How do you organize (and rip) your mp3's? Winamp, iTunes, I'm confused

[MattDUrben]

Hiya!

Ok, so far I've used Winamp to play my mp3's. 2 weeks ago I installed iTunes and have been very happy with it - created playlists and sorted all my mp3's.
The good thing about iTunes imho is to have all mp3's and you can organize them into playlists. (Winamp loads the playlist and has only the songs that are into the playlist.)

The "problem" I see now is, that when I want to exchange mp3's (ripping cd's with a higher bitrate), I've to delete the old ones and assign the new ones to the playlists, which can be loads of work...

What I'd love to have is something like this:

Playlists that automatically adds new songs that belong to the playlist (which can only be done when organizing the mp3's at the harddrive afaik).
I'd have to create a directory structure playlist like - that would be ok for me. But Winamp and iTunes can't do this, or is it possible?

How do you organize your songs? Any ideas about my problem?

Another thing I'd like to know which program (and settings) do you use to convert your cd's to mp3's that will match the quality of your (high end) headphones.

Cheers,
Matt =)

 

[trinkus79]

I use Media Monkey to rip my CD's to FLAC with 0 compression. You can then either play those, or convert them to MP3 for your portable. For playing I use Foobar2000 with ASIO output. I don't really make custom playlists or anything, I just listen to it all

. It is very easy to make playlists in foobar though, not sure if they will auto update or not. I used to try to do all that encode/re-encode stuff, then I got smart and bought a huge hard drive and just rip everything lossless. If I want it on my zune I usually rip it at 192kb mp3's (only really use it on the bus to/from work so I can deal with it).

 

[MrKazador]

I have them in folders...
Diana Krall-> 2002) Live in Paris-> *.mp3
I use Foobar2000 with Album List Panel and set it to Directory Structure.

 

[htbyron]

I use a folder structure (artist/album/filename). I use dbpoweramp to rip to FLAC and assign ID3 tags and place the files in this directory structure. I then use the dbpoweramp batch converter to create a separate set of directories, using the same structure and tag info but with the files converted to lame mp3 v0. I use foobar (with kernel streaming) for listening to FLAC files at my desktop, and I import the mp3 files into itunes for portable listening (I don't use itunes for home listening). Sorry I can't help with the playlist question, as I don't use that feature much (I listen to albums as a whole generally).

 

[MattDUrben]

Thank you very much. Just installed Fubar2k and I'll have closer look. At least f2k can handle flac, which isn't possible with iTunes.

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Al4x]

i use file struture

Music >
Artist >
(year) - Album Name >
File name

file name goes
artist - Album - Track # - Track title

i dont have enough space to record music at any higher than 320kbps vbr as i only have a laptop with 500gb across 2 drives with all music on both for backup

 

[Logistics]

I have the directories arranged by language, artist, album. Oh, but I rip to WAV. When I used to encode music into MP3s I used LAME in the command prompt with a highly modified init string for VBR.

 

[illkemist]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattDUrben /img/forum/go_quote.gif The good thing about iTunes imho is to have all mp3's and you can organize them into playlists. (Winamp loads the playlist and has only the songs that are into the playlist.) The "problem" I see now is, that when I want to exchange mp3's (ripping cd's with a higher bitrate), I've to delete the old ones and assign the new ones to the playlists, which can be loads of work...

Well, you don't really have to worry about this. As long as you do a good job of keeping things organized, iTunes is smart enough to keep all the metadata correct for each song, including ratings and playlists and song counts. I too was worried about re-ripping to Apple Lossless, but I realized that iTunes was just replacing songs (it gives you the option) and keeping the data associated with those songs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattDUrben /img/forum/go_quote.gif What I'd love to have is something like this: Playlists that automatically adds new songs that belong to the playlist (which can only be done when organizing the mp3's at the harddrive afaik). I'd have to create a directory structure playlist like - that would be ok for me. But Winamp and iTunes can't do this, or is it possible?

iTunes is great for keeping things automatically organized with smart playlists. For instance, I have playlists for songs that I haven't listened to in 4 weeks. Or songs, that I have rated 3-stars or above in the last 3 months.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattDUrben /img/forum/go_quote.gif How do you organize your songs? Any ideas about my problem? Another thing I'd like to know which program (and settings) do you use to convert your cd's to mp3's that will match the quality of your (high end) headphones. Cheers, Matt =)

Best thing to do is let iTunes keep your music organized. It creates its own directory structure. And I've been using ALAC with excellent results so far. Hope this helps.