Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
mp3 questions
Topic Started: Feb 17 2010, 11:56 AM (368 Views)
Kincaid
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
Anyone have any recommendations for mp3 players and where to get music from other than iTunes?

1. Daughter #1's 2G iPod cost $30-40 used. Now it went thru the wash. It didn't work for awhile, but now it seems okay. Who knows how long it will last?

2. Daughter #2's 2G iPod cost $70 used. It stopped working unless the charger is plugged in. Repair seems to be questionable and would cost $30 or more.

3. My iPod Video works fine, but I don't like iTunes. Not only did I download some mp3's from Amazon, some of which work and other that don't, iTunes is confusing.

I used ipodrip.com in the past and it worked okay.

I'd like a website that was simple to use, where I could rip my CD's and put them onto the iPod, where I could back up everything onto my external hard drive and where I could easily stick whatever songs we want on to any particular iPod/mp3 player. I'd also like to replace the girl's iPod's with mp3 players as needed.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Aqua Letifer
Member Avatar
ZOOOOOM!
I like SanDisk's mp3 players, personally. They specialize in flash memory and portable storage devices, and so all of the ones I've bought from them have lasted a very long time, and have been put through a lot of abuse. Plus they're not too expensive. (Also, they don't directly oppose open source firmware. :thumb: )

As for where to get music... darknet file sharing is your friend! I strongly suggest amazon.com's DRM-free digital music library.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Radu
Member Avatar
Senior Carp
Kincaid
Feb 17 2010, 11:56 AM
I'd like a website that was simple to use, where I could rip my CD's and put them onto the iPod, where I could back up everything onto my external hard drive and where I could easily stick whatever songs we want on to any particular iPod/mp3 player. I'd also like to replace the girl's iPod's with mp3 players as needed.
You don't need a site to rip your CDs. You can rip all your CDs using Real Player or Windows Media Player (or Nero if you care to pay). You can also check the site www.giveawayoftheday.com - they give each day a free software package, most of them converters / rippers. Real Player, WMP and Nero can check (on the web) and identify the tracks you are ripping.
Posted Image
------------------------------------------------------------
"Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!"
The modern media has made cretins out of so many people that they're not interested in reality any more, unless it's reality TV (Jean D'eaux)
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1hp
Member Avatar
Fulla-Carp

I have an old iRiver H320 (20MByte internal disk drive which I have replaced once). It works well. Connect to a computer and it looks like another disk drive. All my music is sorted by folder (author name), then album name. No syncing with iTunes or anything else. I maintain a mirror backup on my server in case I loose the drive again. My kids also pull from the server backup. Haven't looked at the newer iRiver offerings, not anyone elses. I can only tell you that I won't buy an mp3 player that needs to be sync'd to anything. I would probably look at flash based drives next time, though 8GB seems a little light on storage.

Oh yeah - I use AudioGrabber to rip my CD's to mp3. Audiograbber download from Cnet
Edited by 1hp, Feb 17 2010, 07:32 PM.
There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those that understand binary and................
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
dolmansaxlil
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
I have two iPods, and I don't use iTunes.
I use MediaMonkey. I like it because:
1) for a large music collection (anything larger than your mp3 player holds) it's easier to manage than iTunes. When I was using iTunes (and it's been a couple years, so this may have changed) it was very time consuming to choose which songs to put on the player. With MM, I can choose specific playlists, albums, artist, genres, etc, very easily. It's also very easy to create separate profiles for different players.

2) I can keep the database on my external harddrive so my music is more portable. Again, this may have changed in iTunes over time, but when I was using it you didn't have that option. I can plug my portable drive into any of the three computers I use and have the exact same database available. I like that.

3) it supports a gazillion different players. So if you still had an iPod, but you got one of the girls a different brand of player, you can still use MediaMonkey

4) iTunes does a lot of weird quirky things as far as not fully updating information when you edit it. So if you even transfer your music to another program, you'll lose some of the information that should have been included in the file. It's possible MediaMonkey does this as well, but it keeps a lot of things iTunes didn't, in my experience.

I know most people love iTunes. And I did, too, until my library got too big for my mp3 player and I wanted to be able to listen to my music at work.
"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

My Flickr Photostream


Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
JoeB
Member Avatar
Senior Carp
Even though I use iTunes for loading my iPod, I use CDEX for the original ripping and storing of CD music. CDEX is free (GPL) and doesn't do wierd things. See it at CDEX
"There are many ingredients in the stew of annoyance." - Bucky Katt
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Kincaid
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
Cool! Thanks for all the input, everyone.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Kincaid
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
I picked up the iPod from the repair guy and so far so good. In fact, he screwed up the LCD screen slightly (it has some lines across the top) but it is still completely readable. He knocked the price down to $20 because of the screen issue. However, it's working great.

Then I downloaded Media Monkey and messed around with it some, but was not able to get it to what I want it to do yet. We have five iPods in the family, so I'm trying to keep a repository of all the songs and then do separate playlists for everyone. At one point I was able to get the 12 songs on my computer onto one of the iPods with the other 316 songs I have on iTunes. Then, in trying to get them where I wanted them I duplicated everything by mistake, so I had loaded the iPod with 650+ songs. Rather than go thru it and delete half the songs one by one, I wiped it clean. But then I was only able to reload the 12 songs. So, then I had two songs on one iPod and 12 songs on the other. Everytime I would plug one in it would give me an error message, saying it was looking for the other iPod and it would not let me do what I wanted. Then I figured out I could load a few add'l songs onto one of them, but the bulk of the other songs won't go. I see that some of them have a different "path" and I am getting error messages now.

Between this and iTunes, I am pretty dang frustrated. I was also knocking around on iTunes and I can't even figure out how to get the stupid library to come up! I can't find anything to click on. What is wrong with programmers that can't make things intuitive and simple? Do geeks like complexity for geeks' sake? I wish I'd never contributed to Apple's bottom line.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
schindler
Member Avatar
Fulla-Carp
Get Linux - all I have to do on Rhythmbox (Ubuntu version of iTunes player) is drag the files over to the ipod. It takes three seconds. Of course, I never buy anything from iTunes, which helps.
We're all mad here!
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
NAK
Member Avatar
Senior Carp
Radu
Feb 17 2010, 02:06 PM
You can rip all your CDs using Real Player or Windows Media Player (or Nero if you care to pay).
:darthno:

If you want accurate rips, ditch Windows Media Player. The error correction stinks, and you'll run into tagging problems later on. I used to use it for all my ripping, and noticed that whenever I tried to manually update some aspects of the ID3 tag, it would later revert to the tag it was given when it was ripped using WMP. I haven't tried Real Player, and only use Nero for DVD burning, so I can't speak for either of those, but if you want complete control over your audio files, use Exact Audio Copy. It's very customizable and has excellent error correction, even on badly scratched CDs. It can rip to several audio formats, and you have complete control over the ID3 tags it puts on your files. Best of all, it's FREE! :D

Kincaid
 
At one point I was able to get the 12 songs on my computer onto one of the iPods with the other 316 songs I have on iTunes. Then, in trying to get them where I wanted them I duplicated everything by mistake, so I had loaded the iPod with 650+ songs. Rather than go thru it and delete half the songs one by one, I wiped it clean. But then I was only able to reload the 12 songs. So, then I had two songs on one iPod and 12 songs on the other. Everytime I would plug one in it would give me an error message, saying it was looking for the other iPod and it would not let me do what I wanted. Then I figured out I could load a few add'l songs onto one of them, but the bulk of the other songs won't go. I see that some of them have a different "path" and I am getting error messages now.


Sounds identical to the problems I had with my 80gb iPod not too long before it kicked the bucket. Doing a factory reset and reinstalling the software seemed to fix the sync problem, but about a week later it crashed again, wiping the library. It never worked after that, even after a few wipes/reinstalls. :veryangry:

Oh, and taking a hammer to it doesn't work, either.

Dol, I'll have to try MediaMonkey. I need a media library that can sync playlists with my phone. foobar2000 does an awesome job of organizing music, has a very simple interface, and reads just about any audio file type - everything but the kitchen sync. :(
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
musicasacra
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
Kincaid
Mar 12 2010, 01:24 PM
I was also knocking around on iTunes and I can't even figure out how to get the stupid library to come up! I can't find anything to click on. What is wrong with programmers that can't make things intuitive and simple? Do geeks like complexity for geeks' sake? I wish I'd never contributed to Apple's bottom line.
You're in iTunes and don't see the library? It's upper left. Post a screen shot if you don't see it.

Posted Image


FWIW, I find iTunes very easy to use, drag and drop. The smart and regular playlists are awesome.
I sync my iPhone, iPod, and Shuffle with it. I have over 100GB of music and video in my iTunes library.

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Kincaid
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
MS, I can't get that screen to come up. If I am remembering right, it used to be that I'd plug in my iPod and that screen automatically popped up. Not so, at least with the kid's iPods. Maybe I'll try my iPod video. I get the iTunes main page but can't find any link to get that screen to pop.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Kincaid
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
I was able to reload iTunes so now the screen automatically comes up. I then disabled the automatic syncing. I was able to load all the songs onto all the iPods using iTunes. Then I used Media Monkey to delete the songs I didn't want in each individual iPod. I still haven't figured out how to do playlists but maybe I don't have to (except I'd like to keep my 30GB iPod video as a repository of all the families songs, but don't want to have to cycle thru all of them to listen to what I want (I like to use the shuffle feature). Finally, I need to back this stuff up onto my computer and onto my external hard drive.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
« Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic »
Add Reply