What kind of user are you?

[jfhopkin]

Intermediate, I guess. I've only had MM a couple of months - bought the Gold licence as soon as I realised how much use I'd be making of it.

I've got about 25,000 tracks, mostly jazz and similar, and for the first time I feel like I'm actually in control of my collection. This software is tremendous.

[Mr.Gump]

I use MM because it's 1/3 the hit on my system resources. I will admit though, I set MM to look exactly like the way I had iTunes.

[windcrest77]

I manage 50,000+ tracks (over 1TB) with MM for ballroom dance studios and clubs. All tracks are lossless FLAC ripped from my own CD's with EAC, I detest lossy compression. I wouldn't know a script if it fell on my head. I'm very leery about installing scripts, I have only one script to fix what I considered a bug (the option to put silence between tracks) so dancers can change parners. I just simply wont install scripts, if MM doesn't offer it out of the box, I decided I dont need it. BUT If MM offered signed "certified and approved" scripts from their own mediamonkey.com domain, under ssl, then and only then might I bother with scripts. I wont take a beta, for much the same reason I'll probably never take a script. Having scripts certified and approved from MM domain could make me change as I could keep track of what I've installed, and have a single place to go back to, to rebuild my system.

I guess that makes me a beginner.

[Donski]

Let me start by mentioning that I noticed this thread was started in 2003, it's a really old thread. I would say I'm intermediate and not quite advanced only because I can't write scripts. I've only been using MM for about a year now, and that was prompted because I got an iPod and I hate iTunes.

Before that I was using CDJ which I started using back in 2000 because it could control Sony Mega CD changers. I had a 300 disc player and a 200 disc player for a total of 500 discs. I bought a Slinke which is an interface between a computer and the disc changers, plus it can send and receive infrared signals. You can set up an old TV remote to control your computer with it. The jukebox program for the Slinke is called CDJ which can also play MP3s, and it's a free download. You could load up your changers and it would read each one and go to cddb for the titles of all the discs and tracks. That was the first program I had that would go to the internet and retrieve the lyrics and album art. It simply had stuff that at the time no other jukebox program could touch, so I was very reluctant to change. People were impressed that I could search for lyrics when they didn't know the name of the song. They gave you 100 icons you could customize the graphics on and place them in your toolbar, then program them to do whatever you wanted. The way I had the auto DJ set up was really sweet, and I had icons to switch to which playlist I wanted to automatically grab the tracks from when the playlist runs out. I could click on an icon and it was like listening to an oldies station, and another icon was jazz and yet another was classic rock. But then again there were a lot of things it couldn't do and most of those features could be found in programs like MusicMatch. Although you couldn't burn a disc from CDJ, it was amazing at parties.

Then I found MediaMonkey and at first I wasn't impressed, but that's because it's not designed for the beginner. The more I worked with it the more I found what it could do, and I'm still learning. Now I see that it actually can do almost everything that CDJ, MusicMatch, and iTunes can do combined. The only trouble is figuring out the hoops you need to jump through to get it to do what you want, and that's why you need this forum to pick the brains of the "advanced". But once you take the time to learn, you discover that this is by far the best jukebox program out there today.

[Werewolfhero]

I went with intermediate since i've added quite a few extensions and skins. Even took advantage of the branding thing for a different loading image. :3

As far as db size, i'm at 30K tracks so far.

[RichyBling]

I'd say intermediate as I've played around and installed addons and skins etc. I'm also quite proficient with computers which helps.

I used to think I had a large music collection but looking at some of the sizes of libraries that some of you have got its Im now suffering from small pe**s syndrome. I currently have a library of 23,000 songs taking up 134.6 GB. And still some of my collection hasnt received a single play.

[Nola]

I'd say intermediate as I've played around and installed addons and skins etc. I'm also quite proficient with computers which helps.

I used to think I had a large music collection but looking at some of the sizes of libraries that some of you have got its Im now suffering from small pe**s syndrome. I currently have a library of 23,000 songs taking up 134.6 GB. And still some of my collection hasnt received a single play.

I used to collect music for the sake of having it. Thing is, after amassing about 35,000 songs (still not much by some MM users' standards), it occurred to me that I never listened to 2/3ds of it. It was as though admiring my collection became more important than actually listening to it (I know I'm not alone in having been sucked into this trap).

One night I just took a scalpel to my collection, down to about 11k tracks, and navigating my library for choices is muuuuch easier after trimming the fat. That's about 900 CDs, a collection that would have seemed extreme in the 1990s. And since I'm a FLAC guy, you can imagine how much disk space I saved.

[jared68]

One night I just took a scalpel to my collection, down to about 11k tracks, and navigating my library for choices is muuuuch easier after trimming the fat. That's about 900 CDs, a collection that would have seemed extreme in the 1990s. And since I'm a FLAC guy, you can imagine how much disk space I saved.

This is something I am considering. After using MM to organize everything though it would seem that the effort used to categorize 150 gb of music would be for nought. I still haven't decided if I want to maintain a collection of complete albums, or focus on just those songs I don't like. I guess I should start culling those I hear that I dislike, but sometimes my mood changes and that which I dislike I suddenly like. Not to mention some albums are complete works, whereas others are suitable to be chopped up. And, putting things into terms of having a physcials cd, it is a mind boggling number. I remember when I was happy to have 30 cd's and consider myself awesome

[Lowlander]

I use AutoPlaylists, ratings and Genre's to play what I like while still keeping what I don't. This allows you to change over time in what you like/dislike, but also have a stronger selection for others in the household or when guests are over. Filters can help you hide what you don't like (ie rate what you don't like bomb and Filter all bomb tracks out).

[jared68]

That is what I am going to be doing I suppose. I just have the odd thought about what I should do to help listen to tracks that have not been heard. I recently became gold and am exploring all the features as time permits. I have been organizing my library to have correct Album, Artist, and Song names. Now focusing on genre's, which I originally didn't see a need. But I guess after working on it all I see a preference/need not sure what it is now. I guess the more you work on something you want it to look the best, otherwise what is all that work for

[RichyBling]

I've been thinking of deleting a large amount of my database aswell but theres always that niggly feeling that you're going to delete a track that some day in the future you would like to listen to again.

Right now I'm actually going through the process of rating all my music (23,000 songs) so I can keep a handle on everything (i've currently rated about 20% of my database). I've also just started using Magic Nodes and this is great for managing the database. Just when I thought Media Monkey couldnt get any better I find out about Magic Nodes, I didn't download it intially because it seemed quiet intimidating especially when you read the Magic Nodes thread and theres so much SQL talk, but it comes with ready made scripts which are excellent for grabbing the bull (music database) by the horns.

[gilesjp]

I am a basic user. I have 19,874 tracks all nicely tagged with album art, title, artist, and genre. I have used maybe four scripts in my year of having MM. I also used the volume analyzer on all tracks. I ran one report and sync my devices (palm pre and passport). I am just basic and don't even know half the functions of MM3 and I'm playing now with MM4 beta. I also scrobble when I can get it to work, Its not working for me atm and I can't be bothered to fiddle around with it.

[China-Rising]

I would say Basic to Intermediate. I haven't been using the programme very long (I did try it a few years ago but never got into it) but I have to say i've picked things up quite quickly. It looks quite daunting at first, but once I learnt the very basics, things are clicking into place perfectly.

It's a great programme and something I'm very happy with

[sapo_joe]

I consider myself an intermediate user. I'm using the 4.0 beta now, and with my 40k+ music library, I played with some cool resources, specially the syncing capabilities with my iPod, like auto-conversion, something the almighty Apple just forgot to put in iTunes.

I use both FLAC, AAC and MP3 encoders, the lossy ones to put audio on my beloved new iPod Nano.

My folders are well organized, in a \lossy\artist\album\track.ext fashion, and I like to keep stuff that way. I've been using MM since versions 1.xxx, and like this program very much!

Only fault I've been experiencing is the lack of proper AAC enconding, forcing me to use high-bitrates MP3s to achieve an acceptable sound quality on my iPod. The offered AAC encoder is a bad joke, btw.

Anyway this's been my program of choice, with a great compromise between power and user-friendliness...

[al_kempter]

I am totally new to MM, but have been using iTunes for some years now.
MM should help me to store and manage my 400 CDs in a lossless format and enable me to burn (relatively) high quality MP3 CDs for my car audio. I also want to be able to use parts of this music collection on portable devices: one iPod, one smart phone (which is not decided yet) and a portable player which will fit my next car audio (not decided yet). I'll probably also use it to store a hand full of my Vinyl records (those I still like and can't get on CD).
If I achieve to do that with MM, I'd probably be an intermediate user (not using a music server yet).