MediaMonkey woes once again...

[sastusbulbas]

MediaMonkey.

 

Not the first time I have used this, but just wanted to mention my frustration with this program.

 

I get annoyed with it, as it is always missing album art or does not know or list complete albums, due to the relevant information not being good enough? I don't know. I have a lot of music, from various sources of various bitrate/quality, just about all of it is correctly listed and has the correct album art in WMP, MediaMonkey I don't have much luck with.

 

An example, most of my Roots Manuva albums have LCD SoundSystem album art.

 

My Kerbdog On The Turn album is recognised, but only as a list of individual tracks, not an album.

 

Many of my flac albums (Doc & Lena Selyanina, Kraftim and such) have no artwork, and are unknown when asked about on the web, when asked to sort them out MediaMonkey lists them as individual tracks.

 

WMP has all the album art, and has the albums listed correctly.

 

I assume for MediaMonkey to work well, it must be the only program in use, and the music must be ripped with that in mind?

That said, I ripped an album last night with DBpoweramp as a wav with the album art/data intact in DB poweramp for MediaMonkey, with no luck, trying to update this album art had the wrong CD turn up on the web search.

 

I ended up removing MediaMonkey again, but again decided to try again by giving it it's own folder for WAV and Flac, but when I added the files to this folder it was again hit and miss.

 

Steve

 

[Roseval]

Most freeware players use a license free internet database, Freedb.

Players like WMP use a commercial one (AMG) or Gracenotes in case of iTunes.

These databases are in general better maintained and more consistent.

 

Any reason to use MM instead of WMP11?

 

 

 

[sastusbulbas]

To be honest I had read again that it was "better" sounding than WMP11. I had been through the whole different Media player rigmarole before, and ended up back at WMP11 as it was simpler and would play every file with K-Lite Codec packs installed.

 

Since re-installing MediaMonkey and a soundcard WMP11 will not play my Flac files, hence I thought I would again try MediaMonkey with the Wav and Flac only music. Though I have to add that since limiting my audio output to 16.44.4 many of my higher res flac files are not in use.

 

I have not yet fully re-evaluated MediaMonkey, so what have people found better about this, is it all with regard to bypassing K-mixer?

 

[Roseval]

WMP11 don’t support FLAC natively, you need a plug in (direct show filter) to do so.

If you reinstall K-Lite Codec or MADFLAC only, WMP will probably play FLAC again.

 

I don’t think media players have a sound. They allow you to choose a song and play it.

The play back is a matter of sending it to a driver.

Most of them are simply a front end between your music files and the audio driver.

 

Different drivers might yield a different sound quality.

ASIO is a common practice to bypass Kmixer.

However there are claims that a lot of these ASIO drivers are of moderate quality.

A very amusing example can be found here: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/ASIO.htm

Benchmark is not the only one claiming that XP, when configured right, is able to provide bit perfect output: http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_XP_Audio_Playback_-_Setup_Guide

 

I think the best audio using Windows is Vista. It is a total redesign. WASAPI delivers bit perfect output. Win7 is expected to be launched mid 2009, I wouldn’t recommend an upgrade now.