Switching from Windows Media Player to MediaMonkey: Questions

[boleary]

Am tired of all the hiccups served up by WMP and am attempting to switch to MediaMonkey. My computor knowledge is not extensive but am able to generally figure stuff out. I believe I disabled kmixer following the Benchmark Windows XP setup guide. My system is as follows: Dell laptop to M-Audio Audiophile USB to MSB Gold Link Dac to Dyna SCA 35 amp. The M-Audio has its own driver that supports 24/96 sample rate. Three questions:

 

1. Is there any software that can convert Windows Media Playlists to M3U? I've been making playlists in WMP for nearly ten years. Reconstructing them is too daunting.....

 

2. How come I can rip a cd in MediaMonkey to wave files and they have the tags, but all the wave files I've ripped using Windows Media Player won't show up in MediaMonkey. Conversly, wave files ripped in Media Monkey show up in Windows Media player but the filenames all begin with a zero so none of them, in Windows Media Player, are in the correct order? I thought I would be able to preserve my playlists by just using WMP for playing them; but, if I rerip the cd's so their in MediaMonkey, WMP can't find the wave files cause the filenames changed! (i hope this makes sense....)

 

3. In switching, are there settings in MediaMonkey that I need to be aware of for best quality ripping, burning and music playback?

 

Thanks in advance for any and all responses.

 

[sastusbulbas]

Maybe what we need is a simple setting up your media player guide? One which covers them all, shows what settings give the best performance, and genuine reasons for what outperforms what?

 

I myself have similar problems, plenty of music wrongly labelled or not recognised by MM, and and WMP having problems with rips from other media players.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BobH]

1. In WMP highlight the playlist(s) then select File/Save As - select m3u as the filetype.

 

2. Because tagging of wav files seems to be a bit of an afterthought, most programs handle it differently. I'm afraid you're up against the usual incompatibilities 'designed' into software to try and keep you using 'their' product. Everybody does it, it's never 'their' fault, it's always a PITA and it ought to be illegal!

 

3. The main thing is to make sure that you keep all volume controls at 100% - both Windows and MM. Personally, I prefer the sound of MM using the wave_out.dll - this can be configured so as not to allow volume control by MM. Once that is done, all you need to do is make sure that the Windows audio control is at max and that all system sounds are turned off - so that nothing else is going to want to use the volume control.

 

Hope this helps

 

[Roseval]

When ripping a CD, WMP writes a couple of tag according to the WAV standard.

dbPoweramp and MM writes IDV3 tags (MP3 standard) in a info chunk.

MM won't regognize the WMP tags and visa versa.

As usual in case of WAV, support for play back 100%, protability of tags 0%.

My advise: don't use stone age standards like WAV or AIFF. One day you will move to another computer, another player and you will probably lose all of your tagging.