Looking for MP3 playing program featuring easy track/artist selection

virgo17

Can anyone suggest a program that fills the following needs?

My soundcard is connected to my HiFi and works very well. I normally use Winamp with a crossfading plug-in which works very well indeed. My wife would like to play music via the same system but has a problem selecting the exact tracks and artists that she likes. Now I know Winamp has a media library which will read all my mp3 tracks and attempt to categorise them for easy playing.

However, can anyone suggest any other mp3 playing program within which I can set up a type of database which in turn has an easy display making it simple for a non techie to pick albums or individual artist tracks to play.

Thanks.

V.

scotty

I am not aware of anything with a simpler database type interface than Winamp. Perhaps you do not have the ID3 tags set up suitably. I use a program CDEX to convert cds to MP3. It can access an on-line database to acquire track information and set up ID3 tags with info on artist, album and title. This leads to a easy to use arrangement.

niceguyrichy

Windows Media Player 11 catalogues everything really well
pick an album or song from the list, easy as that.

freeware wise, MediaMonkey organises music files really well, and has a decent layout.

Quincy_3

Not sure if re tagging in someway may help http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

Bob63

Use iTunes and setup playlists. Very nice.

Or use Musicmatch Jukebox. I have the "plus" version which is worth every penny I paid for it.

Mike

kinesin_2

As suggested already get Itunes.

It free and it's easy to use/import your current music collection. I even use mine to rip all my MP3 as it just seems to be really good/automated - just make sure you switch the ripping options from ACC to mp3 in the options menu if you want your music to playable everywhere.

virgo17

kinesin wrote:

As suggested already get Itunes.

Thanks to everyone for their advice.

My collection is well ID3 tagged and I have always used EAC in combination with the Lame encoder to produce good quality VBR mp3 files. Finished of with a little bit of mp3gain to ensure levels are fairly even for streaming.

I have downloaded iTunes and it seems quite good. The only part I am not happy with is the 'Sound Check' normaliser which I had incorrectly assumed would write some sort of reference database and apply the settings when a particular tune was played. Instead, I find that it actually modifies the mp3's themselves, less efficiently than mp3gain. I have now turned this off and replaced the modified files from my backups.

V.

Aiadi

virgo17 wrote:

The only part I am not happy with is the 'Sound Check' normaliser which I had incorrectly assumed would write some sort of reference database and apply the settings when a particular tune was played. Instead, I find that it actually modifies the mp3's themselves,
V.

Does it really modify the MP3 ??? How does it do that ? and does it mean that if I just tick the box in the preferences and click OK, then I have ruined my MP3 files. Most importantly is there anything else that uploading the files to iTunes would change in the original file itself ?????????????????????????

sra

When you add album art to Itunes it is stored withing the file.

The same with 'Sound Check'. But with the size of these modifications compared to the size of your average mp3, it's really insignificant.

I believe it's the case that these are just appended to the file - it's not a case that the whole file has to be re-encoded and you're going to lose any quality.

A lot of the things Itunes add to a file can only be read by Itunes.

I was looking for a way to remove the podcast tag from a file so it would just show in my library rather than cluttering up my podcast area. I found the only way to remove it was to tell Itunes to convert the tags to ID1.0 then drag it out and drag it in again - No ID3 tag editor could find or modify the Itunes tags

Aiadi

Yes I like adding the Artworks to the files (many thanks sra for that tip) but changing the volume or sound quality is a different story. It is reassuring however to know that they don't actually modify the file (took me ages to rip my CDs using EAC and LAME).

sra

A while back i did some calculations on Artwork when I was deciding if I wanted to take it seriously and have it on all my songs.

Can't remember the calculations now, and artwork size varies, but i think your increasing the size of song only a small fraction of 1% with hundreds of bits of artwork taking up the space of a single song.