Winamp vs Media Monkey

Hi,

I want to use MSC with my Fuze so which application you recommend Winamp or Media Monkey

Thanks

If you are going to use MSC mode, you really don’t need either. With MSC you just drag & drop your music files from your computer to your FUZE’s Music folder.

Now if you want to use Winamp vs. Media Monkey for ripping CD’s to your hard drive, that’s a different subject. You can’t use the FREE version of Winamp to rip; you only get that feature in the paid version.

I only use Winamp for creating working (.m3u) playlists for my e280v2 unit (same as FUZE). It does a great job for me, and there wasn’t much of a learning curve to it.

I checked out Media Monkey before I found Winamp. I don’t know if it’s because it has too many options or what, but I found it confusing & cumbersome to use. If I can’t figure out how to use something (even just basically) within a few minutes, I move on to something else figuring there’s got to be a better way.

There is, however 1 feature I found I liked on Media Monkey, so I kept it on my computer for that 1 thing only. It will create a ‘report’ (a listing, if you will) of all your Artists, Albums, Titles, etc. and also convert it to an EXCEL .xls file. This way I not only have a back-up of my music files, but also a back-up ‘list’ of what’s on my player. In the case of a nuclear holocaust or other catastrophic melt-down, I’ll at least have a listing so I don’t have to remember what was on my player. Of course, this report/list has to be updated when new music is added.

Thanks, I want to create the playlist and transfer the album art with WinAmp because if I understood correctly I can still do that with WinAmp and keep the Fuze setup in MSC Mode is that correct are you still setup in MSC mode.

I keep my player in MSC mode 24/7/365. Winamp is the ONLY way I’ve found to reliably create (.m3u) playlists that work with the v2/Fuze processor. Here’s one way I use to make a playlist in Winamp.

I think though, that if you plan to use Winamp to put the songs on your player (sync) as opposed to Windows Media Player, your player has to be in MTP mode.

MSC = Drag & Drop

MTP = Synchronize computer music library with player.

As far as album art, here’s how I do it. There’s also a video on the Sansa support site showing how to (getting the pictures with Google Images). I manually add the album art to the album folder (MSC mode). I’ve read that Winamp will do this too, but I personally haven’t done it. I know the album art shows up in Winamp, and I think I tried finding album art a couple of times, but whatever search engine it uses to find it didn’t work very well.

There’s been a number of people complaining they cannot get album art to work on the FUZE though. Not having a FUZE myself, I can’t explain why it doesn’t seem to work for them, or what they might be doing wrong, or if it is in fact a firmware glitch. I believe I read though, that the image file should be named “folder.jpg” with the FUZE. I use “album art.jpg”. Try them both & see which works.

All I can say is this is what I do, and it works for me. Your mileage may vary. :smiley:

Message Edited by Tapeworm on 09-03-2008 05:56 PM

@tapeworm wrote:

I think though, that if you plan to use Winamp to put the songs on your player (sync) as opposed to Windows Media Player, your player has to be in MTP mode.

 

MSC = Drag & Drop

MTP = Synchronize computer music library with player.

Actually, both modes support drag and drop and syncing.  Winamp portables sync feature works great in MSC mode.  Like Tapeworm, I only use MSC mode and I use Winamp for syncing selected playlists to the Fuze.

The real difference between the two modes is DRM and support for various tools.  MTP is required for DRM protected files and because of it’s proprietary nature, has very limited tool support.  MSC is the standard used by all removable storage and thus your options for tools & utilities is virtually infinite.  MTP also has a very complex implementation that seems to be easily broken by new releases of WMP.  In general, I would say MSC is strongly preferred unless you need DRM support.

The only issue with Winamp’s sync feature in MSC mode is that is puts full paths in the playlist file.  Sansa players require the paths to be relative to the location of the playlist.  See this post for details on Winamp MSC mode syncing and the relative path issue.  The post is in the Clip forum, but it applies equally to the Fuze.

Also, in the previous build, Winamp was copying folder.jpgs automatically.  I think this might be broken or removed from the current build.  I’ll try to verify tonight when I get home.

Note that manually saving a playlist in Winamp (the method described in Tapeworm’s link) correctly uses relative paths.  It’s just synced playlists that have the full paths for some reason.  I’ve posted about it in Winamp’s forums but didn’t get any reply.

As for MediaMonkey, it’s a very powerful tool that I use occasionally for it’s advanced library management features.  However, like Tapeworm, I just don’t like the interface very much.  Winamp is much cleaner, simpler and customizable.  MM’s syncing features are similar to Winamp’s, but I believe it has the same full path issue in synced playlists.

If anyone is interested, I’m working on a VBScript to automate a lot of post-syncing related tasks.  The script does the following:

  • Replace full paths with relative paths in all m3u playlists
  • Apply MP3Gain to all files
  • Copy any missing or updated album art
  • Resize all album art to a user defined size
    The script will keep track of the last time it was run, so by default it will only process files created/modified after the last run.  The first time you run it can take a while, but subsequent runs are relatively quick.  I have a bit more work to do before it’s complete, but if it would be useful to anyone else, I’d be happy to post it.

Sounds like a useful script! Like I said in another topic, I love command line tools!

Hi,

I just want to shared that I downloaed Media Jukebox and creating a Playlist on my computer then I drag it to the Fuze and Media Jukebox copy all the songs and album art to my fuze.

Thanks