MusicMatch is not a Gateway authored program. My guess is you have the version that Gateway distributes with new computers--which first of all is not necessarily the full featured version that MusicMatch offers.

Back a few years ago when I was looking for a program to use to rip my CD collection and organize my 8000+ mp3s I finally settled on MusicMatch after extensive research. Many other programs had different organization features, etc, but MusicMatch was by far the most stable, and complete all around option (plus they offered a purchase option with lifetime upgrades). I don't know what's out there now, or what you're looking for in terms of organization or search capabilities, but I have no problems with Musicmatch.

The trick with MP3s is track tags (little text fields imbedded into the front end of the MP3 files themselves)--making sure your consistent about not only naming the mp3 files themselves, but how they are labeled in the track tags. This is where the musicmatch library will get the track information for searchable fields in the "Find Tracks" search engine. Depending on how far you want to go, Track tagging can be a simple, broad stroke, or a detailed track by track process that can literally take months or years to complete. Once it's done though, with MusicMatch's AutoDJ feature, you'll never listen to music the same way again. I suspect that your problem is not MusicMatch the program, but maybe your lack of knowledge of how MusicMatch is handling your track tags. When you rip a disc with the recorder, MusicMatch will automatically track tag the MP3s with info it gets from the internet, which may or may not be how you want it organized in your library. If you want it organized a different way, you have to go back in and manually change the tags to your liking. If all you're trying to do is make sure the artist / album info is correct, that's only a couple minute process that you would do after you rip each album.

I suspect this same track tag method is how most MP3 players construct their libraries when you add MP3s. This isn't just exclusive to MusicMatch. Track tags are an integral part of the MP3 file format. The old addage, garbage in garbage out certainly applies to MP3 players.

Anyway, I'm sure others will have suggestions about other programs to use that you might find preferrable... but I defend MusicMatch. It's a good program, and a reliable one as long as you know how to use it.

Anyway, good luck with whatever you decide. :)

Mike L.

Edited to add this:

Here's a link to the actual MusicMatch website.

Edited by - MLyons on 2/3/2004 1:59:34 PM

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Help me please.

ned

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"The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise." - George Santayana

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"Garbling" your tracks...? I have no idea what might be wrong. I guess I'd need more information. Are you ripping them from CDs? Or are you using the "Add tracks to library" functions to add existing MP3s to your library?

Are the tracks there when you open Musicmatch, and then suddenly not there when you open it again some time later? Or are you sorting by Artist and seeing some tracks, and then sorting by album and seeing something else? What exactly are you experiencing?

The following commands are based on version 8.2 of MusicMatch Jukebox, so your version may be different...

A way to start if you want to have MusicMatch start over with what's actually in the track tags of the MP3s themselves is to go to:

Options->Music Library->Save Music Library As

And then name it "backup" or something, so you have a backup of your currently library.

Then go to:

Options->Music Library->Clear Music Library

This will clear your library file completely. It will then show that you have no tracks whatsoever.

Next:

Options->Music Library->Search and Add Tracks from All Drives

This will allow you to choose the hard drives you'd like to search for MP3 files. Then MusicMatch will go search the drive to MP3s, read the track tags from them and construct a new music library based on that information. If the track tags have good information, the library will make sense. If they don't you'll have to go through and Edit the track tags (either for individual tracks, or for groups of tracks) until it does make sense.

If you want to go back to your old library, all you have to do is:

File->Open Music Library

and then choose the "backup" you made before.

I'm not sure this will help you, since I'm not clear on what your problem is. So that exercise may not be helpful to you.

Perhaps things are becoming "garbled" by no fault of your own. Just becoming corrupted without you doing anything wrong, but if that's the case, I can assure you with some confidence that it's probably not MusicMatch by itself that's causing the problem. There's some deeper issue there. Perhaps you're using an old version that has compatibility probelms with XP... I don't know.

Anyway... I'm rambling. I can try to help further, but I'll need more information about what you're actually experiencing.

Mike L.

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Ned

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If you ever intend to listen to your music through something other than standard pc/laptop speakers, you're going to run into "artifact" problems using itunes(although the quicktime aac>160-192) or musicmatch. when you compress a .wav file, the codec tries to determine what you can hear and what you can't, then remove the latter. musicmatch uses the Fhg/fastenc codec to do this, which fails pretty miserably in vbr. try encoding using LAME available at

http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org/files/lame-3.90.3.zip

the best size/quality ratio is found by using --preset standard and for ripping the actual cd, go to http://www.exactaudiocopy.de --it's DAE ability is considerably better than anything out there. for playing any kind of audio file try http://foobar2000.org/

it'll take a little time/tinkering with these methods, but they're all FREE, use less memory/processor load and will end up noticably better through decent equipment.

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I use CDex most, but also second the recommendation for Exact Audio Copy.

I've used both and I may be partly deaf but I can't tell any real difference -- either way, the LAME encoder is the most important piece!

NOTE: I linked to a different download for LAME. YMMV

(Also, Lite-On drives are notoriously well-suited for Digital Audio Extraction (DAE).)

I've always used Winamp (2 on older machines, 5 on newer), but I'm definitley checking out foobar2000 because my playlists do get "boggy" when you have several hundred files (and this claims to handle large playlists better!).

When you extract the CDDA tracks with your ripper, you can specify how you want the tracks named - "Artist - Album - Track Number - Track Name" is good, or make an "Artist" folder and make subfolders for the albums, then all you need is "Track Number - Track Name" (so they play back in the right order, if you care).

I've found that if I organize my music this way, it makes it really easy to find what I want and create playlists without resorting to some "Media Library" hooey. YMMV with ALL of this, of course!

But like dude said, it's free, and it's saved me from having to buy replacements of my CDs MANY TIMES when they get scratched or broken. I just burn a new one! I'm sure the RIAA hates that, but at least I don't trade 'em.

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Ned

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Thanks, jamesboston, for the hydrogenaudio.org link -- now that I've done some reading on the forums there about CDex vs. EAC, I'm going to stick with EAC (and install foobar2000 tonight !).

Now, if I could just get these two LDAP servers replicating like they used to...I'm not even going to ask.

Edited by - cobalt60 on 2/4/2004 3:25:28 PM

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