PC iPod software is a joke!

[Chimaera]

Hi all, my lovely wife just bought me a 30gig iPod for my birthday, which I duly set up on my PC, and have had no end of difficulties with it, it would unmount itself after a second and all sorts - quite simply it was annoying the piss out of me until I found the solution: Don't use the iPod software - I don;t know why, but it was clashing *horribly* with my system, but when I disabled and uninstalled it all, it worked fine with a free program called ephPod - do if any of you run into this problem give my solution a try - it worked beautifully here.

BTW for any of you that might be wondering - this thing is so far beyond cool you wouldn't even believe it :)

[melchior]

out of curiosity, what version of windows are you using?

and yes, musicmatch was a joke even before the iPod existed.

[Catt]

Why did apple choose to use musicmatch if its supposed to be so bad?

[Kwyjibo]

musicmatch is fine software for ripping CDs and its library management is better than the average PC mp3 player. I have a feeling these who factors influenced apple more than anything. If musicmatch ripped AAC i would use it to make my library back up.

[Chimaera]

I'm running windows XP pro, allowing me to hunt down and kill services at will :)

As for musicmatch, I never even got that far - that program is, as you say, a complete turd, albeit a turd with a good music library system.

I'm using CDeX to rip and encode the CDs (using LAME MP3 codec @192) , and then ephPod to upload them to the player.

[Catt]

Where can you download ephPod from?

[Chimaera]

unsurprisingly enough its...

http://www.ephpod.com/

[iJon]

yeah ephpod is great, i tell all my friends to not even install musicmatch, because it like doubles all the songs on the ipod or something. once itunes for windows comes around thing will be much better.

iJon

[ouketii]

i've been using musicmatch since 5.0, and ive never had problems with it. it's super tagging works greatand version 8.0 is the best so far

[Rai]

Windows software for the ipod has been a thorn in my ass.

Musicmatch is slow, makes my firewire feel like usb.

Ephpod is great much quicker, and organisation is nice. But there seems to be a bug with the tagging program. Songs up and disappearing never making it to my ipod.

So i went back to musicmatch, fixed the disappearing song trick. But now i have multiple listings of the same song and artist on my ipod. And no the names are spelt wrong.

Check out ipodlounge, lots of info about software to use, from moodlogic to Xplay.

Personnally i've given up, my ipod functionally enough. Just going to wait for itunes on windows. YaY:D

[toughboy]

Originally posted by Rai
Windows software for the ipod has been a thorn in my ass.

Musicmatch is slow, makes my firewire feel like usb.

Ephpod is great much quicker, and organisation is nice. But there seems to be a bug with the tagging program. Songs up and disappearing never making it to my ipod.

So i went back to musicmatch, fixed the disappearing song trick. But now i have multiple listings of the same song and artist on my ipod. And no the names are spelt wrong.

Check out ipodlounge, lots of info about software to use, from moodlogic to Xplay.

Personnally i've given up, my ipod functionally enough. Just going to wait for itunes on windows. YaY:D

Ephpod is kinda nice but needs development..
I'm waiting for iTunes4Windows too... It will be a great jump in my ease of using my lovely iPod...

[iUser]

> I'm waiting for iTunes4Windows too

Why? iTunes has the worst UI for anything but the simplest of music needs. I tried using iTunes for over a month to manage my music and handle my iPod before I quit in frustration. Typical "lowest common denominator" Apple crap.

[alset]

Originally posted by iUser
> I'm waiting for iTunes4Windows too

Why? iTunes has the worst UI for anything but the simplest of music needs. I tried using iTunes for over a month to manage my music and handle my iPod before I quit in frustration. Typical "lowest common denominator" Apple crap.

The only MP# player/library that I ever liked better was SoundApp (the basis for iTunes). What are you using? iTunes manages a library of 4100 songs for me without breaking a sweat. What do you need to do that iTunes can't handle?

Dan

[The Shadow]

Well this is an Apple forum, so I guess the obvious question has to be asked of everyone who is whinging about MusicMatch. :p

So...I won't ask it!;)

[mrjamin]

iPod support is supposedly coming to winamp which will be a bonus. I read an article on it somewhere, can't find the link now :(

[maradong]

probalby not a real solution for you but anyway :
install linux ( for instance mandrake ) and use the ipod software from the web ( you can download it as being a mdk club member )

[iUser]

Originally posted by alset
The only MP# player/library that I ever liked better was SoundApp (the basis for iTunes). What are you using? iTunes manages a library of 4100 songs for me without breaking a sweat. What do you need to do that iTunes can't handle?

Dan

Don't get me wrong - if you're only dealing with one mp3 store on your local machine, iTunes is fine. I'm not wild about the interface, but that personal preference. It's iPod handling is kinda nice.

My major complaint is is when you're dealing with multiple mp3 stores in the form of disconnected shares. In my case, I keep most of my mp3s on my NFS server and only a very small amount on my laptop for travel purposes. iTunes has no way of showing me only the files that are local - or even to grey out the files it can't find.

The only way I was able to get iTunes to work for me was to create separate playlists. This ended up being entirely a pain in the ass.

Currently, I'm using the gnupod utils to manage my iPod. I don't get a pretty GUI to hold my hand, but it's really simple to use and powerful enough to do what I need.

[DeKa]

I have an iPod I use with my iMac... but my sister has an iPod she uses with her PC running Windows XP Pro.

Musicmatch is a pain compared to iTunes. Yes, Musicmatch is much more sophisticated than iTunes in terms of automated supertagging etc but it is SO slow to connect/update the iPod.

Never had any trouble with the iPod software. It always tells you when the iPod is connected/disconnected and it always un-mounts perfectly.

Musicmatch does get confused momentarily if you un-mount the iPod from the iPod software icon near the clock on XP, but if you un-mount the iPod from Musicmatch itself everything seems sweet.

The biggest issue I have with Musicmatch is the inability to make playlists easily. TOok me a while to figure out that just *making* a playlist doesn't put that playlist on the iPod. You have to save the playlist in Musicmatch, and the name you give it is the title. Didn't seem to be the easiest way of doing that.

All in all it's perfectly functional on Windows XP though :)

Derek.

[Chimaera]

Having spent most of yesterday working on the pod I have found the following works for me:

Stuff I'd not yet ripped
---------------------------
- CDeX, using LAME MP3 codec @ 192kbit
- Verify ID3 tags using Musicmatch
- Copy into MP3 'LIVE' folder

Stuff I'd ripped before
--------------------------
- Import into Musicmatch
- Use the impressive tagging and supertagging tools to sort the problems
- Copy into MP3 'LIVE'

Uploading to iPod
---------------------
- Plug iPod in
- load ephPod
- hit sync folders (only folder specified is the 'LIVE' one)
- Unmount iPod (leaving it plugged in)

Basically I use Musicmatch *only* for sorting tag issues, I disabled its ability to connect to the iPod completely - I really don't like the program, but its tagging tools are (for me) the perfect balence between power and simplicity, and I'm not even going to talk about the iPod software from Apple - its horrible and got deleted *very* quickly.

[yzedf]

Originally posted by maradong
probalby not a real solution for you but anyway :
install linux ( for instance mandrake ) and use the ipod software from the web ( you can download it as being a mdk club member )
The problem with Mandrake is that the perl installation is not standard. Try to install gnupod and you get errors up the ying-yang :( (I am regular Mandrake user that just got his iPod...)

[Chimaera]

Thats hardly a user-friendly solution to a problem - Linux is pretty nasty still :)

Like I say the problem is fixed pretty simply - by deleting all trace of the Apple software off my machine :)

[melchior]

linux has it's uses. it is especially useful for dedicated appliances like a music & video server/tivo or just to run folding all day :rolleyes:

for most users though, it does not make an easy and cheerful desktop operating system. though things have improved in recent years, the latest 9.x offerings of many distro's are very user-friendly.

still, i would not reconmend my mother use linux over winxp. the re-learning curve would be staggering for her and my japan-australia technical support would quadruple.

[Chimaera]

I agree totally :)

[yzedf]

Originally posted by melchior
linux has it's uses. it is especially useful for dedicated appliances like a music & video server/tivo or just to run folding all day :rolleyes:

for most users though, it does not make an easy and cheerful desktop operating system. though things have improved in recent years, the latest 9.x offerings of many distro's are very user-friendly.

still, i would not reconmend my mother use linux over winxp. the re-learning curve would be staggering for her and my japan-australia technical support would quadruple.
Ximian with openoffice and evolution email and she would be fine. The "learning curve" is just a myth. Gnome and KDE (Ximian is Gnome based and run by the originators of Gnome) are pretty much windows 98 clones, appearance wise. Either one can be setup to mimick windows rather well. After all, it is still just clicking on a "start" button, finding your app, and using it.

Back on topic...

I (with help of my roommate) got gnupod up and running on my ThinkPad running Mandrake 9.1. Word of warning, you will have to install Perl 5.6-devel to get it to work properly. The Perl 5.8 that comes with Mandrake seems a little... weird. Not to mention that it isn't on www.rpmfind.net yet :confused:

Generic pcmcia Firewire card I got from Amazon worked without any configuration!

Flashed the iPod from the Mac version to the Windows version (1.3) without a problem.

Transfered (command line) songs without a hitch! Now I just need a faster cd drive to rip my cd's to .mp3's.... :(

Can anyone recommend a good Gtk front end for gnupod? Has anyone heard good things about podsync?

I have the feeling I am going to become very attached to my iPod (zed) very quickly! :D

[maxm]

I use XPlay which i think is great, but i have a problem; if i sync an album which is an artist who plays with another different artist on every track it appears on the ipod as lots of different artists rather than just one. Has anyone else found this, and if so how do i fix it!?!

[tazo]

Originally posted by melchior
out of curiosity, what version of windows are you using?

and yes, musicmatch was a joke even before the iPod existed.

I completely agree. I was playing around with what music app to use on my pc, usually using WINAMP, until it would randomly refuse to play any of my mp3s, saying they did not exist...

And then I went to WMP, which was ok because it loaded in > 1 sec, and always played my mp3s fine.

Then I wanted to see what else was out there so I tried musicmatch, which had the same problem as winamp with my music, and was EXTREMELY BLOATED and worse of all took like 5 minutes to load even with a system containing 384mb ram!

[fraeone]

Yeah Music Match is to be avoided like the plague, whether you're used to good HIG compliant software, or not.

[realinspiration]

I was wondering if it was possible to view music on my ipod by date, for example music from the 90's or 70's etc. Which out having to put music in seperate folders 70's Soul, 80's Soul?

[FightTheFuture]

Originally posted by realinspiration
I was wondering if it was possible to view music on my ipod by date, for example music from the 90's or 70's etc.

whoah, you replied to a kindof old thread. i just tried it on my first gen. ipod. and you can't really do that - are you using itunes for windows (http://www.itunes.com) ? by now i hope you are - you could make a playlist and name it 70s music, 80s music by going into the library without anything in the search field, then go to edit/view options/and have the year radio button checked, and you can click on year in the library window to organize which year each song was ripped. that is of course, if the id3 tag info is up to date, if not - you'll prolly have to update it yourself. anywho, just drag your 1970s tracks to a new 1970s playlist.

the steps may be a bit different - i'm in os 9 on iTunes 2.0.4 :mad: