Need MediaMonkey Help

[modman]

I am proposing to use a MediaMonkey program to rip my CD collection onto my new HTPC. I downloaded the basic version to my main home desktop and ripped one CD into FLAC format. It worked well, but I have a few questions before I commit whole hog to this. Can you help?

1. For the trial rip, the program ripped the CD into two different folders -- one in FLAC format and one in mp3 192 kbps format. That is EXACTLY what I wanted, but I did not remember selecting the dual rip as an option. Is this standard procedure for the program?

2. It appears that, in addition to the standard tags applied to each track (Artist, Album, Genre, etc.), MM lets you add "classification" tags (e.g. High Energy, Sunday Morning)...but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to add these. The program's help screens are not much help. Any clues?

3. Is the use of the Volume Leveling feature recommended? I sure hate gain differences between different tracks/albums, but does this affect sound quality?

Thanks

 

[modman]

Follow Up...

Or should I use Winamp Pro to do this cataloging and playing?

 

[MDS]

It all comes down to personal preference as to which program to use to do ripping and tagging of your CD collection. I do it manually using Sound Forge.
It was a good idea to try MediaMonkey first before committing to using it for the whole collection. You could do the same with Winamp or even Windows Media Player.

The program's setup or preferences menus allow you to configure options like which forrmats to save in, whether to keep the original WAV and the format of the directory layout used to save the files.

There are a few different schemes for volume leveling but most of them calculate an offset and store it in the ID3 tag under a specially named key. The catch is that you have to use a player that understands that particular key, so other players may not understand the key MM uses. Players ignore unknown keys so it won't affect other players if an unknown key is present in the tag.