Media Monkey Error & Genre Disgust

[breakfastchef]

I know that a lot of you like Media Monkey. I downloaded it and am giving it a test today. I ran into a problem when I double clicked an file to be played with the built-in media player.

Bad direct sound driver. Error: 887800978

Any idea what this means?

Also, as a point of interest, I hate genre tags. The tags provided by online databases or the CD itself are either wrong or too specific. This means that using an app that creates auto-playlists, puts tunes that do not belong in the mix. Example: the first B-52's album is tagged with a genre of Blues when it should be more accurately tagged with a genre of Alternative or something similar. How do you all deal with genre tags?

[doniago]

I check the genre tags when encoding CD's to make sure they read what I want them to read. If it's a non-CD situation I just make sure to review them within MM and make corrections as necessary.

Not sure what the big deal is there, honestly...

In regards to the error message, I suggest making sure you're using the most current version of your sound drivers.

Not sure why this was in X5 Recordings either...

[breakfastchef]

I check the genre tags when encoding CD's to make sure they read what I want them to read. If it's a non-CD situation I just make sure to review them within MM and make corrections as necessary.

Not sure what the big deal is there, honestly...

In regards to the error message, I suggest making sure you're using the most current version of your sound drivers.

Not sure why this was in X5 Recordings either...

With over 2500 tracks ripped, it is a bit of a chore to go through and change genres that have been arbitrarily assigned by some 'organization' to genres that make more sense to me. There must be fifteen different genres for Alternative, or example, when the single category of Alternative is fine by me. I am going to have to change genres one folder at a time with some softwre that can do genre tag edits on entire folders. Any suggestions?

Sound drivers on my PC are current. Just looking to see if anyone has expereinced this error message and might shed some light on the subject.

As to why I posted this in X5 recordings...where would you prefer I posted it? You are a mod; put it where you think it belongs. Perhaps it belongs in the general X5 forum; that is not my call at this point.

[doniago]

Dude, I'm not trying to upset you. I thought maybe you'd put it in Recordings by accident or something. Anyway, I moved it to "Music" for lack of a better idea.

Afraid I've never seen that error message before. Perhaps try a reinstall of DirectX?

What you could do if you've got your _folders_ organized properly by Genre is use MM to re-tag based on file/folder structure. That might save you some time. You can also sort your MM display by genre, which will at least allow you to edit everything based on Genre X at one time instead of needing to 'hunt and peck' for it. Another possibility would be to create a Playlist of all music files that are _not_ of whatever Genres you want to use. This would make it easier to see what edits you still need to make.

Anyway, sorry if I upset you, wasn't aiming to do that. Hopefully some of this helps. I have suggested a subforum for music organization software and such, but that appears to be...er...in-progress.

[breakfastchef]

Thanks for your suggestions. I actually have all of my music in a folder structure that works great with my X5L - Artist>Album>Tracks. Since I have an X5, I never thought about looking for a more appropriate categoy. Music suits me fine.

Anyway, is there app out there that can make the tagging process easier than going one track at a time. If I could change the genre of an artist folder at one shot, that would mean only 250 potential edits rather than 2000+ individual track edits to change genres.

All of this perversion with genres came about when I read about MusicIP Mixer in one of the X5 threads. This app makes auto-playlists based on tag information. I thought this would be pretty cool, but I was getting Ray Charles (seed song), The B-52s, Billy Joel and Gang of Four in a 15 song mix. It occurred to me that my genres might need to be changed to get a better mix result.

[doniago]

You _can_ edit multiple tracks with MM. Just select all of them, then right-click and select properties, type in the Genre (or what-not) that you want, and you're all set. Note that it might take a few seconds/minutes to update significant numbers of tracks (you can see the status at the bottom).

[Zeus's Uncle]

For genre editing, just tag them as whatever you want them to be, whatever makes sense to you and your collection. Note that with id3v2 you can make up your own genres and aren't limited to the small set that is available in id3v1. MM makes it easy to do that. In fact it's really easy to merge genres. For instance if you have some that are tagged as Rock and some as Rock & Roll, and you just want them all to be Rock. Go to Library / Genre and then click on Rock & Roll, hit F2 or click again and type Rock. It will update all the files and make them all Rock. One setting you'll probably want to check is in Options / Library / Tags & Playlists. There is a checkbox titled "Update tags when editing properties" that you will likely want to check. That way, when you update the properties of a file (you're actually updating the information in the database) it will also save the changes to the file itself on the hard drive. You can also install a plugin called Magic Nodes which will allow you to write SQL queries to create views of your music. This can be very useful for updating your music to get a set of music that is missing a tag or really almost anything (if you're familiar with SQL you know what I mean).

Also, take note of the <Album Artist> field. As far as I know, this is a MM specific field, it's not part of id3. It's beneficial for mix albums, where you can set the main artist for the whole album (perhaps it to Various Artists if it is just a mix and not remixed tracks). That way the tracks are still tagged with the proper artist, but if you use <Album Artist> tag to make your synchronization mask for the X5 then compilation discs will all end up in one folder. You'll likely need to update most of your mix albums inside of MM but they are easy to spot when scrolling through the Albums in the treeview or again you could create a SQL query to find them.

[breakfastchef]

Outstanding information, Zeus' Uncle. I expect nothing less from your posts.