Have a Cowon myself - Bought GF iPod - iTunes Arggghh for single songs

Kintarō Hattori

Hey Folks,

I have a Cowon A2 myself and putting MP3's on it is great as it's mass storage compliant. I bought the Girlfriend an iPod though and I'm finding it headwrecking trying to put music on it. Putting albums on it isn't so bad, but trying to put on individual songs is annoying as hell.

I have a folder in my MP3 directory called Damn Fine Tunes, which is made up of individual songs and I'd like to put this on her iPod, but iTunes doesn't seem to let you pick a folder itself and pop it on the iPod. I think I need an id3 tag editor that will let me say that these songs all come from the same album if you know what I mean. I think this is the only way I can get these on, without having to transfer them across one by one.

Can anyone recommend me an editor that let me edit the tags in this folder in one go?

Many thanks.

muckwarrior

Mp3 tag, simple but effective.

astec123

Another one is "the godfather".

http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/

BTW good on you for picking a player with some decent options!

Dont forget to visit your local friendly forum for all the latest info regarding your new player

http://iaudiophile.net

And for her

www.ipodlounge.com

Enjoy.

A

muckwarrior

BTW, I love the way that you felt the need to point out that the iPod didn't belong to you

Kintarō Hattori

Thanks guys,

They are helpful alright! Yeah I sell MP3 players as part of my job, so I get the benefits of lots of different players. I had an iRiver H140- I think among the best MP3 players ever, superb sound quality. I didn't use it much anymore, so I needed something with a bit more functionality than music, so aka the Cowon. Great piece of kit, excellent reviews. It's really hard to fault it.

Indeed, I had to point out it wasn't mine. I have far more sense than to go out and buy an iPod. I was going to buy her an iAudio A5, but I don't think she would have appreciated the greatness of it! In the end I realised she'd probably prefer the iPod because it is more fashionable and pretty fool proof to use. I don't think she'd see the benefits of the Cowon.

BTW - Having been so used to Winamp it was hard to see past it, I just figured out how to solve my problem with iTunes. With Winamp, a playlist is just a list, but it seems it's much more with iTunes. I created a playlist of my folder and I imported it into iTunes. It then copied the playlist and songs onto her iPod. It's pretty nifty, easier in that respect than Winamp, but I still don't like iTunes. I'd rather have Winamp any day.

carrotcake

you can just drag and drop the folder/songs into the itunes library, or select all in the browse dialog for adding a single file

cormie

So what are you doing with your H140 now you have an X5?

I use tagscanner, does what I want to do and is very easy to use.

You can tag based on location, so if you have C:/windows/desktop/music/various artists/damn fine tunes/

you can tag, using the tag processor tab in the program so it uses VA as artist, DFT as album and then the file name as title. Also, if you then want to take music from an iPod/Creative etc, and they are only arranged by ID3 tag from that, you can use music renamer tab so it will create folders from the ID3 tag.

Here are my config settings

[Settings]
Translit=0
Capitalization=0
Underscores=0
Spaces=1
Autosave=0
Recurse=1
SpaceAsDelim=0
ExistTags=2
TAGpreview=1
Export=0
ListSort=1
LastFolder=C:\Documents and Settings\--\Desktop\Temp\Music\Rip\!TAG!
ID3v2Priority=1
RenameMask=%1\%3\%7 - %2
TagMode=3
ListSortOrder=1
ListColumnOrder=i0:w170:vt,i1:w150:vt,i2:w150:vt,i3:w150:vt,i4:w50:vt,i5:w150:vt,i6:w50:vt,i7:w100:vt,i8:w150:vt,i9:w70:vt,i10:w120:vf,
PListColumnOrder=i0:w170:vt,i1:w182:vt,i2:w50:vt,i3:w170:vt,i4:w46:vt,i5:w150:vt,i6:w170:vt,i7:w44:vt,
Language=English
TagMode2=7

[Paths]
Lines=0


[Renamer]
Lines=7
Line1=%1 - %3\%7 - %2
Line2=%1 - %4 - %3\%7 - %2
Line5=%7. %1 - %2
Line0=%1 - %2
Line4=%7 - %2 (%T)
Line3=%7 - %2
Line6=Track_%7

[Generator]
Delimiters=-
Title=%f
Artist=%U
Album=%D
Year=0
Track=0
Genre=11
Info=
Capitalization=0
Action=0
UseDefisBlock=1

[Export]
Format=0
Fields=101111110001110
LinkType=0
Url=
UseLinks=0
Fields0=0

Fields1=1
Fields2=2
Fields3=3
Fields4=4
Fields5=5
Fields6=6
Fields7=7
Fields8=8
Fields9=9
Fields10=10
Fields11=11
Fields12=12
Fields13=13
Fields14=14

[Freedb]
Server=http://freedb.freedb.org/~cddb/cddb.cgi
Mail=xdev@narod.ru
UseProxy=0
Proxy=
ProxyPort=
ProxyUser=
ProxyPass=
Sites=0

Just paste that into the default settings text yolky in program files/tag scanner and it should have the right settings ready to tag. Always test with a tester folder/mp3 first so you don't mess up your collection. When you're happy with it, you can choose any amount of files to tag:)


That's another thing I hate about mp3 players that go by tag only. It will put every artist on your player into the artist directory so if you have 50 albums by bands and then you have 50 compilation albums with say 20 different artists on each, you're going to have 1,000 artists in the artists directory who you only have one song of and 50 who you have an album of. This is really annoying when browsing through a friends DAP to have a look at what artists they have. Whereas, with file tree, you get to see it exactly like it is. So much handier I think.

Kintarō Hattori

Hi Cormie,

Thanks for all that- makes life a little easier! Yeah I hate going by the ID3 tags, I wish the manufacturers would all switch over to a folder bases system. It would make life so much easier for everyone.
Hmnn I miss my H140 for music alright, I gave it to my brother. The A2 is a good all rounder, but it's definetly not as good when it comes to just music. But I can't complain, I kinda stopped listening to music on the train, and started reading instead - probably a better thing anyway!!!

cormie

Lucky brother:D I have my H140 still with rockbox, it's brilliant and I'm not going to upgrade until there is something better for music. I can't concentrate when reading, my mind wanders so music is definitely the choice on transport for me:)

Mr E

Use Media Monkey as a replacement for iTunes. Lets you copy single tunes, albums, artists, whatever you want.

TempestSabre

You can just re-tag them in iTunes either, its just as easy. Select all the tracks and in the right click menu select "get info". Then enter the album name. You can sort by "date added" to group them for easy selection.

Personally I think tagging is a pain in the butt. I use Media Monkey some of the time myself.

Civilian_Target

I second the nomination for "The Godfather" - takes a wee bit of getting used to, but extremely powerful. Read the tutorial...

Kintarō Hattori

Hi Guys,

Many thanks for the great links, programs and sound advice. I've finally got it all sorted out. I hate iTunes, I'm not overely fond of the iPod, I'm going to sit her down and make her learn it while I enjoy the ease of my Cowon!!!

Regards,
Liam