Thank you so much for the replies. This is clearly a good forum experience. I've had such mixed experiences with forums before, so I'm leery. (The main problem with this forum is that it keeps blocking my posts and making me edit so-called links.)
I wanted to share my initial impression. Which is still that MediaMonkey really should have worked out of the box (so to speak) with my music collection. No tweaking of anything should be required. These files are named and organized in about the most obvious and thorough way possible.
I have redundant information. Correct filenames, correct tags, CUE sheets, M3U playlists. Maybe too much? But they all have the same information.
What I really wanted was a no-muss-no-fuss solution when it came to recognizing my files. I don't want to have to teach the software that "Song" within "Artist" folder is "Song". It should know that already.
Mostly due to frustrations with Plex, this got more complicated than expected. I wasted some time on that, but Plex is not really easily configurable in the way that I need it to be if it's also not going to be smart.
I do believe that MM is configurable, but I had hoped that it would simply be smart.
Although with Plex too, I can tell it not to be smart, and just to trust my tags, I would prefer a smart solution, in that if the tags make sense, use them, and if not, identify the file. When I ripped my CDs I put time into that. But it would be nice going forward not to always have all music in the same exact format. It's easy when ripping a bunch of CDs to use one template. (In fact it's odd to me that Plex and MM have trouble with only certain songs and albums, given that literally every CD was ripped and named and tagged in exactly the same way.)
What is kind of incredible to me is that CD-ripping software is able to get the CD artist and tracklist correct without any filenames or tags at all! That's how I got most of these filenames and tags in the first place. And yet Plex and MM cannot identify the songs correctly even after I'd done all the work of naming, tagging, and organizing them! What is going on here? Isn't there a program that can figure this stuff out? It's not rocket science!
CUERipper, Exact Audio Copy, dBpoweramp, and others can look up the info based on very simple CD attributes. Not 100% accurately, but far more accurately than Plex or MM which have access to filenames and tags! Maybe MM could access these databases -- CTDB and AccurateRip -- or some others to help it along. Does it even check song length and things like that? Because it bungles some of these albums very badly.
I think it accesses some of the same databases -- MusicBrainz, Discogs. It
says it supports "audio fingerprinting". But it sure wasn't doing that with a lot of my files. It did seem to do a bit better with more popular albums. But why so much worse on others than the ripping tools? Granted, some info is lost after the CD is ripped, like the disc data length or whatever.
But in my case using CUERipper for most of my discs, I have info files in each folder as well. So for example:
Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town dot accurip
Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town dot cue
Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town dot log
Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town dot m3u
.accurip contains the CTDB ID for the CD. .cue contains a detailed list of songs including track number, performer, and song title (and empty space and cues for recreating the CD). The .log and .m3u files are redundant given the filenames are already there. But the info is there several times over. I do think that tag and filename ought to be plenty, especially when they match, so I don't understand those being either changed or ignored.
As for support, as a user the normal support was not clear. A forum is a cop-out for support, although a forum that is monitored by someone official is a definite step-up (that's not the case at Plex, they simply close threads after three months with no answers).
Phone support is not economically feasible for a company like this (unless the cost were tripled). But I think that basic ticket support should be easier to find.
Lowlander wrote, "If you're looking for help you can find it
here, support is available on the forum as well as at
support."
The first link there is to documentation. The second link goes to a support Knowledge Base. There's a not-obvious-at-first second row of links there below the Support header that includes "Wiki" and "Helpdesk".
It would have been nice if it had been clearer that there was a ticket system available, because I didn't find it the first time. I found this forum. And I don't like getting all my tech support from a public forum. It's a lot of personalities to juggle just to get a simple answer. In this case, the personalities seem to be good ones, but it's the internet, so it's a roll of the dice. And writing about a negative first experience also feels like airing dirty laundry, which is not good for the company either.
I'll be messing with MM when I have some blocks of time. Input welcome. Hopefully I'll find a tweak that makes it friendly to my entire music collection.
Last time I wanted to listen to music, I admit I just used VLC on an Android phone connected to a Windows network folder. And while it occasionally paused a little to get to a folder list, what I liked about it was that it was so foolproof. All the songs were there. All the artists were there. All the songs were playable. Whether VLC was reading my metadata or getting it online, the disc photos appeared. It just worked.
I already spent a lot of time ripping CDs (and movies). At this point my preference is going with something that is just easy.
For movies Plex is easy. Fortunately. I don't think that MediaMonkey is even an option for that. I ripped my movies to AV1, which I see as the up-and-coming standard (but already supported for years in hardware by Intel, NVIDIA, etc.). MediaMonkey even with the codec pack doesn't seem to have even H.265 yet. H.264 is more than 20 years old. With the test movie I tried, the subtitles didn't work. But I didn't get MediaMonkey for movies, so I don't really care about that. I can find a way to do movies. (VLC even reads DVD ISOs with menus!)
I just want to thank Lowlander, Peke, and Rob_S for the replies (especially user Rob_S). It's clear that there is a loyal following. I was posting after the double-disappointment of it not recognizing my music the way I had hoped and then my not finding the support I had expected to find.
I am more hopeful now. At the same time, I would love to see a response like, "Yeah, your music does seem to be organized in a way that our software ought to support without asking the user to jump through a bunch of hoops. So we will work on that to make it happen."
Had it worked, I'd already be recommending this to everyone I know. As it is, it's just another piece of software that doesn't do quite what it should out of the box, which means that yeah, I, as a technically-minded user, can certainly figure it out, but I can't suggest it to random people I know because I don't want to be showing up to have to reorganize their media or tweak their settings. With well-organized media, software this mature should have NO PROBLEM recognizing at least 99% of what I have with no further configuration. Period.
In addition to getting so many songs wrong, some albums are missing altogether, and some listed as "????????????????".
The experience just gave me the feeling that far from being easy, I was in for a big marathon of configuration and setup, for reasons that are still unclear. Why doesn't it recognize these songs and albums? Why doesn't Plex? They mess up completely different sets of songs, such that what Plex gets right MM gets wrong, and vice versa, but it's still a large percentage, and I think a pretty simple AI -- really one developed in the 70s, not even 80s -- ought to be able to handle. So it's partly just a, "Hmmm...that's weird" moment for me.
I'll continue to mess with it, but in the meantime I may just use VLC so that I can enjoy my music like I had intended! I think a lot of the music players on Android are just VLC clones that don't work as well as VLC. But MediaMonkey has a nice Windows interface and a nice set of features -- VLC plays DLNA but doesn't serve it up. I'd be very happy if I could find a simple solution not only for me but for people who ask me about setting up their own media library. I hate the answer, "Well, I set up my own media server, but it's probably too complicated for you. Just keep listening to CDs."
You know?
I think this is a perfect niche for MediaMonkey. But it swung and it was a big miss. So I hope it can do better. There is so much AI out there, including that doesn't require a big GPU. Look at Audacity! Via OpenVINO plugins it can recognize dialog in movie audio and create subtitles from them! All for free. That's a level of difficulty magnitudes above what I'm asking of MM here, just to recognize an already tagged and accurately-named song, without doing a bunch of extra configuration.
I know you can do it. Probably not in time for me to get my media stuff ready to go, but maybe soon enough that I can wholeheartedly recommend you to others. I hope so.
It seems like a cool company, headquartered (I think) in Montreal. I do want it to do well.
Thanks!
p.s. As for this forum, I am not even able to link to your own website! That is really bad. I can't quote the error that I get, "You don’t have rights to post image, email or url links that are external to this domain. You can edit https colon slash slash mediamonkey dot com by inserting a space into the URL (e.g. http colon slash slash website) and a moderator can later fix the link." The suggestion does not work. Look, people who bought the software should be able to make the forum posts they need to be able to make. Get the configuration right, guys! I keep editing these posts to try to get your forum software to accept them. I've wasted half an hour on this. It's annoying. I was told "soon you will have all rights," but do you really want to annoy your new users? Why don't people who buy the software have the right to do a normal post on your forum? Silly. Only if I hang around here on the forum for awhile do I get the right to post what I need to be able to? You have to re-edit the links as well. Some of what it complains about are not even links! When you try to funnel users toward your forum, make it work.
Thank you so much for the replies. This is clearly a good forum experience. I've had such mixed experiences with forums before, so I'm leery. (The main problem with this forum is that it keeps blocking my posts and making me edit so-called links.)
I wanted to share my initial impression. Which is still that MediaMonkey really should have worked out of the box (so to speak) with my music collection. No tweaking of anything should be required. These files are named and organized in about the most obvious and thorough way possible.
I have redundant information. Correct filenames, correct tags, CUE sheets, M3U playlists. Maybe too much? But they all have the same information.
What I really wanted was a no-muss-no-fuss solution when it came to recognizing my files. I don't want to have to teach the software that "Song" within "Artist" folder is "Song". It should know that already.
Mostly due to frustrations with Plex, this got more complicated than expected. I wasted some time on that, but Plex is not really easily configurable in the way that I need it to be if it's also not going to be smart.
I do believe that MM is configurable, but I had hoped that it would simply be smart.
Although with Plex too, I can tell it not to be smart, and just to trust my tags, I would prefer a smart solution, in that if the tags make sense, use them, and if not, identify the file. When I ripped my CDs I put time into that. But it would be nice going forward not to always have all music in the same exact format. It's easy when ripping a bunch of CDs to use one template. (In fact it's odd to me that Plex and MM have trouble with only certain songs and albums, given that literally every CD was ripped and named and tagged in exactly the same way.)
What is kind of incredible to me is that CD-ripping software is able to get the CD artist and tracklist correct without any filenames or tags at all! That's how I got most of these filenames and tags in the first place. And yet Plex and MM cannot identify the songs correctly even after I'd done all the work of naming, tagging, and organizing them! What is going on here? Isn't there a program that can figure this stuff out? It's not rocket science!
CUERipper, Exact Audio Copy, dBpoweramp, and others can look up the info based on very simple CD attributes. Not 100% accurately, but far more accurately than Plex or MM which have access to filenames and tags! Maybe MM could access these databases -- CTDB and AccurateRip -- or some others to help it along. Does it even check song length and things like that? Because it bungles some of these albums very badly.
I think it accesses some of the same databases -- MusicBrainz, Discogs. It [url=https colon slash slash mediamonkey dot com slash wiki slash WebHelp:Getting_Track_Information_from_the_Internet slash 5.0]says[/url] it supports "audio fingerprinting". But it sure wasn't doing that with a lot of my files. It did seem to do a bit better with more popular albums. But why so much worse on others than the ripping tools? Granted, some info is lost after the CD is ripped, like the disc data length or whatever.
But in my case using CUERipper for most of my discs, I have info files in each folder as well. So for example:
Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town dot accurip
Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town dot cue
Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town dot log
Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town dot m3u
.accurip contains the CTDB ID for the CD. .cue contains a detailed list of songs including track number, performer, and song title (and empty space and cues for recreating the CD). The .log and .m3u files are redundant given the filenames are already there. But the info is there several times over. I do think that tag and filename ought to be plenty, especially when they match, so I don't understand those being either changed or ignored.
As for support, as a user the normal support was not clear. A forum is a cop-out for support, although a forum that is monitored by someone official is a definite step-up (that's not the case at Plex, they simply close threads after three months with no answers).
Phone support is not economically feasible for a company like this (unless the cost were tripled). But I think that basic ticket support should be easier to find.
Lowlander wrote, "If you're looking for help you can find it [url=https colon slash slash www dot mediamonkey dot com slash wiki slash index.php slash WebHelp:Content]here[/url], support is available on the forum as well as at [url=https colon slash slash www dot mediamonkey dot com/support]support[/url]."
The first link there is to documentation. The second link goes to a support Knowledge Base. There's a not-obvious-at-first second row of links there below the Support header that includes "Wiki" and "Helpdesk".
It would have been nice if it had been clearer that there was a ticket system available, because I didn't find it the first time. I found this forum. And I don't like getting all my tech support from a public forum. It's a lot of personalities to juggle just to get a simple answer. In this case, the personalities seem to be good ones, but it's the internet, so it's a roll of the dice. And writing about a negative first experience also feels like airing dirty laundry, which is not good for the company either.
I'll be messing with MM when I have some blocks of time. Input welcome. Hopefully I'll find a tweak that makes it friendly to my entire music collection.
Last time I wanted to listen to music, I admit I just used VLC on an Android phone connected to a Windows network folder. And while it occasionally paused a little to get to a folder list, what I liked about it was that it was so foolproof. All the songs were there. All the artists were there. All the songs were playable. Whether VLC was reading my metadata or getting it online, the disc photos appeared. It just worked.
I already spent a lot of time ripping CDs (and movies). At this point my preference is going with something that is just easy.
For movies Plex is easy. Fortunately. I don't think that MediaMonkey is even an option for that. I ripped my movies to AV1, which I see as the up-and-coming standard (but already supported for years in hardware by Intel, NVIDIA, etc.). MediaMonkey even with the codec pack doesn't seem to have even H.265 yet. H.264 is more than 20 years old. With the test movie I tried, the subtitles didn't work. But I didn't get MediaMonkey for movies, so I don't really care about that. I can find a way to do movies. (VLC even reads DVD ISOs with menus!)
I just want to thank Lowlander, Peke, and Rob_S for the replies (especially user Rob_S). It's clear that there is a loyal following. I was posting after the double-disappointment of it not recognizing my music the way I had hoped and then my not finding the support I had expected to find.
I am more hopeful now. At the same time, I would love to see a response like, "Yeah, your music does seem to be organized in a way that our software ought to support without asking the user to jump through a bunch of hoops. So we will work on that to make it happen."
Had it worked, I'd already be recommending this to everyone I know. As it is, it's just another piece of software that doesn't do quite what it should out of the box, which means that yeah, I, as a technically-minded user, can certainly figure it out, but I can't suggest it to random people I know because I don't want to be showing up to have to reorganize their media or tweak their settings. With well-organized media, software this mature should have NO PROBLEM recognizing at least 99% of what I have with no further configuration. Period.
In addition to getting so many songs wrong, some albums are missing altogether, and some listed as "????????????????".
The experience just gave me the feeling that far from being easy, I was in for a big marathon of configuration and setup, for reasons that are still unclear. Why doesn't it recognize these songs and albums? Why doesn't Plex? They mess up completely different sets of songs, such that what Plex gets right MM gets wrong, and vice versa, but it's still a large percentage, and I think a pretty simple AI -- really one developed in the 70s, not even 80s -- ought to be able to handle. So it's partly just a, "Hmmm...that's weird" moment for me.
I'll continue to mess with it, but in the meantime I may just use VLC so that I can enjoy my music like I had intended! I think a lot of the music players on Android are just VLC clones that don't work as well as VLC. But MediaMonkey has a nice Windows interface and a nice set of features -- VLC plays DLNA but doesn't serve it up. I'd be very happy if I could find a simple solution not only for me but for people who ask me about setting up their own media library. I hate the answer, "Well, I set up my own media server, but it's probably too complicated for you. Just keep listening to CDs."
You know?
I think this is a perfect niche for MediaMonkey. But it swung and it was a big miss. So I hope it can do better. There is so much AI out there, including that doesn't require a big GPU. Look at Audacity! Via OpenVINO plugins it can recognize dialog in movie audio and create subtitles from them! All for free. That's a level of difficulty magnitudes above what I'm asking of MM here, just to recognize an already tagged and accurately-named song, without doing a bunch of extra configuration.
I know you can do it. Probably not in time for me to get my media stuff ready to go, but maybe soon enough that I can wholeheartedly recommend you to others. I hope so.
It seems like a cool company, headquartered (I think) in Montreal. I do want it to do well.
Thanks!
p.s. As for this forum, I am not even able to link to your own website! That is really bad. I can't quote the error that I get, "You don’t have rights to post image, email or url links that are external to this domain. You can edit https colon slash slash mediamonkey dot com by inserting a space into the URL (e.g. http colon slash slash website) and a moderator can later fix the link." The suggestion does not work. Look, people who bought the software should be able to make the forum posts they need to be able to make. Get the configuration right, guys! I keep editing these posts to try to get your forum software to accept them. I've wasted half an hour on this. It's annoying. I was told "soon you will have all rights," but do you really want to annoy your new users? Why don't people who buy the software have the right to do a normal post on your forum? Silly. Only if I hang around here on the forum for awhile do I get the right to post what I need to be able to? You have to re-edit the links as well. Some of what it complains about are not even links! When you try to funnel users toward your forum, make it work.