/remote/complete_albums.txt

I go to great lengths to keep my stuff organized in a way I like, I don't want to risk some program moving stuff around to fit its own idea of how it should be organized.

Also had an experience with WMP where once you added music to it, it wouldn't 'forget' the music if you moved it. Even though the music was clearly gone, you couldn't remove it from the program's list, which just made a mess. Change one filepath, and the whole program is messed.

Maybe someone more familiar with iTunes can elaborate more on how it works. I keep my music meticulously organized, so I don't feel a need for a program to do anything other than play it.


<A HREF=\"http://www.ministryofaction.net\" TARGET=\"_blank\">Action Half-Life</A> - <A HREF=\"http://distraction-mod.com\" TARGET=\"_blank\">Distrac



Quote
 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by smackintosh on Sun Dec 31st at 7:01am 2006

I organize my MP3s much the same way.
I burn them to data DVDs first (@192 kbps you can fit 50-70 albums per disc).
Then I put them on my external 250 gig and sort them by artist and album.

I've never lost anything in I-tunes. I just make a new directory and put copies of albums or songs in it, and then import them into I-tunes. I never link to original files, they're all backup up anyway. I have multiple libraries with the new version
of I-tunes, you just hold down shift when loading it (to switch between them or make a new one).

I only use I-tunes to sort it for Ipod use, I use winamp to listen to music, I hate
WMP.



Quote
 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by Forceflow on Sun Dec 31st at 4:51pm 2006

The problem with both players is that I want my MP3 player to play anything I like. DRM is the work of the devil, so scrap Zune. Ipods are a bit too expensive (you pay a plus because it's a shiny *Ipod*), and play far from everything (Flac, Ogg ?).

I also want an MP3 player that would just let me drag and drop stuff on it like as if it was an external hard drive.

I mean, serious, what's the use of the forced I-Tunes transfers ? The program hogs up way too much memory for a music player, and I don't really like the integration of the online store in it. A music player should play music. Period.

I'd go with one of the Creative models. They allow a lot of modification (there are articles on the internet from people who managed to run Doom on it :P) and are pretty cheap.


:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer



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 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by Jinx on Sun Dec 31st at 6:11pm 2006

I rather liked .ogg files, they definitely sounded better than an mp3 of the same bitrate. The lack of support is frustrating, though. Any more when I come across .ogg files I just convert them to high bitrate mp3s :/

Flac is nice in theory, but I can't really tell the difference and they are so huge it's rather annoying. I convert those to high bitrate mp3s, too.


<A HREF=\"http://www.ministryofaction.net\" TARGET=\"_blank\">Action Half-Life</A> - <A HREF=\"http://distraction-mod.com\" TARGET=\"_blank\">Distrac



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 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by Forceflow on Mon Jan 1st at 12:11pm 2007

I have to admit that Flac is indeed still a bit huge, but it's very nice that it can convert an 80 Mb Wav file into a 15-16 Mb FLAC file , all lossless. I mean really, you can't tell the difference, even when you're playing it on a high-def stereo set.


:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer



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 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by Jinx on Mon Jan 1st at 1:07pm 2007

On a related note, I've been enjoying the scrobbling features of Last.fm

image

Pretty neat thing to pop on your MySpace, webpage, etc.

btw, does anyone know of anything similar that will track what video you've been watching? most videos aren't properly tagged, but even something that would show the filenames would be nice.


<A HREF=\"http://www.ministryofaction.net\" TARGET=\"_blank\">Action Half-Life</A> - <A HREF=\"http://distraction-mod.com\" TARGET=\"_blank\">Distrac



Quote
 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by DrGlass on Tue Jan 2nd at 9:48pm 2007

You can set iTunes up so it doesn't mess with your audio file set up, but like I said before you can skip iTunes all together with Winamp (I would use this if I wasn't on mac)

Price is a big factor with the iPod, I put lots of stress on design so I oped for the ipod (plus I got a big discount with I got my macbook).

I can't stress enough to use Winamp if your on a PC, it is by far the best media software I've ever used.

iPods also have a strong user base. iPod+winamp = my choice



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 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by ReNo on Tue Jan 2nd at 10:04pm 2007

Aye, Winamp really whips the Llama's ass <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_wink.gif"> I'm sure many other media players are fine too if you take the time to set them up how you like and learn to use them properly, but I've used Winamp for years now and have yet to see any reason to change.



Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net



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 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by smackintosh on Wed Jan 3rd at 1:23am 2007

I'm still using Winamp 2.10...
I hated when they added all of the visualization stuff and video
playback. It looked like it was slowly becoming Real Player.



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 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by Forceflow on Wed Jan 3rd at 9:29am 2007

foobar2000 for the win. It's pretty minimal, so you can just add what you want. The basic layout looks fugly, but after a bit of tweaking you've got the music player customized to your needs.


:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer



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 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by Jinx on Wed Jan 3rd at 2:04pm 2007

? quote:
foobar2000 for the win. It's pretty minimal, so you can just add what you want. The basic layout looks fugly, but after a bit of tweaking you've got the music player customized to your needs.

Huh, I think I saw that in Last.FM's list of supported players. I was like "wtf is that?!" Maybe I'll check it out. Winamp bores me and it's the same damn player I've used for like 8 years. WMP is okay I guess, but it's excessive for just mp3s and seems like a sluggish program- no matter how fast your system is or how much ram you have, it's just a dog compared to other video & audio players.


<A HREF=\"http://www.ministryofaction.net\" TARGET=\"_blank\">Action Half-Life</A> - <A HREF=\"http://distraction-mod.com\" TARGET=\"_blank\">Distrac



Quote
 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by smackintosh on Wed Jan 3rd at 4:04pm 2007

thanks forceflow, foobar is great. Its very quick to load and
doesnt eat up my system resources like winamp. I guess it is about time to
abandon winamp now.



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 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by Forceflow on Wed Jan 3rd at 4:39pm 2007

Be sure to check out the foobar2000 forums. There are tons of third-party plug-ins to enhance functionality. The default look is pretty spartan. I've added Album View and a small thing to pop up track info in the system tray when I'm playing music. Oh, and the audioscrobbler plug-in.


:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer



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 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by smackintosh on Wed Jan 3rd at 4:44pm 2007

good to know, I'll check it out. thanks again.



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 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by Jinx on Wed Jan 3rd at 4:51pm 2007

Giving foobar a try as well. works with the multimedia buttons on my keyboard, which is nice (to pause if I get a phone call, etc.)

He's right, though, it's pretty godawful ugly lol.


<A HREF=\"http://www.ministryofaction.net\" TARGET=\"_blank\">Action Half-Life</A> - <A HREF=\"http://distraction-mod.com\" TARGET=\"_blank\">Distrac



Quote
 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by Forceflow on Wed Jan 3rd at 5:30pm 2007

- ColumnsUI is a very good layout manager (allows you to sort songs, tabbed playlists, ... it is the framework to start placing other things in, really)
- PrettyPopup is good for popping up song info
- Database Search is handy too, playlist search also
- AlbumInfo is nice
- And the Bauer to Stereophonic plugin is very nice if you listen a lot with headphones. You may not hear the difference at first, but I notice I can stand listening to music longer without my ears getting ... 'tired' - might be the wrong word, but that's how it feels.

And even with all these plugins loaded, the thing tops off at 1 Mb memory usage. w00t.


:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer



Quote
 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by smackintosh on Wed Jan 3rd at 6:02pm 2007

I gotta ask, I have ALOT of albums that don't have ID tags on them.
What's a good program to go through and "mass-tag" them?
I've tried quite a few and they didn't work as well as I hoped. I haven't
tried with I-tunes yet, I know it will take forever.

or can foobar do that too, with the correct plugins?



Quote
 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by Jinx on Wed Jan 3rd at 7:03pm 2007

? quote:
I gotta ask, I have ALOT of albums that don't have ID tags on them.
What's a good program to go through and "mass-tag" them?
I've tried quite a few and they didn't work as well as I hoped. I haven't
tried with I-tunes yet, I know it will take forever.

or can foobar do that too, with the correct plugins?


I think foobar can with some plugin, but here's a program I know works:
http://www.cryotank.net/remote/ID3_tag_scanner.zip
It's freeware, but I uploaded it for convenience.

If your mp3s are named in a consistent manner, it can automatically generate ID3 tags from the filenames. For example, I used to name my stuff like this, but make no tags:

artist - album - track## - songtitle.mp3
ie
Covenant - Northern Light - 03 - Bullet.mp3

You just tell it how the info in the filename is arranged, and you can have it batch generate all the tags for you from them. Assuming, of course, you named the mp3s consistently ;D

You do that under the "Tag Processor" tab. I dumped all my ripped albums in one folder, set it to do subfolders, too, and had it do every damn one all at once image


<A HREF=\"http://www.ministryofaction.net\" TARGET=\"_blank\">Action Half-Life</A> - <A HREF=\"http://distraction-mod.com\" TARGET=\"_blank\">Distrac



Quote
 Re: Ipod vs. Zune
Posted by French Toast on Wed Jan 3rd at 8:34pm 2007

Easier: Get iTunes.




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