930 Forums
=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: brennser on December 05, 2003, 03:38:00 pm
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Ok, so I have a new pc and am just wondering what CD burning / ripping software people out there like to use. I've been using Musicmatch for 4 or 5 years now but am curious if there are other, better alternatives.
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Originally posted by brennser:
Ok, so I have a new pc and am just wondering what CD burning / ripping software people out there like to use. I've been using Musicmatch for 4 or 5 years now but am curious if there are other, better alternatives.
itunes for the pc
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I hate hate hate music match. I use Itunes now, but before that came out for pc I used a program called dBPowerAMP Music Converter. Get it here (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm) .
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chaz, I have a friend who has an ipod and uses musicmatch on his p.c. He doesn't know what changing to iTunes might offer. Can you explain to me the benefits?
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itunes is much easier to manage than Musicmatch, and the sound quality is far superior. It's also freeware.
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itunes also lets you listen to the radio...
Woxy
Virgin
Kexp
are all there.
Plus it works really well with the ipod.......
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How is the sound quality better? And is there more/better functionality? I've heard the "easier to manage" phrase, but how is Musicmatch hard to manage?
(I'm not arguing or disbelieving -- looking for the reasoning to pass on).
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Plus it works really well with the ipod.......
but does it work with other mp3 players....sacrilege I know markie
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I use Acoustica MP3 Audio Mixer (http://www.acoustica.com/mp3-audio-mixer/index.htm) to mix the tunes (I can't thank Kosmo enough for this software tip!!!). It allows me to fade tracks, adjust volumes and play tidbits in the middle of songs.
And Roxio Easy CD Creator to burn the mixes, although Acoustica makes burning software that plugs into the mixer, I've never bought it because I have great success with Roxio. Roxio makes the burning software that most Media Libraries use, including Napster and WIndows Media Player. I'm not sure about Real Audio or MusicMatch though. Roxio allows me to track at once as well, which is required when fading between tunes. They also have a Disc copier that I use when copying one CD to another.
If I'm just copying a CD track for track out of my digital library I use Windows Media player 9.0 because it's simple.
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Originally posted by brennser:
Plus it works really well with the ipod.......
but does it work with other mp3 players [/b]
there are other Mp3 players?
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there are many that say that
Exact Audio Copy (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/) is the only way to go for PCs for ripping. Besure to use the LAME encoder for creating MP3.
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Originally posted by vansmack:
It allows me to fade tracks, adjust volumes
itunes lets you fade tracks and automatically adjusts the volume, if you wish.
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Originally posted by mark e smith:
Originally posted by brennser:
Plus it works really well with the ipod.......
but does it work with other mp3 players [/b]
there are other Mp3 players? [/b]
<img src="http://pages.prodigy.net/indianahawkeye/newpage17/19.gif" alt=" - " />
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Originally posted by mark e smith:
Originally posted by vansmack:
It allows me to fade tracks, adjust volumes
itunes lets you fade tracks and automatically adjusts the volume, if you wish. [/b]
for the purposes of burning? acoustica is like jam for osx, it allows you to create a sequence in order to burn cds. i use to create seamless mixes. i'd being using the acoustica sw but all off my windoze boxes are too old to take full advantage of it. jam is a mighty fine piece of sw though...
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Originally posted by brennser:
Ok, so I have a new pc and am just wondering what CD burning / ripping software people out there like to use. I've been using Musicmatch for 4 or 5 years now but am curious if there are other, better alternatives.
Two words: Golden Hawk (http://www.goldenhawk.com/). Everything else is a toy.
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looking for an appropriate smilie response, and all I can find is that twat, Mankie.
<img src="http://www.click-smilies.de/sammlung0903/musik/music-smiley-021.gif" alt=" - " />
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Originally posted by Bagster:
chaz, I have a friend who has an ipod and uses musicmatch on his p.c. He doesn't know what changing to iTunes might offer. Can you explain to me the benefits?
Pretty much ditto what most folks have said, although I never really used music match for my ipod. I've always hated it so becuase it was just so un-intuitive and bloated. Before itunes came along i used ephpod which was also quite good, but i couldn't use it to rip tracks.
One benefit that I don't think anyone's mentioned of itunes over mm is aac support. With itunes you can rip tracks into aac files which is supposedly better compression resulting in higher quality files.
Mostly though itunes is just so easy to use and mm always seemed to be a struggle for me to figure out. After all, itunes was written with the ipod in mind and mm is just a generic player/organizer with and ipod plug-in.
my main reasons to switch would be
</font>- <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">ease of use</font></li>
- <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">aac support</font></li>
- <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">replaces a few different programs</font></li>
<font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">
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Originally posted by mark e smith:
looking for an appropriate smilie response, and all I can find is that twat, Mankie.
<img src="http://www.click-smilies.de/sammlung0903/musik/music-smiley-021.gif" alt=" - " />
If yer bored Mankie, you can dream about your new laptop (http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/fr3000.htm) .
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Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
for the purposes of burning?
You hit it right on the head Kosmo.
Brennser asked about burning and ripping software and everybody posted about what software they use to listen to digital music and transfer files to and from their Ipods.
Brennser, if you just want to put 80 minutes of music on a CD use what you're comfortable with because the features of each are pretty much the same.
Look for the ability to track-at-once to take the two second gap out between songs (not available on all) and which software interface you're most familiar with.
For ripping, decide on file type first then choose the appropriate software. If you want aac use Itunes, if you want WMA use Windows Media Player 9.0, if you want MP3, use MusicMatch or RealOne Jukebox or the CD Ripppers suggested by other users. Just make sure that your devices support the file type you choose.
Lastly, if you're bored with just picking 80 minutes of music and putting that on a CD, try your hand at mixing with Acoustica and you'll never look back at making random mixes without a lot of thought between songs and looking for that perfect fade.
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Originally posted by vansmack:
if you want MP3, use MusicMatch or RealOne Jukebox
I use itunes and rip o MP3s, not AAC. Mp3s are good because they are compatible with with just about everyone and everything else.
the beauty of itunes/ipod/istore is that it is a well worked out integrated solution. It can Rip and burn and so much more.
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Originally posted by vansmack:
You hit it right on the head Kosmo.
Brennser asked about burning and ripping software and everybody posted about what software they use to listen to digital music and transfer files to and from their Ipods.
I use Itunes to rip and burn on a regular basis thank you very much
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Originally posted by pollard:
I use Itunes to rip and burn on a regular basis thank you very much
I wasn't referring to you, jadetree, and you're welcome.
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Originally posted by mark e smith:
....Mp3s are good because they are compatible with with just about everyone and everything else.
the beauty of itunes/ipod/istore is that it is a well worked out integrated solution. It can Rip and burn and so much more.
So much more if you can use aac, yet Mp3's "are good because they are compatible with with just about everyone and everything else." Sounds like something I've said before.
I'm not knocking Itunes by suggesting to Brennser that he take a look at the different software available. I'm just saying that they all do about the same for ripping and burning and that he should use whatever he's familiar with.
Now, when he wants a conversation about buying digital music, you and I can debate the "and so much more" part of your statement. Until then, help the guy and tell him that Itunes is not much different featurewise for Ripping/burning than anyother Ripping/Burning software, except that the user interface is different.
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i had to buy roxio toast because osx didn't recognize my sony burner natively... and sony didn't see fit to provide the sw to run it under osx. itunes for osx is the defacto sw of choice seeing there aren't any real competitors since people perfer to develope for the windows due to the larger market share. as far as i know itunes still doesn't offer LAME encoding built in and you need a third party script to use it. itunes is getting better by adding error correction.
as mentioned before exact audio copy is the sw of choice to rip and create mp3s under windows.
here's a challenge for all you mac yes people, have any tests been done on which sounds better aac verses mp3? i'm to lazy to find out and think those touting aac are doing so only because the file size is smaller.
one doesn't need jam or acoustic to burn discs, it's just a nice to have if you want to make mix discs, or your a band sequencing a record.
don't know which burning sw is tops in windoze land... but stay away from b's gold.
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if you're ripping to .wav, you don't want to use any other program besides exact audio copy for DAE.
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de)
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thanks for such a plethora of good information - I will check out some of the programs - but I do still want to know if itunes is compatible with transferring music to non-ipod mp3 players - right now I have an ancient 64mb rio that I still use and I know musicmatch supports that and in the near future I may be getting a new one
the ability to download music from these new stores is of little interest to me - time will tell but for now I'm still a CD buyer
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Originally posted by brennser:
thanks for such a plethora of good information - I will check out some of the programs - but I do still want to know if itunes is compatible with transferring music to non-ipod mp3 players - right now I have an ancient 64mb rio that I still use and I know musicmatch supports that and in the near future I may be getting a new one
the ability to download music from these new stores is of little interest to me - time will tell but for now I'm still a CD buyer
It's not so much the player as much as the file type you choose to create from your CD.
Mp3 files created with iTunes will play on your your old school Mp3 player, but do not copy as slickly as an iPod. Instead of one button iPod synching, you have to copy files from your music folder to your Mp3 player transfer folder (I used Philips-Nike Mp3 player in my test).
AAC files will not play on your old school player so be sure to rip your songs as Mp3s.
After giving iTunes a through go through this weekend, I've discovered that iTunes still does not support WMA so it useless for my collection which is primarily WMA for less file size, same quailty and compatability with ALL of my devices (laptop, desktop, handheld, mp3 player and most importantly, TiVo).