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ID3 Tags and MP3 Players

post #1 of 7
8/25/06 at 11:44am
Thread Starter 
Which mp3 players apart from the iPod use ID3 tags for information and navigation, rather than drag and drop folders? And assuming that others are out there, what software is used to support them, and how does the whole set up work?

I would love to consider mp3 players other than an iPod, but a major selling point for me is its use of ID3 tags, as this makes navigation of a large music collection much easier. Note that is not an endorsement for iTunes, which is slow beyond belief when its database gets too large!
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post #2 of 7
8/25/06 at 12:02pm
The Zen Vision:M, iAudio X5, iRiver H320/340 do this.

The ZVM imo is the best
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post #3 of 7
8/25/06 at 3:43pm
Thread Starter 
With each of these is the method of putting music onto the player drag and drop, or is there some kind of database driven software like iTunes? The ability to see what music is chosen and to simply sync the iPod after you have unchecked and checked your selections is in actual fact one of iTunes most useful attributes, especially with a large music collection. Not to mention the other search and find advantages of a database. And again I emphasise I am not a fanboy for iTunes - but if there is anything out there that actually has the database driven functionality of iTunes, without the bloat and bad performance I would like to try it.

And when the music is on the players you have mentioned do you navigate them by id3 tag driven information or are you still stuck navigating a folder tree, reading file names?

Sorry to sound so clueless, but I have yet to see anything but iPods in day to day use - and where I live even they are fairly rare.
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post #4 of 7
8/25/06 at 5:25pm
One word: Mediamonkey - Better than Itunes, it is very powerful, will allows you to customize the ID3 tags fast and easy. Sync with the ZVM and most other DAPs perfectly, the only program I use.
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post #5 of 7
8/25/06 at 5:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by zumaro
With each of these is the method of putting music onto the player drag and drop, or is there some kind of database driven software like iTunes? The ability to see what music is chosen and to simply sync the iPod after you have unchecked and checked your selections is in actual fact one of iTunes most useful attributes, especially with a large music collection. Not to mention the other search and find advantages of a database. And again I emphasise I am not a fanboy for iTunes - but if there is anything out there that actually has the database driven functionality of iTunes, without the bloat and bad performance I would like to try it.

And when the music is on the players you have mentioned do you navigate them by id3 tag driven information or are you still stuck navigating a folder tree, reading file names?

Sorry to sound so clueless, but I have yet to see anything but iPods in day to day use - and where I live even they are fairly rare.
I think you are asking about 2 different things:
  • Software on the PC that is a DB of your music files and makes it easy to synch with the portable player. There are various programs that do this. Some of them do it quite well. Some of them let you move music via your choice of drag-and-drop or auto-synch, just do it however you wish. Speaking only for myself, I've found that MediaMonkey is the best, especially if you're dealing with a large number of music files. It is powerful, flexible, and very customizable (via plug-ins and Magic Nodes), and it does a fine job of permitting you to synch with the portable device however you wish. It also gives you almost unlimited flexibility in how you look at your music on your PC (providing various views that are built-in, plus allowing you to create your own views via Magic Nodes). Because it gives you various options, it is not as idiot-proof as iTunes, you have to horse around with it a bit, just to get familiar with it. It's not an extreme learning curve but, like any product that gives you choices, there is more of a learning curve than with iTunes.

  • Once you have music files on the portable player, does the portable player use ID tags to give you "virtual view" of your music vs. only a location-based view of which files are in which folders. This will vary from device to device, and will be dependent on the firmware (or other program, such as Rockbox) that runs on the device.
AFAIK, most people choose to organize their music by [artist -> album -> song] anyway, so in practice the virtual views don't make much difference for most people as they use their portable players. The features that seem important to people I know are (1) the ability of the portable device to use Playlists that are assembled on the host-PC, and (2) the ability to show album art. I don't know what's important to you personally.
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post #6 of 7
8/25/06 at 6:41pm
Thread Starter 
Yes I realise as I wrote my first reply that what I am really interested in is a total id3 database driven solution to music management - both on the PC and on the music player itself. I will check out Media Monkey (particularly if it can be used to manage my current iPod). I have no problem with more complicated software than iTunes - it really does not handle large databases well in terms of speed, its many undesirable features and bad behaviour under windows, all annoy me more and more. At the same time I really don't want to revert to drag and drop methods of file transfer - choosing 60GB out of about 300GB is already complicated enough without opening and closing multiple folders etc, let alone deleting things again off the iPod. A simple syncing operation is very much easier.

The trouble with file/folder name navigation on a mp3 player is that it doesn't suit classical music very well, with often very long track names, and strange foreign characters that fool Windows all the time when you insert them into file names. ID3 tags care nothing about all of this, and make navigation much easier (or at the least more readable).

Also even with the iPods rudimentary virtual views, you still get more choices on how you access the music than a simple folder view. For example I can go about finding a particular album, or start looking for a particular artist or navigating through a genre I am in the mood for, depending on what I am trying to find. There is no easy way that folder navigation can replicate this multiplicity of views. So yes I am looking for a player that knows how to use id3 tags for navigation, and preferably with more flexibility than the iPod.

Thanks for the information so far!
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post #7 of 7
8/25/06 at 7:01pm
I expect MM will do what you want on the PC side. For any view or organization that isn't there to begin with, Magic Nodes let's you create one that suits you. And, yes, it will work with your iPod, just a few settings to get right, that's all.

I understand what you are saying about classical, filenames, etc. I have zilch idea re: whether some players are better than others at using ID tags to good advantage. I also don't know if Rockbox provides any good news on this point.

I would like to know more about this myself. Perhaps others will have some interesting things to say about devices that do this well.
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