MediaMonkey or Songbird?

SanDisk MP3 players Sansa® Fuze™
1

Well i decided to explore other media players to play my music and to transfer music to my Fuze.

So what would be the best choice?

I want:

A player that supports and transfers album art

A player that rips and transfers FLAC files

A player that has a easy to use UI

Pretty much those are my 3 requirements lol

2

Last I checked (a few weeks ago) the current Songbird doesn’t support generic USB transfers.

Media Monkey or Foobar should cover  your list.  Foobar requires a free plugin for loading players (foo_sendtodevice)

On “easy to use” one or the other could win depending on what you’re used to.

Foobar is prety much a “send to device” , where media monkey is more of a synchronization which I think will remove songs from the player if they are removed from the sync’d playlist and perhaps deleting on the player results in deletion on your computer as well.  I’m clearly more familiar with Foobar.

3

/Other side of coin/

I like MM alot. Does everything you want it to do, and is really nice for finding missing tags and for mass tagging stuff.

I think it’s very easy and user friendly once you get used to it.

Bottom line, try 'em both. Can’t hurt. :wink: (Try MM first hehehe)

4

@donp wrote:

Last I checked (a few weeks ago) the current Songbird doesn’t support generic USB transfers.

 

Media Monkey or Foobar should cover  your list.  Foobar requires a free plugin for loading players (foo_sendtodevice)

 

On “easy to use” one or the other could win depending on what you’re used to.

 

Foobar is prety much a “send to device” , where media monkey is more of a synchronization which I think will remove songs from the player if they are removed from the sync’d playlist and perhaps deleting on the player results in deletion on your computer as well.  I’m clearly more familiar with Foobar.

 

 

 

 

 

MediaMonkey can be used as a “send to device” manager also, and it has a podcast catcher as well. There is a lot to it though…if someone is trying it for the first time I would definitely recommend the help menus. It’s not the easiest thing to jump into.  It will rip and transfer FLAC, and the “auto-tag from Web” can be handy.

5

I’d add Winamp to the list.  Winamp and MM are fairly close in features.  I use both, but prefer Winamp’s UI for every day use.  However, MM has more “power user” oriented features that I also find very valuble.

Foobar is a excellent and highly customizable player, but Winamp and MM are more full-blown media managers.  

6

I actually use mM with WinAMP embedded as the player. Another cool MM feature.

7

MM for me. Looked for the same thing when i bought my fuze a few months ago, and stopped looking once I figured my way around Media Monkey. Am considering buying the Gold version presently.

8

Amarok. You can directly drag and drop from the playlist (or anywhere else) to the device to copy files over. The interface is simliar to iTunes but a million times more intuitive for us advanced users. It doesn’t rip though (there is probably a plugin), it’s purely a music player. I use KAudioCreator to rip with, which is little more than a front end to various encoders and rippers. With newer versions of kioslave, it’s possible to pop a CD in, and browse the CD like any data CD holding MP3’s, OGGs, FLACs, whatever you have support for. The ripping and encoding is done on-the-fly in leiu of an actual file copy. Beat that, Windows!

Too bad that’s all Linux-only*. I feel sorry for you Windows people. On the occasion that I’m stuck in Windows I use Foobar2000. The interface can be hacked at until it looks, feels, and (mostly) acts like Amarok (or any other player out there), so it works for me. It’s freeware. I wish I had known about it earlier, before I was corrupted by WinAmp.

* KDE and all of it’s stuff (Amarok included) HAS been ported to Windows, but if I can’t get it to run, I don’t expect anyone else to.

9

@skinjob wrote:

I’d add Winamp to the list.   Winamp and MM are fairly close in features.  I use both, but prefer Winamp’s UI for every day use.   However, MM has more “power user” oriented features that I also find very valuble.

 

Foobar is a excellent and highly customizable player, but Winamp and MM are more full-blown media managers.  

Completely agreed.  For some reason, I really like WinAmp and can’t stand MM at all.  Go figure…

10

I love Media Monkey.  I use sync, and you can set it to warn you if there are any tracks on the player that are no longer in the library.  So if you were worried about that (as mentioned by someone in the thread) you don’t need to.

I have my internal fuze memory synced to match my clip and I use my clip when I’m out of the house and the fuze when I’m in it.  It’s useful because I put a LOT of time into deciding which songs to put on the clip (had all but the 1gb version), so when I got my fuze it was easy to get it to mirror my clip.

It’s also really really easy to make playlists, which is good because I like to use them.  I also like how easy it is to get MM to find the CORRECT artwork online (having used itunes, I know how easy it is to end up with something totally random because my music is not usually very mainstream and/or is unreleased).

I don’t have the gold version, but I’m considering it as it allows you to automatically re-encode your files as they are synced.  So theoretically you could rip all your cds in flac then have them sync to your device as mp3 etc.

I can’t really rate it against any of the other options as I used drag and drop before MM.  

11

@summerlove wrote:

I don’t have the gold version, but I’m considering it as it allows you to automatically re-encode your files as they are synced.  So theoretically you could rip all your cds in flac then have them sync to your device as mp3 etc.

 Same deal with Winamp.  You need the Pro version to encode MP3, but all other encoders (Ogg, FLAC, etc.) are inclued in the free version.

12

Take it for what it’s worth (great song btw…:smileyvery-happy: ) but I have both MM AND Winamp on all my machines… I rarely use MM, but I use Winamp daily. (I use pro just to have the mp3 option, if I need it when I’m working within Winamp)

It does almost everything well.  I have no major issues with the software at all…:smiley: