Music woes

[The SSK]

Please excusr the triviality, maybe I should enlist the help of an average 7-year-old, but I’m having nothing but grief trying to transfer CDs to my Walkman (NWZ-E443). All this ripping and synching does my head in.

Here’s a typical problem: I’m trying to load ELP’s ‘Welcome Back My Friends’ (no value judgements, please) which is a 2CD set. The system doesn’t recognise it, so ripping and synching puts it into the machine as ‘unknown artist … unknown album … track 1, track 2’ etc.

What I’m trying to do is to (a) identify the artist, (b) rename the album, (c) rename the tracks and (d) put all the tracks on one album (e) in the order that they appear on the CDs. Oh, and it doesn’t help that track 5 on disc one has the same title as track 2 on disc 2 – but I can fudge that.

If I can work out the sequence of events, I first downloaded the two ‘unknown albums’ to the machine, thinking I could possibly do the editing in Media Player. Then I decided to erase them from the machine and instead do the editing in My Music. Then I used drag-and-drop to copy them into WALKMAN/Media/Music. I now have all nine tracks, duplicated, once with the name I gave them and once with ‘Track 1’ etc – and not in the order I want.

This bloody machine, which every second passenger on the bus seems to have the mastery of, is driving me insane.

[Mushroom_2]

Assuming you have ripped the Cd's to your computer, all your requirements can be fulfilled very simply by Mp3tag.

Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v2, MP4, OGG, FLAC, ...) (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/)

[stumpey]

Firstly due to copyrights, all this is probably illegal. But as your not copying and selling on, "Stuff em". If you've bought one format and just want to cross format for personal use, that should be allowed!

Having re read your post, I think what your doing wrong is trying to use the Sony software, it really is PANTS. Just RIP it as an Mp3 using Windows Media Player to your Hard drive. If WMP wont or cant fill in the details, just goggle them and fill them in manually. Get the thumb nail off some where like Amazon making sure you save as a jpeg and Bobs your Uncle, (And Fanny's your Aunt but thats a different story)! Its a pain doing all that typing but you only have to do it once. Its the same with the order of naming in options. Once its set, its set. The next album will probably load listings straight off the net! Just avoid that Sony software. Having a generic Mp3 copy means you should be able to load it on ANY machine not just Sony's.




Of course your real mistake was as you say, not getting a seven year old to do it for you!

[hellsbrink]

I've no idea what is being used to rip the CD, but if you are using WMP, SSK, then check your privacy settings as there is an option to "download" information from the internet. The same goes for iTunes and many other rippers.

Unfortunately, your problem is a common one. CD's do not generally have that little bit of code on the tracks to identify the track title. To get the track id you need to have the option "retrieve information from the internet" (wording will vary according to the software) checked, eject the cd and insert it again, then "voila", you should have all the track id's which should happily transfer to your mp3 player.

[Saab Dastard]

I can thoroughly recommend Bonkenc for creating mp3 files.

It's free, quick, efficient.

And most important, it's not iTunes or Windows media player.

SD