westslope wrote: 
Playing randomly indeed works better with some albums, and not so much with others. Some tracks might overlap, or for instance you land on a piece of classical music that follows a long build-up...

One of my favourite (random) criteria I set is to not repeat (at least for two years), unless, etc., etc.

Some albums I love to hear in order as well, from start to finish.

Just a note on personal preferences with regards to random play lists.  Think of it as completely tangent to the thread.

I am not a big fan of random play lists.  I either prefer DJ determined play lists, i.e., radio paradise.  

Or I prefer to listen to albums/CDs from beginning to end.  Always have.  Long before Steven Wilson talked up the album concept in more recent times.  It can be prog rock, heavy rock, country, folk, new world, classical, jazz, folkloric, from beginning to end is my preference.

That said, lots of people do like randomly, sometimes criteria-shaped play lists and clearly flash drives will play the next song faster.  Though, when listening to a sequence of music where one song is very different from another, I certainly prefer a longer pause.  

 

Thank you RichardPrins and kurster for most useful posts.  I am currently trying to get Exact Audio Copy to work and will check out Media Monkey shortly.

I re-checked the specifications for audio playback on the JVC KW-NT1 GPS/Receiver.  It will play WMV files on a CD, not other media such as a USB flash drive.  

I reckon that in the boxy 4X4, 320 kbps CR MP3 files are more than enough.   Though I can easily notice the difference between 128 kbps MP3 and 320.  192 kbps is still noticeably inferior to 320 kbps.   I could burn WAV files to a CD but CDs take up so much space compared to a 'thumb drive'.

Playing music from a USB thumb/flash drive is so convenient!  This 4X4 SUV does go off-road, sometimes into places that could induce nausea, so keeping the cabin clean and uncluttered is helpful.  Otherwise, either stuff goes flying around or it takes a long time to search music among a dozen jewel cases stuffed in the centre console storage.
Incidentally, I do notice the difference between FLAC files and mp3 files if I sit down in front of the 2.1 Home theatre sound system.  Also if I notice the difference if wearing headphones with the volume turned up.  And I do like all the meta data that FLAC files can store.  

Learn something every day.

 kurtster wrote:
You could keep them in the same folder. I have some songs both as mp3 and flac. I edit flacs directly with Audacity.

The way they end up (auto-organized) on the network disk is something like:

Z:/Music/A/Aphex Twin/Some album

with the various files in various formats in that folder. If I need to fill a USB stick or a device I can tell it to fill 16GB worth of only mp3s that are rated 4 or higher and that exclude the genre Xmas, etc.

 number7 wrote: 
Yeah, I liked Music Match back in the day.  Still have the program and key stashed away.  Its from back in 2003.  Also have Winamp 2.8 stashed and active on one computer.  also have the final version of Winamp downloaded and stashed away for safe keeping.

But for now foobar 2000 is my preferred playback.  That can be subject to change. 

 RichardPrins wrote: 
Ok, getting something like this is why I am also ripping flac files.  The wav are for archive and editing and burning purposes.  I'm torn between leaving the flac and the wav files in the same folder, cuz that is the way db rips them.  So far though, I'm moving them from the rip dump to the final folders separating them into a flac folder and a wav folder.  Seems like that would still be the best way to proceed, although it requires a little more work.

Greetings all.
I use AIMP3 to listen to RP & use ACC 128. It works very well, is small & sounds great. Plus, I like the Analog Meter.

For my organizer, ripper & all round player I use Media Monkey Pro. It is inexpensive it works & sounds great with lots of nice extra features.
I have 200,000 plus tunes (more than I will ever listen too) and it doesn't bog down.
Been using it for years after we lost Music Match to Yahoo. They ruined the best player out there for the time.
I have tried many many players over the years & have settled on these two for some time now.
Cheers.

 kurtster wrote: 
It's a pretty advanced librarian, etc. with numerous additional plugins written by people. Get somewhat familiar with the (hundreds of) settings before you let it lose on your music collection. It can auto-organize albums cleverly, but with the wrong options you could end up losing stuff.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
That is most cool.  I'll have to give it a look see.

 kurtster wrote: 
Yes.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
Interesting.  I play from network storage as well.  MediaMonkey is highly regarded.  So does it display what the next 20 songs will be in advance ?

 kurtster wrote: 
I use that as well, mostly for large sets of conversions.

PS: MediaMonkey, when playing (pseudo-)randomly via Auto-DJ, can choose the next 20 (or a different number) songs to prepare the virtual playlist. In my case all the songs come over the network from storage.

I'm using dbpoweramp for my ripping purposes and foobar 2000 as my player.  I am PC based.

I just got done going through a bunch of rippers and have settled on the dbpoweramp system.  I am at the end of my trial period and am going to buy the full version as I think it is worth every penny.  My primary file is wav.  What is cool about db is that not only is it a quality ripper, you can also rip in multiple formats in one operation.  I am ripping both wav and flac currently and could add mp3 to that process if I desired, ripping in three formats simultaneously.  Low resource usage, it just takes up about another 200 meg of RAM while running.  The reason I'm ripping in flac besides wav is for the meta data.  Wav does not provide for the attachment of meta data to the file.

On using a USB flash drive for playback, by all means especially if you do random playback.  Random playback is very hard on a conventional HDD.  The drive must suddenly move to a new file every time a new song is played.  A solid state drive like a USB does not operate mechanically, so there are no problems or physical wear and tear on this type of drive.  For playing playlists, not a big deal as the drive knows where it is going next and will basically throw everything into your RAM way before it gets to the songs.  I use USB flash drives in my car deck loaded with either wav or mp3 files.  

I used EAC for awhile and found db to be far superior.  I am re ripping all my EAC rips, I think that it is that much better.

 westslope wrote:
I am not sure, but I tend to rip a batch of CDs using EAC, which can encode FLAC, then use MP3Tag to make sure all the info is correct, and finally import all the resulting folders/files into MediaMonkey.

Thanks again.

The free version of MediaMonkey has a 30-day limit on MP3 ripping if I understand correctly.  I guess I could use it in conjunction with a free MP3 ripper.

Re: FLAC files from a CD

Got it.  I believe it is relatively easy to convert a FLAC file to an MP3 files.  You are correct to suggest that storage media is inexpensive and increasingly so.

Will the free version of MediaMonkey rip flac files from an audio CD?

 westslope wrote: 
Yes, I do, but you can do just fine with the regular version. The Gold version has the auto-playlists which allows for clever (random) playlists and advanced device syncing.

The point of the FLAC is that it is lossless, as opposed to mp3s, which are lossy (i.e. they chop parts of the audio spectrum in order to achieve a higher level of compression). As such, with FLAC you lose nothing from the CD, and can reproduce the original audio from the CD if needed. Not just for Audio CDs, but also higher quality media such as SACD or 24bit/96K, etc.

You might not necessarily hear the difference compared to the high quality mp3, but it is there nevertheless. All the bits are kept with FLAC.

It is similar to saving images in JPG (lossy compression) or in PNG (lossless compression) formats. In some cases, you might not see the difference either...

 RichardPrins wrote: 
Thanks Richard.  Do you use the Gold Version of MediaMonkey?

I have downloaded a few FLAC files and frankly do not notice the difference in sound quality from a CD or a 320 kbps MP3 file, probably due to the equipment I am using to listen.

I generally tend to buy music as audio CDs.  Is there any point in ripping a FLAC file from an audio CD?

I use MediaMonkey as my player/library organizer.

As for formats, with the lower cost of storage devices, I increasingly store/rip my files in the FLAC format (aside from mp3 for favourites to be played on devices that don't support FLAC).

I am reviewing/rethinking music medium and players choices and thought Bill G and RP fans might have some suggestions.

Right now I am listening to RP on New: 192k Ogg Vorbis (with song title data) via VLC Player on Windows 8.1 PC workstation.   It sounds great on VLC Player and the artist name and song title do appear.  iTunes won't play it. 

The vehicle sports a JVC GPS/receiver and I currently play 320 kbps MP3 files copied to a USB thumb drive.  Works fine.  But instead of ripping MP3 files from audio CDs is there a better format for carrying music on USB flash drives or CDs?  I gather that many believe MP3 is an archaic format.  

For ripping CDs and listening to music from the hard drive, I still use iTunes and wonder if there is a better music player out there.  In the past I have used WinAmp and I also concurrently use VLC player but find VLC player somewhat limited for organizing artists and songs.  Suggestions?

I am not married to iTunes at all.  Frankly we do not own any Apple devices.  But the last time I looked — admittedly a while back — iTunes came across as the better music player/organizer/ripper.  iTunes, to its credit, is currently much more stable and less clunky that previous incarnations.

Any and all suggestions would be appreciated.

-Erik