Red Chair Software

[kosmo vinyl]

Anyone used a Red Chairs products with thier MP3 Player? They sell a third party Windoze solution to transfer music files to many of the MP3 players on the market including the iPod.
 
  Red Chair Software
 
 Having all but given up the idea of finding a MP3 player capable of playing FLAC files... Which doesn't have a high failure rate, Rio Karma, or from a Korean based startup, iAudio.  I stumbled upon Red Chairs offers.  
 
 Smackie may also be interested in this product as it does on the fly conversions of FLAC, OGG, WMA files to  MP3.  So you don't need to have two formats of the same song on your hard drive.    There are loads of other features but the on the fly conversion is whats interesting me most.
 
 So now I'm considering the Dell DJ as I don't need picture, video support.  Plus hopefully Dell dosen't abandon support like some many other companies do of thier products.
 
 It's a real shame the Rio Karma has such a crappy reputation for quality, because it's got a killer feature set.  The ability to connect it to an network and transfer files to that way is really nice.  But with no support for Napster To Go in it's future it's a real nice paperweight.

[dumpkopf]

Yeah I use the anapod explorer for my iPod. It's a great set-up if you use Windows and not OSX. Basically my ipod shows a drive called anapod and drag and drop all the music I want and it auto creates playlists based on albums. And the on the fly conversions are a handy feature too.

[tenfifteen]

Red Chair is great. Used it for almost a year with my Rio Karma. When the HD on that completely shat the bed and I got a 40GB iPod, and Red Chair's "Anapod" was the first thing I bought. Phenomenally good software, and the "Xtreamer" thing rocks if you want to share at work. Shhhh...

[kosmo vinyl]

quick question then... If I transfer FLAC to MP3 can I use any bit rate I want on the MP3? i.e. 192, 256 or higher.

[tenfifteen]

Yeah, I believe you can set the conversion options, but I'd use something like Easy CD-DA to handle the conversion instead of doing them on the fly. The reason is that the converter (AudioMorph) is kinda wonky if you go VBR (and I do), as it uses this percentage slider. Might get better results out of a dedicated program.

[kosmo vinyl]

good to know... I'm interested in the Red Chair SW because of the on the fly conversions, looking to spend less time converting and then up loading stuff is what my ideal situation would be.

[vansmack]

I'm definitely going to try this out.  Thanks Kosmo!
 
 I finally broke down and got Smackette her Pink Mini for Valentines Day.  My first week with an iPod has been interesting.
 
 I must say, the inability to convert on the fly is a major downside to iTunes.  To have two copies (one WMA and one MP3) of every file she wants to transfer is a major drain of resources.  It will take months to convert our entire collection because we don't have the hard drive space to let it run on it's own.  And frankly, I'm not even sure I want to.  
 
 And the library iTunes creates - why even call it a database when all it is is a spreadsheet?  Just a vertical list of every song in columns is so not useful, so 1980's, especially for large collections like ours.  Two windows, one with the ability to list your columns like this:
 
   <img src="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/images/using/windowsmediaplayer/getstarted/wmp_org_fig01.gif" alt=" - " />
 
 And put the results in a bigger window like this:
 
   <img src="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/images/using/windowsmediaplayer/getstarted/wmp_org_fig06.gif" alt=" - " />
 
 Is much more useful.  Of course, you're married to iTunes with your iPod.  With my Napster player I can use a myriad of Song Management systems so I can choose the one that works best for me.  I'm looking forward to trying Kosmo's suggestion.  
 
 However, there are many things on the iPod I wish my Napster player had.  The ability to create playlists on the player itself is an extremely useful feature.  I would kill for that.  And the ability to customize your menus is a useful feature.
 
 iTunes recognition of songs using Gracenote is a lot better than any other CDDB I've ever used.  I had a CD with both Shins albums, Oh Inverted World and Chutes too Narrow, on one disc.  Every other library I've used didn't recognize it, but iTunes recognized it as The Shins, put every track name in, and although it didn't label each of the albums, that's a simple cut and paste, I was still very pleased.  Labeling each of the tracks would have sucked.
 
 There was something else I liked about the iPod or iTunes, but I can't remember right now.  If I think of it, I'll get back to you.

[tenfifteen]

iTunes sucketh verily, but try CTRL-B to get out of that horrible columns-only view. Also, strictly speaking, the list is based on an XML database.

[ratioci nation]

Originally posted by vansmack:
 
 
 And the library iTunes creates - why even call it a database when all it is is a spreadsheet?  Just a vertical list of every song in columns is so not useful, so 1980's, especially for large collections like ours.

you know if you click browse it is not just a single list of the songs

[ratioci nation]

Originally posted by tenfifteen:
 the list is based on an XML database.

yes and you can do whatever you want with that information (library.xml), like this for a simple thing you can do -
 
 http://mulling.net/music.asp?sort=itunes&howmany=

[vansmack]

Originally posted by tenfifteen:
  iTunes sucketh verily, but try CTRL-B to get out of that horrible columns-only view. Also, strictly speaking, the list is based on an XML database.

Yes,, I've tried browse but that just creates more columns horizontally across the screen.  I guess I should have been more clear - collapsible lists for better vision using vertical columns instead of horizontal columns.  Way too much wasted space on the column on the left.  Not enough visibility in the browse columns.  I don't need a list of my categories - I should be able to collapse that.  A collapsible list of my artists or albums would be much more useful.

[tenfifteen]

Ah, I see. Yeah, it sucks. And you're double-screwed if you use it to "organize your library." Phew. Cluster-f**k. Anapod is the only way to go for me.

[ratioci nation]

I guess I dont understand what you are trying to do that you cant do.  I have no problem organizing my library through the use of smart playlists and ratings.  Can you give me an example of something you want to do that cant be accomplished with itunes.

[tenfifteen]

Hmmm... let's see...
 
 Right-click a folder/mp3/playlist->Send To->iPod. Pretty sure iTunes doesn't do that.
 
 Convert to mp3 from [insert other format here] on the fly. iTunes == No.
 
 Browse the contents of my iPod from a Windows Explorer front-end.
 
 Browse the contents of my music library without having to create a massive XML database (in my case at over 110GB of mp3s, this is a significant issue).
 
 I could continue... whatever its graces on the Mac, iTunes for Windows is a dog.

[vansmack]

Originally posted by ratioci nation:
  I guess I dont understand what you are trying to do that you cant do.  I have no problem organizing my library through the use of smart playlists and ratings.  Can you give me an example of something you want to do that cant be accomplished with itunes.

It's not about what you can and can't do - it's about how you do it.  And having used Napster, Windows Media Player, MusicMatch, RealJukebox and a plethora of others, I was surprised at how linear the thinking was for iTunes, especially given it's popularity.  
 
 Based on user experience, it appears most people look music up in their libraries by artist, song title, or album.  So why do they get small windows in the browse section, while the playlists, predefined categories and the radio/store and the library button get an entire left side vertical column?  Yes, you can find anything you want, but why make it so difficult?  And if I extend the browse sections, now I can't see all the songs.  But I can always see those choices on the left.  Something about that doesn't make sense to me.
 
 And I'm not picking on iTunes, I'm just giving a review based on using other Media Management Software.  I could list problems I have with Napster (which I no longer use to organize my media) and others.