Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with music and mp3

Can I use the iPod Nano MP3 player with my own headphones and non-itunes music?

katala — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:22:36 -0800

Can I use the iPod Nano MP3 player with my own headphones and non-itunes music? Sorry if this is a completely newb question but my google-fu is failing me. My old MP3 player (a Creative) just died and the only iPod I've ever owned is the shuffle which has proprietary headphones which can't be swapped out.

So I just have two quick questions about the iPod Nano if anyone is able to help?

1) Can I use my own headphones (Bose QuietComfort 2) with the iPod Nano?

2) Can I use my own music with the iPod Nano even if it wasn't purchased via iTunes?

Any advice you can offer would be very gratefully received! I'd also welcome your thoughts on the Nano if you have one, or on an alternative MP3 player in the $250 AUD or less range.

Thanks heaps :)
Katala

Where can I listen to Japanese train station melodies?

avocet — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 20:38:16 -0800

Where can I listen to Japanese train and bus station melodies and onboard announcements, preferably without installing RealPlayer? My previous go-to archive is 404ing. My Japanese is mediocre but good enough to help me navigate sites.

Loud speaker. Quiet speaker. Alternate at random.

TheSecretDecoderRing — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:41:24 -0800

I want to listen to my digital music player at work (technically, WMAs and not MP3s) through speakers rather than headphones. With the latter, all my songs sound fairly consistent in volume. With the former, they're all over the map and ditto for the dynamic range. Suggestions? I'm using PC speakers. They seem of good enough quality, but is that what's magnifying the variation in volume? Would a cheaper, weaker set of speakers actually make it better?

This is at work, so sound quality and bass isn't too important. And I keep the volume just loud enough so I can hear it, and the environment is usual office ambience/conversations. I've tried maxing out the speakers and adjusting the player, vice versa, and in between on both.

I'd prefer to avoid the hassle of normalization software, unless there's something out there for WMAs that's really easy and effective. USB access to the work computer is restricted. Hopefully others have had similar problems and have found workarounds as simple as just getting the right speakers. Thanks in advance.

Scratch n' Skip

cmoj — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:48:23 -0800

I have SRV mp3s that skip in exactly the same way as a CD I have. I've had a Stevie Ray Vaughan CD for as long as I can remember. I think it's from a remastered boxed set from the early 90's. Also, as long as I can remember it's skipped in places (you know, CD type skipping), but kept playing, so I dealt with it.

Nowadays I've got downloaded mp3s of all of this SRV material I already had on CD. Here's the weird thing: the mp3s skip in the same way as my old compilation CD. Even weirder, I don't have mp3s of that specific compilation. I believe the skipping is on an In Step reissue that's marked as being from 1999.

What's the deal? What could be the deal?

All I want for Christmas is to save a franklin on postage for a holiday CD

rileyray3000 — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:55:56 -0800

I used to send out a Christmas CD with holiday songs and clips from Movies and TV shows. It took a month to master and rip the CDs and 100 bucks in postage. What's a way to do this online instead? Is there somewhere I can POST a Christmas CD so people can listen online and download it if they want? This used to be my holiday project. It more or less consumed the last week of november and the first of december. So I stopped.

But I thought "If I can just take out the postage, it's not THAT awful. Ideally I'd like to have the tracks all in order and downloadable if people want. Is there a service that exists? How do I do it?

Will I get in trouble for posting mp3s to my blog?

hagelslaag — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:33:22 -0800

i am (surprise surprise) into blogs. and before i was into blogs, i was into music. now i like to post mp3s to my blog. is it a bad idea to label which song/artist it is -- as in, are there really crazy music coppers who will show up on my doorstep to arrest me? my blog's host is tumblr, which makes it easy to share an mp3 a day. should i just forgo labelling which songs i post? or is it pointless to even worry about this at all? i have no idea how intense lawyers are these days about persuing folks who share tunes online, and i don't want to get sued just 'cause i want to spread my love for joe meek.

How can i sync my android?

Iananan — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:21:19 -0800

I'm looking for an effective and hassle free way to sync small amounts of music (less than 6GB but more than 3GB) to my android phone. PC only. I use Mediamonkey for my ipod, and that works fine, but every time i plug my phone in, mediamonkey wants to delete all of my podcasts and ringtones, and i have to uncheck them all by hand, which is more hassle than just dragging and dropping the music, which is my current solution.

the missing sync looks promising, but will rely on windows media player, which i usually avoid like the plague, and either way isn't actually out for a while yet.

Doubletwist has been recommended (by google searching and lifehacker) but is effectively un-usable on windows, (it looks pretty smooth on macs, from videos, but fails to recognise my phone/build an effective library/read simple id3 tags/stay alive more than 3 minutes on windows)

Any suggestions?

Where can I find better music metadata?

imposster — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:47:48 -0800

Need more metadata for my music. I'm looking for track-by-track recording date/performers/composer/etc. mainly for jazz albums. Is there a source out there? Right now, I'm ripping my CD to FLAC with dBpoweramp using the AMG subscription to fill in the metadata. I'm making small changes as I go (mainly to the year and genre). but I'd really like to have the detailed information found in most liner notes. (For the albums I really care about, I'm keeping both the CD and the liners for reference). Is there a service out there that can provide this? AMG's data doesn't seem to go down to that level, nor does Musicbrainz. Certainly other music fans have done this manually already. Are they sharing it somewhere? Thanks for any help.

Should I buy a Tonium Pacemaker?

jonnyploy — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:54:53 -0800

Should I buy a Pacemaker if I am not a DJ and don't have all that much dance music? I am thinking of acquiring the above product which is a pocket-sized DJ system, however I'm worried that my music collection is unsuited. I do have a limited collection of funky house from the last few years but this is mainly in the form of Hed Kandi compilations. I have music spanning several genres including: soul (60s and 70s), funk (60s, 70s, 80s), britpop, 80s cheese, electro-pop from the last few years, it goes on...

Will I be able to effectively mix tunes from these different genres and therefore get good value for money from my purchase?

A secondary, related question: where online can I purchase vocal-only and instrumental versions of songs? I have tried itunes (obviously) and hit a blank. Are these even available to buy?

Cleaning up messy music folders

1024x768 — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:11:46 -0800

Help me clean up my messy music files I am embarking on a clean up of my enormously messy MP3 folders. After several computer switches, and crash+restore jobs I have approximately a dozen different folders containing between hundreds and thousands of MP3s each. The issue is each folder is at least a partial duplicate of several others. Each of these dozen folders contains subfolders in various organizational formats. There's far too many files for me to devote the time to manually eliminating duplicates. Confounding matters slightly is that many of the MP3s have woefully inadequate tagging/ID3 data.

This motley collection lives on a Macbook pro running 10.5. I'd like to find an app/script/method that does the following

1) Eliminates all the dupes
2) Cleans up the ID3 info

The cleaned up collection will then be put into an iTunes library which I will let keep things from getting too messy in the future. I would prefer to use iTunes due to ease of syncing with my iPhone, but if there is a truly compelling alternative that will take care of everything, I am willing to consider it.

I'd prefer a free method of doing this, but would shell out a little bit of scratch if there were an app out there that did exactly what I wanted.

I don't mind paying for music, but where can I get it?

NoraCharles — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:39:10 -0800

I don't mind paying a fair price for music I enjoy. Can someone please suggest a good mp3 download site? Requirements:

I don't want any site that will require me to download any additional software, I just want to be able to buy and then download the mp3 to a folder and be able to play it with any music program or mp3 player.

I'd like the selection to be popular music from the 60's forward.

I'd like a site that has a pay-per-download option as opposed to one with a monthly fee, as I probably won't be downloading too much - most likely just the occasional popular song that strikes my fancy or an old song I forgot I liked.

I'd prefer to stay away from sites that only accept paypal. I don't mind providing my Visa for it to be billed to.

I've searched here (and found a question from 2005) and Googled (getting far too many results), but would rather hear what the hive mind recommends.

Thank you in advance.

Em-Pee-Three

sycophant — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:29:30 -0800

A new version of MP3.com? I was answering this question and was reminded of how MP3.com used to be a few years ago. It was a site where musicians could upload MP3s and it was well indexed and stuff.

Is there an alternative to that these days?

soulSuX: I need music!

ElmerFishpaw — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 06:10:23 -0800

Its been a couplefew years and there is still no decent music sharing solution for mac? Theres got to be something, right? This is the only headache I have from switching to mac. Ive been told they search the same database but I dont buy it, soulSeeX on mac does not return anywhere near the results slsk does on PC. Same deal with solarseek and nicotine. Whats the secret?

Help me be less evil

serazin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:20:42 -0800

Is there such a thing as an independent, online music store? It seems to me that Apple and Amazon have a monopoly on online record sales now. I like to buy straight from the label if possible, but it isn't always (like right now I'm trying to buy the Micachu album but its on a British label and I'm in the US).

Is there any independent, online source for music? I'm imagining the Powell's of records.

How to fix an mp3 file that doesn't burn to CD in its entirety?

darwesh — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:57:31 -0800

One of my mp3 files does not get burned to CD in its entirety (using Windows Media Player). The actual duration is roughly 53 minutes, and the mp3 plays flawlessly all the way through in WMP, but only around 48 minutes gets burned to the CD. I don't get any errors from WMP when it's burning, but when I play the track on the CD it stops after about 48 minutes and goes on to the next track. I have tried the CD burning three times, so it's unlikely to be a problem with the CDs I used.

Any ideas what could be wrong or how I might go about figuring it out or correcting it? Here's a link to the file. Thanks!

That boy needs therapy

benzenedream — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:34:19 -0800

What are some of your favorite obscure electronic music singles? I'm looking for the kind of stuff where an otherwise unremarkable or unrecognized artist managed to release one perfect song. I am not interested in one-hit wonders as Wikipedia defines it -- I don't care if the song was ever popular or a club hit, just that it's good and interesting. Songs that creep onto your playlists despite not knowing or liking anything else by the same band are what I'm looking for, perhaps an excellent remix that managed to redeem a weak song. I tend towards artists such as Negativland, Lionrock, Aphex Twin, Prefuse 73, Amon Tobin, Girl Talk, DNTEL, Autechre, Avalanches, Jason Forrest, etc. but am looking for stuff far off the Pandora similarity radar.

How can I listen to and MANAGE my mp3 music collection/playlists over the internet?

gummo — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:12:24 -0800

How can I listen to and MANAGE my mp3 music collection/playlists over the internet? I have a large music collection (all mp3) at home that is pretty well organized into folders and properly tagged (finally). Nothing is really in playlists, and that is the next task I've set for myself. I need to organize my music into playlists so I can just click a playlist during a party, or while I'm kicking around the house. Shuffle just doesn't work on my collection. Too many whole albums with plenty of weird stuff popping up.

Organizing this music into playlists is proving very time consuming. Listening to thousands of songs and occasionally adding one to one playlist or another just isn't something I have been able to make much time for. It occurred to me that since I listen to music at work all day long, I could be accomplishing it there.

Bringing the music to work, even in batches, isn't really that feasible. What I need to be able to do is stream it to myself at work, by folder or artist or album, and occasionally add a song to one of my playlists (preferrably not by jotting it down in notepad and adding it at home later).

How can I do this?

[Requirements/limitations]

For the server at home, I have a few windows boxes (vista, win7, and xp), and could, if absolutely necessary, run a linux box or something.

For the client at work, I have an XP box. Web interface would be best. Some sort of small, non-intrusive windows app would be ok too.

I have used and don't really like Itunes, and prefer to avoid it if possible.

I use Mediamonkey at home to manage my music collection and like it very much.

I prefer open source or freeware, but am not opposed to buying something if it will do exactly what I need.

I prefer to avoid any kind of cloud storage or uploading of my music. My machine at home should be the server. No online server being involved would be best. I'm not interested in sharing, or public social music nonsense, or scrobbling, or music recommendations, or auto-tagging, or anything like that. I just want a client/server app to manage my music library.

I'm leaning towards Orb, but haven't tried it. It seems like overkill, and the sharing etc... aspect of it has turned me off a bit. I'm curious if there are better alternatives. However, if anyone has any direct experience with Orb (specifically with playlists), please let me know.

Thanks.

Help me find a CD player

LSK — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:28:53 -0800

Help me find a portable CD player. I'm looking for a portable CD player with all these traits:

- Plays CDs with mp3 files saved on them.
- Has a LCD screen (even a small one) showing basic information.
- Can be operated blindly and without removing it from my pocket.

I used to own a nice Sony one that did all these, but lost it. Help!

Does PC software exist that can compare the contents of 2 computer folders that each consist of tens of thousands of individual mp3 files, in order to find discrepancies between the two folders?

kristin — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 19:41:32 -0800

I have two drives, and each folder has some overlapping music, some music that isn't in the other folder, and some corrupted files (due to fire damage), which is why I cannot just merge the two together and let the duplicates of one overwrite the other - I don't want to overwrite a 'good' song with a corrupted, unplayable version. I am looking for software that could map the contents of both folders and show me which files they have in common, which would then identify which they do not, and allow me to create a new, clean, folder of music that has no duplicates and no corrupted files.

Does this software exist? Or, is there a better way to do this? Because the thought of doing this manually is making me a little sick.

itunes for the Android?

Squid Voltaire — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:51:36 -0800

Tips for mp3 sorting with the G1 (how to replicate iTunes heuristics)? Back when I had an iPod + iTunes setup, I would connect my mp3 player, and it would automatically remove the songs that I had listened to, and replace them with new music.

This new music would be roughly:
1/3 songs that I loved (5 stars),
1/3 songs that I didn't hate (more than 2 stars) and also hadn't listened to in at least a month, and
1/3 songs that I had never heard before or hadn't rated.

What's the closest approximation to this that I can achieve with my G1? The key features are clearly not hardware-related, and the OS is open, so it should be really easy to replicate this, right? I certainly would not mind installing new software on my desktop, nor would I mind paying for the apps.

I'm currently using Meridian, which does support rating. However, I'm not sure how to update the mp3 file on my desktop after rating it on my phone automatically.

What's the best way to turn PS3 into music player (with visualizations)?

idyllhands — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:42:45 -0800

Best way to turn PS3 into music player (with visualizations)? I want to set my PS3 up to play music files (FLAC and MP3), because I'm not happy with the built in Media Player. Are there any guides out there for installing Linux on a PS3 to get it to act as a media center? I don't care about watching tv on it, which most of the guides I've found seem to center on. Basically, I just need a nice GUI to be able to browse through albums by tags and a nice visual player would be great too. The Visual Players included with the PS3 got old quick, and unfortunately you can't add more...

I need new headphones - Any suggestions?

Rendus — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:12:26 -0800

What are the right headphones for me? Big head, normal ears, likes loud noises, $100-$200 budget. Mostly for listening to music on my iPod Touch, occasionally playing games on my computer using it's (reasonably competent) onboard audio. I understand the listening experience is subjective, but if I can narrow it down to a short list, I can work on getting my head on various items to see how they work for me. My Sennheiser HD212 headphones recently died, and I'm looking for a new pair. For those familiar with the particular combination of equipment, I usually used these phones at about 75% volume on my iPod Touch, although I do occasionally go up to 100%.

The HD212s just barely fit around my ears, and I found them to be reasonably comfortable - Larger cups would be fine, smaller is probably not feasible.

My normal listening environment is riding on the bus, so noise cancellation wouldn't be an unwelcome feature, but it's far from necessary.

I'm 6 feet tall, and prefer to keep my music player in my front left pocket - Cables long enough to do this are preferred. 4+ feet is great. If all else fails, though, I can use extensions without a problem.

My attention to detail in music is rather lacking, really - 192kbps LAME-encoded MP3s sound perfectly reasonable to me, although I prefer higher bitrates. I just as often listen to Pandora (which I believe is 128kbps), and it only occasionally causes me to grit my teeth at the audio quality. This may bias your answers in one of two ways - Low end phones, or phones that sound absolutely fantastic and should show me what I've been missing. Feel free to take either approach.

I'm generally more concerned with clear sound than deep bass. According to iTunes, I listen to Nightwish, Within Temptation, After Forever, Blackmoore's Night, Lacuna Coil and the like much more than Metallica, Rammstein, Stone Sour, etc.

If there's anything else you need to know, ask and I'll answer.

How to make the Mac play nice with my Sansa?

reenum — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:44:49 -0800

How to sync Macbook with a non-iPod MP3 player? I have a Sansa e250, and I love it. I also love my new Mac. However, I've been having a small issue with syncing music onto the Sansa.

On my old Windows machine, I used to have a Sansa folder on my hard drive and then would just sync both folders each week using a program called Allway Sync, which removed listened to MP3's and added on the new stuff I'd downloaded that week.

With the Mac, I can't find a similar program, possibly due to the dominance of iTunes.

So, Hive Mind, is there a program or method I can use to get this functionality on my Mac?

Help Us Rejoice!

kwaller — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:49:44 -0800

MazelTovFilter: A friend is getting married this weekend, and he's having a hard time finding a decent MP3 version of "Hava Nagila" for the reception. Can the hivemind help? He's looking for something somewhat traditional. It'd be easiest if he could download it from iTunes, though he's willing to travel for a CD in Greater Boston.

He has found:
—a version by GOLEM! with the lyrics "have a tequila" (too wacky)
—an instrumental version by violinist André Rieu (tempo changes are a little extreme)
—a David H. Yakobian version ("too synthy," reversed chorus and verses)
—an Israel Singers version (part of a medley; still synthy)
—a Bobby Morganstein version (not a fan of his Hebrew accent)

Thanks so much for your help!

iTunes is randomly deleting songs...which ones?

arniec — Thu, 28 May 2009 07:18:49 -0800

Help me fix this absolute mess of my digital music collection which is in iTunes. Over 2300 CDs, but some are missing.... HELP! Okay here's the details. In the 80s, 90s, and early 00s I amassed a fairly large CD collection, well over 2,000 CDs. many times in the past i had worked to rip all these CDs but never succeeded because of problems with CD data, etc. I also, being a Windows guy, waned a specific folder structure which added a lot of manual labor.

Giving up on my wish list, last year I decided I would just rip all my CDs using iTunes. I would let iTunes decide the folder structure, as I am an iPod user. I set iTunes to rip the CDs in Apple's lossless format, and I was not particular about the metadata figuring it's best to get the discs ripped, and I can go back and adjust the metadata to how I like it later (such as changing Phil Collins to Collins, Phil and so on). I set a computer to automatically rip CDs as they are inserted and did about 50 a week. Months later, I was done.

In that time I also have switched from being a Windows user to being a Mac user. I have also belatedly embraced digital music, no longer buying overpriced CDs and instead buying single songs or some albums on iTunes, Amazon, or some other online stores. My music collection is now an amalgam of my own ripped CDs in the Apple lossless codec, MP3s, M4As, etc.

In moving to being a Mac user, I put my music collection on an external drive hooked into a Mac Mini as the "server" and various other Macs in my house share the library. I set the Mac Mini to "Keep iTunes Music Organized". I figured since I had relinquished control of the folders to iTunes, I might as well leave it that way.

But here's the problem... I have since learned that checking the box to allow iTunes to keep the music folder organized can cause removal of data, so I turned it off about a month ago. But it was too late. I discovered this past week that at least 3 of the CDs I know I ripped are missing. Not just some songs, but entire CDs (my wife says iTunes is trying to give me taste as what I lost were the soundtracks to all 3 Beverly Hills Cop movies). Given that those 3 are gone I can only assume others are missing as well...but I have no idea which ones.

I'm now left with a problem. I want to validate all my CDs are there, and all songs on those CDs are there, but I don't want to have to manually pull 2300 CDs at an average of 10 songs per disc and then search iTunes to see if all the tracks are there or not. The amount of manual labor involved in doing that would be extraordinary.

I have thought about just saying "forget it" and reripping all 2300 CDs as that WOULD be quicker than the manual validation method, but I can't just start over as at least 100 songs I've paid for from the various sites are mixed in among the ripped tracks. (God only knows if I have lost tracks I bought from iTunes, etc. I have no real way to validate all those).

So what do I do? i need methods to either:
a) quickly and easily determine if my CDs are ripped in full

or

b) some method to extract the tracks bought from Amazon and iTunes, etc from the tracks I ripped myself so I can rerip all my CDs and reintegrate this music collection.

or

C) some other fix for this problem that will allow me to have a well-organized music library consisting of all the CDs I own plus all the tracks I have bought.

Where do I go from here??