Best MP3 Utilites??

[Thanatos340 1]

I am looking for suggestions from other here with large MP3 collection on what software they use to Maintain their Collections (Files not Libraries)??

I had about 80gb of MP3s that I personally ripped from my CD collection. Every File and ID3 Tag was perfect and consistent. Now a friend has given me a copy of their 40gb Collection.. But It is ugly as hell. Missing tags, Incomplete Tags, No consistency to Naming (same Band/Artists Spelled 5 Different ways) (Files and/or Tag info) No structure at all. I need to clean it up so I can merge it with my collection.

So it looks like I needs several things..
1) Something that will Correct all the Tags from a consistant and accurate online datbase (In HUGE Batch Mode). One at a time would take years)

2) Something that will rename the Files based off the corrected Tags and then create Artist\Album\ Directory structure one the Tags are fixed.

3) finally something that will Merge the two collections. Probably 80% or more will be duplicates, In which case I want to Keep the MP3 from my Collection and just fill in whatever I am missing from the new collection.

I have used Tag Scanner in the past which is great at Changing File Names from Tag info but sucks at creating Tags.

I bought Fixtunes to try to identify the songs with missing and incomplete Tags but after running 5000 songs through it only identified about half and even those sill had 100s of mistakes even on ones it said were 100% accurate and would still have the same Bad\Artist spelled several different ways. (Is it AC\DC, AC-DC, AC_DC or ACDC.. The software says all are correct and I end up with 4 Different Folders for the same band.)

What magic utils do you guys use to keep your collections clean and organized?

(I will cock slap the first dumbass that suggests that functionally illiterate POS iTunes.)

[GTAVercetti 0]

You need

Media Monkey

I use it. Free, rename files based on Amazon or from tags or vice-versa. Also uses FreeDB when importing a new CD.

Can rip mp3's using LAME encoder.

Not sure about a merge though. But it does have search functions to bring up duplicates. Also can sort by missing tags (ie. bring up all files missing an album tag).

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[Dokeman 0]

i use this and its great
http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

It will tag the files based on name and vise versa. Also has an option for getting tag info from freedb or amazon.

[Thanatos340 1]

Quote

rename files based on Amazon or from tags or vice-versa

In Batch Mode?? I am dealing with 1000`s of songs here. I have seen many apps that will do this one at a time but not many that do it well for this many songs.

Same for the Duplicates, even iTunes will show me a List of Duplicates but then I have to manually check the songs I want to delete. When I am looking 20,000 or more duplicates, That is A LOT of clicking.

[GTAVercetti 0]

Quote

Quote

rename files based on Amazon or from tags or vice-versa

In Batch Mode?? I am dealing with 1000`s of songs here. I have seen many apps that will do this one at a time but not many that do it well for this many songs.

Same for the Duplicates, even iTunes will show me a List of Duplicates but then I have to manually check the songs I want to delete. When I am looking 20,000 or more duplicates, That is A LOT of clicking.

The amazon is by album (otherwise, it would never be found). But renaming from the tags or vice-versa is by batch. When I moved all my files to be in folders by album, that is how I did it.

the duplicate thing, I have not seen a free program (or a pay one for that matter - I stopped looking after I got Media Monkey) that will delete dupes automatically. This is because the file is not really a dupe if it is a separate directory. Only a program that compares the exact structure would work. And that seems needlessly complicated.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[Bolas 5]

Along the same lines, does anyone know have any MP3 editors?

Like if you wanted only part of a song or to cut out the 3 minutes of dead air.

Stupidity if left untreated is self-correcting
If ya can't be good, look good, if that fails, make 'em laugh.

[GTAVercetti 0]

Quote

Along the same lines, does anyone know have any MP3 editors?

Like if you wanted only part of a song or to cut out the 3 minutes of dead air.

Audacity

Very handy. The only problem I have found is that I cannot do VBR when saving the new file. But I just save at a really high CBR to compensate.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[JackC 0]

I've used musicmatch to download track tags and do renames acording to tag data automatically an album at a time. I don't know if it will handle larger batches though, I've never tried it.

Edit: just tried it with 5 albums (76 tracks). It found all of the songs OK but got the wrong album if that track appeared on several. It then gives you a choice. Super rare stuff that's not in the database, you're on your own. Once the tags are set, it will rename all the files acording to your preferences. It will merge collections too. I have the free version of musicmatch 9.

[GTAVercetti 0]

Quote

I've used musicmatch to download track tags and do renames acording to tag data automatically an album at a time. I don't know if it will handle larger batches though, I've never tried it.

I think musicmatch is too big of a program for me. I only use it to buy music...although they raised their prices so even that is up for grabs.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.