It is so frustrating...

[inmado]

I was looking for a replacement of iTunes/DoubleTwist and was trying to move to MMW/MMA instead. I bought MMA full version. I may have considered to buy MMW gold next. But right now, I wonder if it's worth the money. It just doesn't work smoothly. I may have spend over 20 hrs, but still running into issues. Such as the most recent one:

I added a CD to MMW. Well, cumbersome. The free version does not support ripping the CD. So, I just iTunes instead, copied the files from the iTunes music folder into my MMW music folder (I know, MMW could operate on the same data, but I preferred to keep iTunes and MMW separated and copied all iTunes music into an folder dedicated for MMW, only). Next, I used "Add/Rescan" in MMW to add the new folde into its library. Fine.

I also added some playlists in MMW.

Next, I wanted to sync my mobile to get the playlists and the new songs from that imported CD. Yesterday, I did not work at all. MMA got stuck on "getting WiFi connection". Well, UPnP think worked fine, but sync did not start. I rebooted the mobile, I rebooted the PC, tried again. No change. So, I stopped. Today, driven by desparation, I tried the same again: No issue. I did not change anything. Anyway, MMA got connected. And Sync started... - But after analysing, MMA started to sync the whole library, started downloading all my more than 5000 songs, again!??!

Now, I see "Downloading 80/5402", "Downloading 81/5402", etc. And if I use the file manager on my mobile, I see those MP3s have in fact been uploaded again. They all show a date of today. So, MMA is downloading MP3's that exist locally, already. Why?!?!

What a mess!

So frustrating...

[inmado]

Ok, it took about 8h to complete the WiFi sync. While the new songs were copied to my mobile, the playlists were not. I started sync again. By surprise, another 66 songs were copied to my mobile (I did not change anything in MMW, of course). Once this completed as well, I checked again. No playlists on my mobile. Although I have these imported playlists on MMW.

How to get these MMW playlists to MMA via sync?

Any pointers?

[Lowlander]

The free version of MediaMonkey can Rip. Only Ripping to MP3 is limited to 30 days due to the License on the MP3 encoder, other formats will still work.

You need to select what you want to sync. This means you'll need to select Playlists to be synced if you want those Playlists on your device. You can sync between 1 to all files depending on what you select to be synced. Setting this up may be easier in the Device Profile in MMW (Tools > Options > Portable Device Sync) after which you can do a wifi sync.

[inmado]

Huh? To what else aside from MP3 should one want to rip? Isn't Lame a free encoder?

Thx for the hint on syncing Playlists. Once I selected Playlists as well, it worked fine.

[Lowlander]

FLAC, it's lossless, so same quality as CD. MP3 decoding (playback) is free, but encoding isn't. There are 3 organizations with license claims on the MP3 standard.

[inmado]

FLAC is a waste of disc space. This might be fine on a desktop, but not on a mobile. Aside of this, it is rather impossible for a human to identify what's FLAC and what's MP3. (Testet on my ~$5k hifi equipment). For sure true for music played via a mobile device with these common earspeakers.

According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME the licenes for MP3 encoding have expired 2017. Other programs such as Audicity use the Lame MP3 encoder.

[Lowlander]

You can convert on-the-fly when syncing to a portable device to save space. Besides lossy MP3 and lossless FLAC there are plenty of other choices.