22 Oct 2005
Request for advice
Readers, I would like some advice from you.
I am about sick of the crappy music-playing and -recording software that came pre-installed on my Dell desktop PC. Here’s the crap I am currently using:
- For listening to CDs and MP3 files: Musicmatch Jukebox 10
- For ripping audio tracks from CD into MP3 files: Musicmatch Jukebox 10
- For burning MP3 files onto CD: Sonic RecordNow, Audio module
- For making copies (disc-to-disc) of audio CDs: Sonic RecordNow Copy
Musicmatch Jukebox is bloated and obnoxious; I dislike the interface; I dislike the way it handles “playlists”; it nags me incessantly to pay money for an upgraded “premium” or “gold” edition of itself; worst of all, it’s unreliable and sometimes it hangs and/or crashes for no discernible reason. I’d just as soon use Windows Media Player, but WMP won’t let me rip tracks into MP3 format unless I pay extra for it.
Sonic RecordNow has a disconcerting habit of cutting off the last three seconds of every song when I make copies of CDs. It seems to do an acceptable job of burning MP3s, though.
I’m willing to pay for a good suite of software that would perform the four tasks I listed above. Any recommendations, readers?
Kill Musicmatch. The first thing I do whenever I get a new computer is get rid of that abomination.
I would think either iTunes or Windows Media Player should be able to do all that stuff (with the possible exception of disc-to-disc; I only have one CD drive anyway, so I’ve never tried that).
Between those two, iTunes is probably preferable, even though I hate Macs. It takes a bit longer to start up than WMP, but it seems to burn CDs MUCH faster.
The only drawback that I can see to iTunes is if you have a portable MP3 player that isn’t an iPod; it doesn’t seem to work with those.
Dadahead
October 22nd, 2005 at 17:17permalink
I sure didn’t need much in the way of encouragement to get rid of that execrable Musicmatch Jukebox. That baby’s outta here.
What was keeping me using it was its ability to rip audio files into MP3 format. I downloaded CDex, free software, which enables me to do that, and then uninstalled Musicmatch.
Musicmatch, after “uninstalling,” left behind about half a ton of cruft on my hard drive and in the Windows registry, of course. It took me the better part of an hour to really get rid of it, and I know there’s still orphaned traces of it here and there in the Registry.
This is why people give up on Windows altogether and move to Linux. Why I, a professional UNIX system administrator, am still running Windows XP at home is either one of the mysteries of our age or (more likely) a testament to my innate laziness and sloth.
I don’t share your anti-Mac sentiment, but I dislike the price tag, which is what keeps me in the Intel world.
dumpendebat
October 23rd, 2005 at 14:16permalink