phuocle wrote:Hi everyone,
I've downloaded MediaMonkey last week after trying out iTunes, Jajuk, and Songbird on my Windows XP based computer.
So far I like MediaMonkey a lot, but considering that the others are free and MediaMonkey would cost money, I have some questions and concerns. I see that the community here is quite active and helpful, so perhaps you can answer some of my questions so I can make an informed decision. Thanks!
1. I have a large music collection (60,000+ tracks in 310GB MP3 format, mostly on a network drive). Realistically how well can MM handle this? So far it seems stable enough, but I've had problems with Songbird and iTunes handling that many songs over a network drive and I don't know much about the SQLite database at all to judge its effectiveness with a lot of data. iTunes stored its library in an XML file which had a tendency to get corrupted and just took a long time to work with.
MM works great with huge libraries. I am over 100k tracks and 800 gigs and its still going strong.
MM 2.x uses an access database
MM 3.x uses a SQLite database, mm3 is still in alpha testing
2. Auto-tagging - with such a massive collection, there are quite a few files that are not tagged since they were ripped back when there was no Gracenote and then the controversy with Gracenote before the emergence of FreeDB, etc. I'm looking for something to help me tag my files easily and accurately. I tried the auto-tag feature by looking up some albums on Amazon, but it doesn't seem to work that well. I'm looking for something along the lines of Applian's Replay A/V which is a product that can record streaming media but somehow "listens" to the music and figures out the right tag info for it from FreeDB or something similar. Is this possible, even with a plugin, for MM?
Unfortunately, no MM is not a 'mass tagger' in the sense that it will automagically tag your library.
MM offers powerful tools and extentions via scripts which can help YOU tag your library, but it won't tag it for you.
Tag by amazon works only on single album at a time. The freedb lookup is only for CD and does not currently work for already ripped tracks.
I recommend the musicbrainz picard QT tagger more semi-automated tagging.
3. Music Serving. I have 2 Roku Soundbridges; an M2000 and an M500. I used to use iTunes to serve my music but now I'm using Firefly Media Server since iTunes is a resource hog and unstable with such a large collection. I read in the wish list thread that having a music server be part of MM is low priority. Does that mean it won't get done at all?
Unfortunately no, MM does neither serve music nor does it act as a UPNP client. Yes it has been requested numerous times, its priority is only known to the developers and they have not (to my knowledge) commented on if/when UPNP will be implemented. I wish for it too.
Aside from these questions/concerns, I really like MM. The interface is better and not as gimmicky as Jajuk, although I prefer the Songbird's interface only slightly better than MM, but Songbird is also a resource hog.
Many apps serve different purposes.
MM's strength lies in managing huge librays and most common file types with ease.
Tools like Jaikos and musicbrainz picardQT, are more tagger oriented and not management oriented.
I've not messed with songbird in quite awhile, so I don't know what level of functionality its up to, but I see it as more a itunes/winamp _player_ app rather than a library manager.
The free version of MM may be perfectly suitable for you, the exact list of additional features for gold is listed on the main website @
http://www.mediamonkey.com/download.htm personally I feel MM is well worth the support and is active development.