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October 30, 2010 - 9:39am
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I know this is like trying to convince a fan to support another football team but I suggest your problems will never be solved for sure unless you leave behind Mr Gates sloppywear and migrate completely to a Unix based system such as Linux or Mac OSX.
If you invest in one of the latest Macs you can still run your old Microsloppy software on those machines, as a native OS, as well as Unix based ones. Although, from my perspective, I can't see why anyone would be so suicidal. Good luck.
Try JRiver Media Center. I've been using their freeware version (JRiver Jukebox) for about a year and find it very stable, feature-rich and flexible.
Foobar. Foobar. Foobar
anyone on PC that does not use it is clueless.
heres my foobar skin
Linux = steep learning curve. Not for the faint of heart.
Mac/Apple/Jobs = closed system. difficult if not impossible to customize. No flac support. stuck with p.o.s. iTunes. Great for the brain dead among us. And way over priced.
Windows 7 = less steep learning curve. Not for the faint of heart. full flac support. no need to use iTunes. Highly user configurable. Lots of software to chose from.
You might have a problem because most music playback programs (and rippers and tag editors) don't store tag values in WAV files in a standard way if at all. Your music playback program may keep values for those fields in its database but may not actually store the values in the WAV fields themselves. Move the WAV files or change players and the values don't appear in the new context.
Unless you understand the Tagging limitations for WAV files, the WAV format may cause you problems. If you are wedded to iTunes, ALAC and AIFF are reasonable choices. If you are using J. River MC, Foobar or Media Monkey for playback, FLAC is a safe choice.
Perhaps you might blame Microsoft rather than Media Monkey.
Uninstalling and reinstalling software is what you do when you don't understand the problem. If you have to do it very often, you need to invest in improving your troubleshooting skills.
I think that learning a bit more will produce better results for you than changing programs.
Bill
I agree this does not appear to be a media monkey problem BUT, I have had to rebuild my music files three times over the last 18 months using them as Microsoft issues updates or simply because it is Tuesday and we are speaking of a computer and software.
I have close to 500 WAV files and a dozen MP3 files (where I cannot find a CD to rip from) already in the system. Reorganizing files and figuring where the system moved them every time Microsoft gets a mind fart is getting old.
In the latest case the system deleted my playlists and put all remaining music in what looked like alphabetic order, a lovely idea except when one has things like classical music now scattered movement by movement all over the list.
In an ideal world I would have a computer dedicated to nothing else but music and photo's...it would have the best processor possible, the best graphics card in existence, a sound card with a decent digital out, at least 8GB of memory and be up datable in the future...
Of course, in that ideal world I also have a few score grand to play with audio...
Not likely in today's happy world of taxes and idiots in Congress.
This is not reasonable. You have some specific problems that you need to solve.
Why is Windows moving any of your files? Or is it Windows media Player? If you are using Media Monkey, you should not be using WMP at all.
Do you have a backup? Do you know where your files were before they were moved?
You should pick a base folder in which all your music files will be stored and specify that in the software you use to rip CDs. (For example, c:\jimv\music\. It is better to specify a location you control rather than allowing the ripping s/w to place your files in some default location like c:\documents and settings\...\My Music\.) Then specify a rule for the folder name in which the files from ripping a particular CD will be placed. (For example, [Artist]\[Album].) Then specify a rule for naming the individual files. (For example, [Artist] - [Album - [Track #] - [Track Name].) Most ripping programs will allow you to specify a base folder name and rules for folder and file names. Some ripping programs can retrieve album cover art at the same time and some let you specify whether you want the image file stored in the folder with the music file, embedded in the music file or stored in a central location.
Once you have ripped some CDs, copy your collection to a backup drive. When you rip more CDs, update your backup.
I do have a dedicated MusicPC with my music files stored on it. And two generations of backups. That PC runs Windows XP, slimmed down and tuned and without Windows update running at all. Nothing fancy about the hardware: a four year old 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 CPU, 2 GB of Ram, a 500 GB system drive and a 1 TB drive for the music files. Things are very uneventful on that PC.
I have a copy of the music file son my general purpose PC. That PC also runs Windows XP. Windows Update and an anti-virus program run on that PC. Over several years, I have not had any problems of the sort you describe. Windows updates don't delete or move my files.
Your problems would not be solved by spending a lot of money.
Bill