Looking for new media player

[MrPirate2882]

Hey all.

I have always used iTunes on my laptop, and it has done me well. However, now I'm promoting to a desktop, and with that comes a lot more space. I want to start storing my files as FLACs, but I need a decent media player that will rip CDs as well.

The ultimate feature would be if it could store two copies of every file, FLAC for playing on the PC and AAC to sync with my iPod. Like I said space is not an issue at all on the PC, I just don't want to have to manually rip it in two different formats. I don't suppose this exists?

Either way what do people recommend? Thanks.

 

[Adam]

I'm not that familiar with FLAC files, but I just wanted to give my process. I still use iTunes, but I use the AIFF encoder for my lossless versions and then convert those all to AAC for my smaller-file-size versions. If you haven't done it, iTunes can convert multiple songs from one format to another.

Just wanted to throw that out there as an option.

Adam

 

[MrPirate2882]

Hmm, I would like it to be automatically really (click rip and it gets the lossless version then converts to lossy in the background) but that would be acceptable. I would use ALAC instead of FLAC if allowed me to do it well enough, but don't you end up with two copies of each file in iTunes this way? I mean if you want to listen to it, so you click Artist -> Whoever, then wont it show both versions? I'd prefer it to only show the lossless ones, and then only put the lossy ones on the iPod.

 

[Adam]

There might be a way to do it automatically in the background. I've never looked into that (it was years ago that I ripped my collection). If I recall correctly, the way that I got it to not show up as two copies in iTunes is this: before I converted all of the files to AAC, I changed the folder that was to be used as my iTunes library folder. It then put all of the AAC files into the new folder. I think that I might have had to then wipe clean the music list and reimport from the library that I wanted to use on my PC. That's what I remember, but it has been a few years.

 

[MrPirate2882]

Ah see the thing is that I plan to be continuously ripping new CDs. Yours is a good solution if you just want to rip the collection once and keep two copies, but I think if I ripped a new CD with your method, then the lossless files will go into the new folder and get mixed up with the lossy ones, or it would just rip straight to lossy and playing it in iTunes will point there. Thanks anyway.

I might look into MediaMonkey a bit more tomorrow. Seems to support ripping to FLAC, conversion and iPod sync, might be the best I can get. Then again I do have a few songs that I bought off the iTunes store... hmm.

What I'd really like is to be able to maintain 3 databases: one is stuff I've ripped since getting my new PC with terabytes of space, so FLAC. One is the current stuff off my Laptop, which is a mix of AAC ~196kbps, iTunes store with DRM, and iTunes Plus without DRM. The other one is automatically generated AACs from the other two, creating each song once from the best available source, to sync with iPod. Then I need a decent audio player that does the same thing, displays one copy of each song, and gets the best quality version from the 2 databases to play.

If someone could code that up for me that'd be great, thanks.

 

[avarsity921]

Mediamonkey will automatically convert files on-the-fly in the background if you pay for the full version. I haven't bought the full version yet, so I don't know if it saves the converted files in a separate location. I just assumed the function was mainly for converting music from lossless to lossy and storing it on an mp3 player. I can't find any options in Mediamonkey for keeping multiple databases, but you can probably accomplish the same effect using Mediamonkey's filters. Mediamonkey also does not natively support burning AAC/m4a files, but there is a not-free plug-in on the website that allows you to do it.
It also plays DRM music from iTunes just fine, at least on my computer.