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Winamp or Media Monkey?

post #1 of 52
1/13/11 at 4:45pm
Thread Starter 

I've decided to upload all of my CD collection in FLAC using either of these two.  Which would you recommend? 

 

Thanks.

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post #2 of 52
1/13/11 at 4:54pm

Depends on what kind of user interface and function lay out you prefer. Coming from WMP in Vista I preferred Mediamonkey. 

 

These days I rip the CDs in WAV using WMP and play the WAV-rips in Mediamonkey. Mediamonkey is also very user friendly if you want to convert the WAV-rips to other codecs for whatever purpose. FLAC is just as good and converting the WAV-rips to FLAC for my Clip + was easy. 

 

I use the latest free version of Mediamonkey.

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post #3 of 52
1/13/11 at 7:56pm

In the tradition of this thread, I recommend foobar2000.

 

Joking aside, download both, play with both, and find out for yourself which interface, functionalities of either you'll like better.

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post #4 of 52
1/13/11 at 7:59pm

I prefer Mediamonkey for its interface, but they are both good and customizable. Keep in mind, if you want to use vst plugins (ex. Isone Pro), you will need Winamp or Foobar.

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post #5 of 52
1/13/11 at 8:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by thuantran View Post

In the tradition of this thread, I recommend foobar2000.

 

Joking aside, ...
 

 

x2. But not joking
 

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post #6 of 52
1/13/11 at 11:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by violinvirtuoso View Post

I prefer Mediamonkey for its interface, but they are both good and customizable. Keep in mind, if you want to use vst plugins (ex. Isone Pro), you will need Winamp or Foobar.



MediaMonkey can use VST plugins if you get the "VST Studio for Winamp" plugin.

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post #7 of 52
1/14/11 at 1:40am

Something you ought to know about Mediamonkey: sometimes the software is annoying. When I am adding an album from WMP and it has various artists - like today - it stores the album in the library but because the album consists of tracks by various artists it divides the entire album in the library over the individual tracks from the same album per artist which it should not do. The album name is already known so now I have to work out how to place all the individual tracks in one folder with one album name. 

 

I hoped this annoying trait would be gone...

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post #8 of 52
1/14/11 at 2:14am

I've used both and prefer the look of Winamp, but had numerous issues syncing to my iPod.  I've switched to MediaMonkey.  They are in the process of "alpha" testing version 4 which adds video support (if that's of any interest to you).  They've also added secure ripping.  You can find a link to the alpha version in the forums.

 

I use dbPowerAmp for ripping and MediaMonkey for organizing and syncing to my iPod.  

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post #9 of 52
1/14/11 at 2:23am

I tried to work the problem out but sometimes Mediamonkey just works inconsistently. It is moments like those that make me prefer my CD player...

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post #10 of 52
1/14/11 at 4:37am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Deep Funk View Post

Something you ought to know about Mediamonkey: sometimes the software is annoying. When I am adding an album from WMP and it has various artists - like today - it stores the album in the library but because the album consists of tracks by various artists it divides the entire album in the library over the individual tracks from the same album per artist which it should not do. The album name is already known so now I have to work out how to place all the individual tracks in one folder with one album name. 

 

I hoped this annoying trait would be gone...


Select the album and under the artist field you choose 'various' and it works perfectly.

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post #11 of 52
1/14/11 at 4:49am

It is hit or miss usually. When I rip the album in Mediamonkey this problem usually disappears. I will try to solve the problem later... I have had this problem before.  

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post #12 of 52
1/14/11 at 6:52am
Thread Starter 

Thanks, all.

 

I'm not really concerned at all with the "bells 'n whistles" aspect of either.  My goal is to digitize on an external hard drive my CD collection so that I can eventually sell most of them.  As I have many, many thousands, they take up quite a bit of physical space.  Add to that my vinyl collection, which is somewhere in the 8-10K range, recent move from a 2K sq ft house to a 1100 or so sq ft apartment without a garage has me reconsidering a lot of things audio.  And reducing the numbes of physical discs is one of those things.

 

To that end, all I'm looking to do is to put my CDs onto a computer.  My friend from work (computer whiz) suggested that I specifically use "just" a ripper, and use one of the many programs (Winamp/MM/etcetera) to work the music.  So I looked for just a ripper, but they all seem to be rather slow, like 4x the speed.  And I saw that the upgraded versions (paid for) of both MM and Winamp rip at speeds of up to 48x speed.  As I'll be ripping literally thousands of CDs, I was looking for the speed.

 

I'd like to eventually put all my CDs on an external hard drive, get a laptop and DAC and use it in my home rig or my headphone rig.  All this computer-based sound stuff is Greek to me.  The only thing computer-based I've done is the iPod/iTune stuff and recently downloading music from Zune utilizing the Zune Pass.

 

tjt, is dbPowerAmp a fast ripper?

 

Thanks again.

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post #13 of 52
1/14/11 at 9:21am


 

Quote:

Originally Posted by AudioDwebe View Post

 

tjt, is dbPowerAmp a fast ripper?

 

Thanks again.



Yes - but it depends on the parameters selected.  For example, secure ripping will always be slower than a single pass rip.

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post #14 of 52
1/14/11 at 9:32am

Just a few things to keep in mind:

 

Unless you organize your music well in folders, I would not use Foobar as your music library organizer. I would only use it as a player (like VLC).

 

There aren't that many things that Mediamonkey Gold does over the free version. Unless one of those upgraded features is a must, the free version is probably the way to go.

 

Faster CD Rips are almost always less accurate. If you want a perfect copy of your CD, I would not go for the faster option (especially since you are not keeping the discs). There are a few different CD ripping programs that are very accurate. My favorite is EAC (Exact Audio Copy). Check it out, it is also free.

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post #15 of 52
1/14/11 at 11:44am

Please bear in mind that no ripper can fix disc errors.

They can tell you if they encounter an error, but none of them can fix it. Most of them will try again if they make a copy error (that's why they are so slow in that mode).

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