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Feel let down by your audio software choice?

4 years ago when I started ripping my CD collection to a bunch of WAV files onto my hard drives, I researched the options carefully. I chose MusicMatch, which at the time was consistently one of the best-rated jukebox software. Indeed, I find it continues to organize my collection well, and I love the Audio DJ feature.

Unfortunately, MusicMatch is no longer supported. Supposedly it's going to be integrated with Yahoo's product (which I find much inferior). The alternative, iTunes, I use on my Mac but it, too, lacks some of the features that I would want in a music management software.

And, of course, now I have WAV files that MusicMatch organizes well, but iTunes has a limited ability to read the metadata (tags) in those files, which make them difficult to port over to iTunes. To complicate matters, Slim Devices Squeezebox does not support MusicMatch.

What I really want is a product that allows for easy management of large amount of (potentially uncompressed) music data, that can have pieces of that full collection selectively (and automatically) exported to different "libraries" in a compressed format for synchronization with one or more portable players. Is it that hard for the industry to see that there's a niche for that kind of product?

I just feel let down by the leading software in music management.

Michael
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herman
2,244 posts
 
The reason iTunes can't read the wav tags is that there is no such thing as a wav tag. If there is more information about the song being displayed by your program then it is stored somewhere other than a tag that is part of the wav file.

If you have notes or pictures or other info it has to be in another file that is managed by your program. That's why iTunes can't access it.

It seems unlikely you will find a program that can read and import all the "tag" info that your program has stored unless your program has the ability to export the library in some standard format.

I believe iTunes could do what you want with the compressed files as long you are using iPods. I don't think it supports other players. I'm sure other programs can produce MP3 files but iTunes is what I use so I don't know much about the other ones.
cytocycle
1,043 posts
 
if you need windows software.. Media Monkey Gold and it can sync to Ipods (and pull songs off!) It can play FLAC files and tag them, it can rip also.
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sufentanil OP
782 posts
 
Various programs (MusicMatch included) have ways of tagging WAV files, but they're inconsistent and not well standardized.

Funny someone should mention Media Monkey. I've played around with about 6 "lesser known" applications, and so far Media Monkey is my favorite. I'm going to be using it to reorganize my collection into FLAC files on my Linux server, so that a Squeezebox can subsequently use those files.

Even though Media Monkey seems closer to the ideal than some of the other choices, I still feel that we still have a ways to go in terms of audio file management software. What I want is an application that will do for audio files what Aperture does for digital photographs.

Michael
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