[senny-ftw]

I absolutely love iTunes. I like the smart playlists, simplicity of design, overall stability and speed of operation. I'll bet it's the fastest method of inserting CD --> ripping lossless --> synching to portable player available.

I find other players/music managers to be gimmicky, unstable, incomplete and/or slow to operate.

 

[mcmyers]

Quote:

Originally Posted by senny-ftw /img/forum/go_quote.gif I absolutely love iTunes. I like the smart playlists, simplicity of design, overall stability and speed of operation. I'll bet it's the fastest method of inserting CD --> ripping lossless --> synching to portable player available. I find other players/music managers to be gimmicky, unstable, incomplete and/or slow to operate.

X2

I bought a Creative Zen Nomad Jukebox Zen Extra (the name alone demonstrates how little most companies know about marketing) a few years ago because I thought iPods were too expensive. Then I decided to upgrade to a Zen Vision M (slightly better name but still). It looked awesome and sounded good, but putting music on it was the greatest frustration of my life. I don't want to go into detail, but let's just say that it wasn't worth the effort.

So I returned the thing and bought an iPod instead. I have never once been frustrated with it. It works seamlessly, and the smart playlist functionality is amazing (if you've never tried it, you don't know what a revolution it is). Whenever I read reviews of new mp3 players, I always hope that they'll do an in depth comparison of the music managment software options, but they never do. And now that I have an iMod, I believe I have the best of all worlds. Easy music managment and great sound. What more could I ask for?

Well, a better screen and personalizable background would be nice.

 

[kikkomang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcmyers /img/forum/go_quote.gif X2 I bought a Creative Zen Nomad Jukebox Zen Extra (the name alone demonstrates how little most companies know about marketing) a few years ago because I thought iPods were too expensive. Then I decided to upgrade to a Zen Vision M (slightly better name but still). It looked awesome and sounded good, but putting music on it was the greatest frustration of my life. I don't want to go into detail, but let's just say that it wasn't worth the effort. So I returned the thing and bought an iPod instead. I have never once been frustrated with it. It works seamlessly, and the smart playlist functionality is amazing (if you've never tried it, you don't know what a revolution it is). Whenever I read reviews of new mp3 players, I always hope that they'll do an in depth comparison of the music managment software options, but they never do. And now that I have an iMod, I believe I have the best of all worlds. Easy music managment and great sound. What more could I ask for? Well, a better screen and personalizable background would be nice.

WMP is hard to use?

 

[mcmyers]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kikkomang /img/forum/go_quote.gif WMP is hard to use?

I'm not saying I couldn't figure it out. I'm saying it didn't work well or intuitively. Who knows what kind of firmware improvements they've come out with since I tried it (a year ago), but at the time I spent about 48 hours trying to load "autoplaylists" onto the ZVM only to find that it couldn't be done. That was extremely frustrating. And just to give another infuriating example, if I wanted to create separate playlists that contained the same songs (say a playlist of all my new songs and a playlist of all my new electronic songs) I had to copy over multiple copies of the same songs, wasting all kinds of space.

Now like I said, maybe all this has been fixed with firmware. If it has, and if DAPS like the ZVM or the Zune have the same functionality of an iPod, then that's great. But if you can't create endlessly customizable smart playlists that auto update themselves with anything but an iPod, then I will always be using an iPod.

 

[OverlordXenu]

Well, itunes is pretty bad. I mean, it freaking changes the tags of songs...

And using it to rip...ARE YOU CRAZY? EAC in secure mode to FLAC with correct settings is the only way anyone should rip, then use dbpoweramp to convert to OGG Vorbis or LAME mp3...

And ipods...Yes, horrible, horrible sound output. Functional? Hardly.

And rockbox-enabled players can use themes that are much easier to use and more functional than the ipod interface.

 

[mcmyers]

Quote:

Originally Posted by OverlordXenu /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well, itunes is pretty bad. I mean, it freaking changes the tags of songs... And using it to rip...ARE YOU CRAZY? EAC in secure mode to FLAC with correct settings is the only way anyone should rip, then use dbpoweramp to convert to OGG Vorbis or LAME mp3... And ipods...Yes, horrible, horrible sound output. Functional? Hardly. And rockbox-enabled players can use themes that are much easier to use and more functional than the ipod interface.

Well, I admit that I don't rip with iTunes. I use EAC to rip to WAV and then convert with iTunes to various formats. Works perfectly. I'm not really sure what you mean about it changing the tags of songs. But as for sound quality, that's why I got the iMod. Most people (who've heard it) agree it's among the best sounding portable sources available.

And rockbox ruins the whole smart playlist advantage of iTunes.

To each his own, of course. Not everybody would use the smart playlist functionality of the iPod as much as I do. I mean, I cannot tell you the extent to which I have micromanaged my music listening by genre and subgenre and rating and so on. But I LOVE it. And I can't believe more people haven't taken advantage of it. I think most iTunes haters have never used it, and some might even change their minds if they did.

But I have no intention of spending my evening battling the forces of iPod hatred. I'm signing off for the night. Enjoy your music however you enjoy it best.

 

[EsthetiX]

Anyway, we're getting waaay off track here. I already got my answer (which was MEDIAMONKEY

)

 

[otprof]

Quote:

Originally Posted by OverlordXenu /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well, itunes is pretty bad. I mean, it freaking changes the tags of songs... And using it to rip...ARE YOU CRAZY? EAC in secure mode to FLAC with correct settings is the only way anyone should rip, then use dbpoweramp to convert to OGG Vorbis or LAME mp3... And ipods...Yes, horrible, horrible sound output. Functional? Hardly.

What's the point, really? If the question is how to sync songs on a shuffle without iTunes, use that as the subject of the post (or better yet, search), not an all-caps flame.

 

[blessingx]

Quote:

Originally Posted by OverlordXenu /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well, itunes is pretty bad. I mean, it freaking changes the tags of songs... And using it to rip...ARE YOU CRAZY? EAC in secure mode to FLAC with correct settings is the only way anyone should rip, then use dbpoweramp to convert to OGG Vorbis or LAME mp3...

With great trepidation I get involved in this debate as any time Apple is mention people get crazy here. It's usually about self-definition. Oh what fun to be young. You sure you don't want to use jeans or radio stations instead? With as simple as iTunes is, why is it Head-Fi is the only place people don't seem to know how to use it? iTunes changes tags if you want it to. It organizes by DB structure or it leaves your files alone. It gives you choice. What a horrible feature. As for specific release issues, so has every media organizer I know.

As for EAC in secure v. iTunes with error correction v. CD Paranoia v. several other options I've yet to see a test of quality rips. In fact hardware plays more in importance than the software in rips so we should start there. It's why when I've had a PC with EAC and a Mac with iTunes I've got better rips with each at times. EAC does have much better reporting than others and that's its best feature if you ask me. As for why you'd want DBPowerAmp to get involved or why you have a preference for Ogg Vorbis or LAME at high bitrates, well to each its own.

Sorry everyone. Seems there's a bunch of caps in this thread AND I FORGOT TO USE THEM.

 

[feckn_eejit]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kabeer /img/forum/go_quote.gif To be honest Apple have done a decent job of making a stylish, functional product, along with a software that is simple to use. And it just plain works. For the average consumer most other solutions are more fiddly.

Just wanted to quote for truth, well said.

 

[ozz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by blessingx /img/forum/go_quote.gif With great trepidation I get involved in this debate as any time Apple is mention people get crazy here. It's usually about self-definition. Oh what fun to be young. You sure you don't want to use jeans or radio stations instead? With as simple as iTunes is, why is it Head-Fi is the only place people don't seem to know how to use it? iTunes changes tags if you want it to. It organizes by DB structure or it leaves your files alone. It gives you choice. What a horrible feature. As for specific release issues, so has every media organizer I know. As for EAC in secure v. iTunes with error correction v. CD Paranoia v. several other options I've yet to see a test of quality rips. In fact hardware plays more in importance than the software in rips so we should start there. It's why when I've had a PC with EAC and a Mac with iTunes I've got better rips with each at times. EAC does have much better reporting than others and that's its best feature if you ask me. As for why you'd want DBPowerAmp to get involved or why you have a preference for Ogg Vorbis or LAME at high bitrates, well to each its own. Sorry everyone. Seems there's a bunch of caps in this thread AND I FORGOT TO USE THEM.

very well said.

 

[GreatDane]

When I first started using iTunes I wanted to scream at it...and probably did. After a short time I began to use it with no problems and found that other programs don't have all the options that iTunes does that makes it work so well with my iPods.

 

[ozz]

apple is not perfect but i find that most of their stuff just works without
a lot of if any trouble.

 

[EsthetiX]

okay.. i dont want quicktime installed. Doesnt iTunes installation force you to have quicktime?

 

[terrymx]

I don't understand why a thread about what software to send songs end up talking about eac error correction, but.

I use winamp for all my portable syncing, it works very well aslong as you set up your media library. For devices that isn't an ipod, you can set a directory the song automatically go to. Goodluck with the more advance options, but that is all I need.

EsthetiX: Itunes auto install quicktimes with it. I uninstalled quicktime, but itunes wouldn't load after that.

The thing I like most about Itunes is the everything in one window for the music library, what winamp and foobar lacks. Itunes need to be faster, some hundred songs are okay, but when its 3000 songs it feel slow to get around. Also need wider id3 recognition. But I like Apple for keeping it simple. I missed the clean apple design, so I decided to: