MediaMonkey vs ITunes
Atul Kanagat -- Tue, 07/20/2010 - 14:33
I have been using ITunes for ripping CDs to my hard drive based server and playing back with both ITunes and MediaMonkey. It is all very frustrating, hopefully I am doing something wrong and easy to correct. I find that MediaMonkey sounds better (both ripping and playback) but Itunes is way better for organizing and retrieving files, especially for classical music.
Does anybody have any experience with these GUIs?
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I have a large (1000+ CDs) classical collection on my music server. I've found that most media library/playback software does a very poor job of handling classical music, including both iTunes and MediaMonkey. The solution I eventually landed on was using dbPowerAmp for ripping, and J River Media Center for organizing/playback.
dbPowerAmp (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/) is easily the most advanced ripper available - lots of commercial ripping services and radio stations use it, as well. Two things stand out. First, it uses a clever online database to be able to guarantee error-free rips with a single ripping pass on most CDs, thereby halving the rip time. Second, it retrieves metadata from multiple different services, including AMG and GD3, which have much more complete and accurate metadata, particularly with classical CDs. You can define and fill out your own custom metadata tags as well - say, Conductor, Era, Instrument, Work Type, or Venue - which plays nicely with J River.
J River (http://www.jrmediacenter.com/) is the most complete library manager I've found - it makes iTunes look like a little toy. There are plenty of capabilities there, but two that are relevant to this discussion: First, it supports all of the common protocols for bit-perfect playback on Windows (wave out, ASIO, and WASAPI). iTunes does not support bit-perfect output on Windows at all. Second, JR allows you to define and/or read custom metadata tags, and create various browsing views based on those tags. So, presuming you've done the work to add these tags, you can, for example, browse all Symphonies by Beethoven conducted by Bernstein.
Of course, both of these programs cost actual money (dbPA is ~$35, JR ~$50, if I recall correctly). But this is definitely an instance where you get what you pay for.
Up until reading this thread, I would have said iTunes for its ease of use. I slightly played with MediaMonkey but not enough to give up the simplicity of iTunes. There are a lot of features that I wish iTunes did have, and its updates doesn't really add any advanced tools at all... whatever the updates do, they are well hidden from the GUI. I will check JRiver when I get home tonight.
Consumer Priority Service
Im no computer nut but if you take the time to get into J.River (or Media Monkey) you may find it to way better than iTunes. You can try it for one month free as well. When I first got into computer audio I found http://www.computeraudiophile.com/ to be most helpfull.
Thanks Scott. That is very helpful. Do you know if JR will play Apple Lossless files? I have about 5,000 CDs on a hard drive based server all encoded in Apple Lossless that I need to convert into a J River Library.
Thanks.
Atul,
JR plays any of the major formats, including Apple Lossless.
Scott
I use dBpoweramp and J.River 15. I first got Media Monkey bit like J.River best. Another good ripping program is EAC (Exact Audio Copy). Its free but again I prefer dBp. J.River 15 is by far the best Media Centre I have encountered.
Another good thing about dBp is the Batch Converter. You can convert all your files to any format you like. Its easy; even I can do it!