Enough is enough: MM sucks across sync, album art

[kjegou]

I have been a MM user for 10 years. Yes, ten years. It is a very long time and basically ..too long.

Since the very beginning i have had issues with synchronisation of music. In the early days it was with my ipod. Then with my iphone. The came the dodgy DB replication mecanism. Since a couple of years (yes, years) with my Android i m still having sync issues. Still today it is difficult to get the right sync done my Android

Then came the wifi sync. A nightmare to undetrstand where, when , and what make a difference between USB and Wifi. Don't try to explain to me, i have tried million ways over 10 years.

Since the very beginning i have had issues with playcount and last-played . Unfortunately these are the most important tags as all the rest can be changed statically. Afte all these years it keep working and then not working . regressions and fixed, all the time

Since the very begining i have huge issues with album art. I won't play the same song here to you guys. After all these years, album art is not properly synced. Even today i used a simple MP3 player on my library and it simply ...works amazing.

I am simply fed up with MM because the same issues i have faced 10 YEARS ago are still there over time. What i thought at the time was a great colletor's music maangement system turned to be a nightmare over time because the most interesting features (statistics over songs) completely relies on playcount. All this gets constantly messed up.

I am simply bored of all this. I have decided to change. I am not sure what will be the next music maangement software, but i will select it carefully.

And to anyone saying hhmm, what is your problem i will answer: I am listening to 4 hours of music eveyday since i am 20 years aold. I am 47 , i know what i need.

And what i do not need.

[Lowlander]

Have you send in any debug logs capturing these problems? I have no problems with Album Art and when checked no problems with Play History (but I don't actively monitor this). When I did have problems it was caused by a semi-broken SD card (it also caused weird problems in other Apps).

Do note that with MMW <> MMA sync that you want to match versions. Generally it's best to be on the latest release (betas if available) of both. Due to the very splintered nature of Android it is also best to send debug logs where possible as a fix for one device running one version of Android can break things for another device or even the same device running another version of Android (Apple isn't much better as it actively breaks third party access on many of its updates, iOS10 seems to also have clipped the wings of the default Player).

[Peke]

And to anyone saying hhmm, what is your problem i will answer: I am listening to 4 hours of music eveyday since i am 20 years old. I am 47 , i know what i need. And what i do not need.

I totally agree with you, even you are 7 years older than me. Till my 30 I listened music 12h a day, now ~4-6h. From what I see I can also blame MM for not being perfect, but on the other hand if something is perfect it would not be developed anymore. Regarding Sync I would really like to put anyone complaining (me included) to shoes of dev that maintain sync plugin and try to fix as it looks a simple user user bug report.

If you find application that can replace MMW I want to investigate it ASAP. MMW is an old lad and starts like you said starting to have downsides. One thing I'm 100% sure that 10 years ago you have not nearly synced as much as today and much less cared about Album art, but more enjoyed in music itself. I'm sorry if I'm wrong as that is how things changed with me.

To conclude, if MMW sucks then we need to suck it up and fix things instead of letting it rot?

[NewtonBoy]

To conclude, if MMW sucks then we need to suck it up and fix things instead of letting it rot?

Peke, you are right Media Monkey is pretty much the only game in town if you have a large library. I have tried them all, and somehow, I keep coming back to Media Monkey.

I share kjegou's frustration. I have issues as well. I've had to rebuild my database from scratch more than once. I've had to restore from backup because something "Happened" more than once. I've come to the point where I obsessively backup, using the Backup 6.0 plugin, and then performing a full optimization on the database multiple times when I am editing for an extended period. But that isn't that big of a deal for me. I understand the vagaries of databases, and how problems come up with large files. I accept this need as a fact of life. I also find that I only really have these kinds of problems when I'm working on perfecting my tags.

So what makes me angry? What drives me up a wall, and causes me to hate Media Monkey? It's the stupid little things. I posted in another session about my issue with renaming albums. http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =1&t=86485 That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Yes, If I use the Mouse and re-select the artist, I don't have the selection issue. The problem I have is that it works just fine if I add a fourth column, change something there, and reselect it. It behaves as I expect.

MMW is an old lad and starts like you said starting to have downsides

Usually, I just hit play on some playlist and have some background music. MMW works perfectly for that now that I have auto playlists and collections setup. If I'm just sitting and listening to music, I'm fussing with tags in Media Monkey. I've always thought that the interface was clunky when I'm doing this. I have a list of minor annoyance I've been compiling I was going to throw it out on the board much like kjegou did here. I admit, most of them sound stupid because they have to do with unexpected behavior. I use a lot of different software during the day as a Network Administrator. I also often have to use unfamiliar packages. Usually I can work my way through those because they all follow some generally accepted conventions. I find some of those conventions missing in Media Monkey. These get really irritating. Most of these are probably the result of fixing bits of code to make one thing work, and then breaking something else that never gets found in testing. Maybe time for a new QA method?

I don't know the answer, but I know it's not the current situation. I like Media Monkey, and I'm happy to help make it better.

Seriously though, Sync is major. Fix Sync.

[Lowlander]

Seriously though, Sync is major. Fix Sync.

Are you sending in debug logs?

[NewtonBoy]

Seriously though, Sync is major. Fix Sync.

Are you sending in debug logs?

No. I gave up on MMW sync long ago. I select all in a playlist and use "Send to" to copy files to my device. (I'm still bitter about having to re-rip some of my CD's because the Flac files got overwritten by the low quality MP3 from my iPod.)

Sorry, it seems it's just kjegou and I who have problems after all. Carry on. Whatever you are doing is just fine.

[Lowlander]

I'm not saying there are no bugs, however they're often very environment specific and thus sending in debug logs will be needed to get the bug resolved.

I'm still bitter about having to re-rip some of my CD's because the Flac files got overwritten by the low quality MP3 from my iPod.

As MediaMonkey only syncs one way for Apple devices it wouldn't have been sync that caused this.

[NewtonBoy]

As MediaMonkey only syncs one way for Apple devices it wouldn't have been sync that caused this.

• This happened several years ago.
• I only owned the iPod video at the time.
• I only synced with the iPod video.
• The only time I ever messed with anything other than FLAC at the time was to automatically down-convert to put on my iPod.

So you tell me how I have several albums that I ripped into FLAC that are now mysteriously 128k mp3 files.

*Edit to clarify and add;

I discovered this fairly soon after it happened, and I have already re-ripped.

Because of this, my trust in Media Monkey to "do no harm" to my files and data was broken.

[Lowlander]

So you tell me how I have several albums that I ripped into FLAC that are now mysteriously 128k mp3 files.

My first hunch is user error and likely the use of Convert Format (it can replace existing copies with converted copy). Although MediaMonkey has had some serious bugs causing damaged files or file loss I don't recollect one with Auto-Conversion and/or Auto-Sync. MediaMonkey definitely doesn't sync back from the iPod (that actually is a longstanding request) so the problem would've occurred on sync to the iPod. As that's long ago and no one is reporting anything like it for a while now it unlikely is an issue in the current releases.

This does highlight the importance of debug logs as sometimes it does show user error and sometimes it is a very specific bug only a few users are experiencing while everybody else doesn't. The team is very responsive if you open a Support Ticket with a debug log and try to resolve the problem quickly if they can figure out what happened.

[NewtonBoy]

Either way, the damage is done. Both in lost trust, and lost data. All I know is that I synced files to my iPod, and sometime later I noticed missing data. If it's that easy to make a mistake that major, I consider the user interface poorly designed.

My complaints still stand about the consistency of the software. I just found another example as well;

I just added "Shortcuts" to my menu bar. My intention was to make it easier to run scripts. I see the "Tools" button, and it behaves like a button when I click it, but nothing happens. I have to click the down arrow next to it to open the context menu. That makes it less useful than mousing the extra two inches to get to the main menu bar, and go through the menu because I have to be so much more accurate. Same story for "Send To." But "Edit," "Burn," and "Play Now" work flawlessly. The three that I didn't want in the first place. Just checked the default install I did to check that I'm not crazy, and it behaves the same way, and those buttons were already there.

This is not a bug. This is poor quality control. When a button doesn't work on a laptop when I take it out of the box, I return it for another one. I'm OK with bugs. They happen, and they can't be avoided, only fixed. I'm Not OK with sloppy coding that results in an inconsistent user interface. Of all the software I run, I have never run into a button that does not behave like a button. The thing is I'm in PORTABLE MODE. The software should be self contained, and just work. No matter what environment it is in.

[MusicKing]

I'm still having problems when syncing my Samsung A5 with SD card to my computer, it always freezes when removing content. I know, I should be looking under:

http://www.mediamonkey.com/support/inde ... tion-fails

Or:

https://www.mediamonkey.com/support/ind ... ant-access

But these options didn't help me much. But if this could be fixed I would be really thankfull. Too bad so many people have this problem:

viewtopic.php?t=80207

http://forum.mediamonkey.com/viewtopic.php?t=72004

viewtopic.php?t=86375

viewtopic.php?t=82048

https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewt ... 21&t=87617

http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=12961

MM, can't you guys fix this allready? It's really annoying that no fix has been found yet, after all those years..... The program works really good on Windows, but when trying to communicate with my Samsung A5 (with or without MMA) it just freezes. Please guys....

[Lowlander]

What did you try from the USB fails KB article? Which version of MMW and MMA are you using?

[MusicKing]

Tried:

- change the connection mode to MTP
- switch to 'charging mode' and then back to 'mtp mode'.
- verify that there's not more than one sync profile per storage location
- wait several minutes to see if the issue resolves itself
- reboot the device to reset the MTP drivers and try syncing again
- Google USB driver for Android is allready installed
- I can't get Wi-Fi Sync running yet. How do I that via my router? If I can this going, maybe it has a decent chance

MMW:4.1.21.1875
MMA: 1.3.2.0824

[Lowlander]

How does wifi sync fail? http://www.mediamonkey.com/support/inde ... ork-at-all

Generally there is no need for router config (just make sure MMW PC is on same network as MMA wifi device (sometimes wifi can be separated (like guest network). However MMW PC may require security software (firewall) configuration to let MMW through to the network.

Note that the team is always working hard on resolving wifi and USB sync issues (due to Android's fragmentation this is a lot of work), so reporting and providing debug logs is essential in getting things fixed.

[MusicKing]

How do I create a log and send it to the right person?