Creating and managing your music collection for MFT on USB

[Kelleytoons]

Someone started a topic here about using their phone for music and it reminded me of something I wanted to post (so I'm doing so :>).

 

First of all, everyone has their own ideas about how best to get entertainment in their cars and I'm not here to argue for or against any particular format other than to say that in terms of sound quality the best would be CD, then direct wired (to some music player), then USB, then bluetooth, then FM AST, then Sirius (although I have my doubts about placing it even here in the order) then FM, then AM.   Sound quality means frequencies available to be played, and varies depending on how the actual music is created and stored but in general this is a good rule of thumb.  But even the best CD full of crappy music isn't as good as a great AM station (although I don't think AM stations play music anymore <g>).

 

If you are going to use USB (and I don't know why you wouldn't, considering all the great advantages MFT has with USB) then here's the approach I'm using and I hope it will help you.  First of all, you want a good source and that means MP3s (don't try other formats) recorded at 320 cbr.  That means "Constant Bits Recording" and nowadays, with storage so cheap, it's really the only way to go.  It's also known as the "Insane" preset on programs that do this ripping for you (that's assuming you do it yourself and don't acquire music from other sources, legal or not).  A quality 320 mp3 can match even a CD, particularly when playing in the car environment (not optimized for best listening anyway).

 

To manage your music you need to use some sort of program and for those of you using Windows I highly recommend the freeware Media Monkey.  Even if you have Apple devices you can use Media Monkey and iTunes in concert with each other (as I do) but MM will make it easier to get things straight whereas iTunes hides the processes.  The last piece of freeware you need is MP3Gain, particularly if you are going to play mixes (compilations or playlists) from various albums.

 

We need MP3Gain because nowadays most albums are recorded "hot" and this "heat" (which is boosting the gain) varies so much it's really hard to listen to any track from one album next to the track from another without having to adjust the volume up or down.  Which is not what you want to be doing when you are driving.  MP3Gain levels the gain across tracks, but does it non-destructively (it neither changes or rewrites the file and the tag it puts in can be backed out) and does it better than anything else does.  It's so good I use it to level the gains even on tracks I play in iTunes (which offers it's own leveling process, but one that isn't nearly as good).

 

The last piece of the puzzle is to figure out what size USB stick you are going to use -- this depends totally on the size of your music collection.  You can fit nearly 10 thousand 320 bit songs on a 64gb USB stick which should be enough for almost anyone (and this is the very low profile one that doesn't stick out at all in your compartment.  You can go bigger, of course, but the larger ones will stick out more (I'm actually using a 500gb hard drive but that's just because it's what I had laying around -- I don't think I have more than 108gb on it).  What you can't do is put two of them in and expect them to be treated as a single drive.  You put two in (to the two slots) and then you'll need to switch back and forth between them to listen to your music (not something I would recommend).  Put your drive in the bottom one and use the top one for charging things.

 

So my workflow is this: I arrange my music on my computer, by artist (each artist in their own folder) and by album (each album a folder under the artist).  This isn't necessary from a computer standpoint (neither Media Monkey nor iTunes really care how your songs are stored) but helps my sanity (what little left I have).  I run MP3Gain on all the songs (or any new ones I add).  It's easy and straightforward -- just select all the tracks, use analyze track gain and then balance track gain.  For a large collection it will take awhile (perhaps as long as a few hours).

 

Then I run Media Monkey and import the collection and add all the album art I want -- with the album selected you can use the dropdown "Get Art from Web" and it will find it for you (most of the time) AND it will clean up the tracks and songs.  For me an additional step is to import it into iTunes.  Most of the time it's fine but iTunes is a bit weird and will sometimes require me to clean things up a bit more (like not recognizing the album art MM found.  We in Apple support don't understand why this is happening).

 

The last thing I do is use freeware Playlist Creator 3.6.2 to create custom playlists from the playlists I've created either in iTunes or Media Monkey.  I need to use Playlist Creator because, unlike those other two programs, it will correctly create playlists that MFT can play (it's a long story for another thread).  And I then copy all the music and playlists over to my USB device.

 

Once you put a new (or changed) USB device in MFT will take the time to index and create commands for it.  In general I've found this takes about 15 minutes regardless of how much or how little music I've added.  If I *really* want to hear music when I start my drive I just turn on the car and let it do this while it's in the garage.  You can set it up so MFT will start playing right away before the indexing is done, but it's really random then and you have no control over what you hear.

 

Hopefully this will help or at least give some of you some new ideas on how to get your own tunes in your car.  I know *I'm* a happy camper.

[C-Macky1022]

Thanks for the read Kelly, I had not thought about a usb, I was thinking about using a SD card, think that would work?

[Kelleytoons]

If you don't have the Nav system you can use a micro SD card just fine.  You can also use either a normal or micro sized SD card in a USB holder, so those are other options as well.

 

Since I wrote that I started using my phone more for my Christmas music (it was just easier plus I started having issues playing random tracks using SYNC).  I'll go back to my drive now that the new year is rolling around but I do need to find out what's going on with the random issue and Sync (essentially it would *not* randomize the playlists I was playing.  There is an update for SYNC and perhaps that will address some of the issues, but it's more of a first world problem with many more things taking precedence :>).

[scottwood2]

Thx for the info.  Funny, We were just talking about how to do this because Santa brought us a SD card.  We use Media Monkey and did not know you could import playlists.  We did want to play certain album songs in order and that was not happening.  I think the playlist will take care of that .    

 

Thx again

[Kelleytoons]

The thing about album order is you need to turn off the Sync Gracenote features (there are two of them).  With them enabled it will always try and sort your music alphabetically.  Turning them off will allow albums to play in the right order.

 

You *can* make playlists but that's a PITA if it's just an album you want to play correctly (you wouldn't want to make playlists for all your albums -- if nothing more it would make it hard to find the playlist you wanted for other things.  With a handful of lists you can easily browse them).

[drdiesel1]

How do I get/make 320 cbr sound files ? What's the ripper ? Will it change existing files downloaded from Amazon

music ? Thanks!

[Kelleytoons]

The freeware program CDex is what I use -- note that you'll need to change the default preset to the "Insane" one (it's called that because in the old days of limited storage it was crazy to store things at 320 CBR).  It will also do a lookup of the tracks for you and is a very nice way to rip all your CDs.

 

As a general rule you do not want to compress a compressed file -- you lose information along the way.  The files Amazon stores are already efficient enough that you don't have to recompress them, and you cannot get better quality by doing so (only lose quality).  Since they are already mp3 there is no need to convert, either.  

 

CDex will convert .WAV files to mp3s, though.

[JAZ]

Kelleytoons, thanks for the explanation of why my music suddenly began playing alphabetically.  I had activated Gracenote without being aware of what other changes might be involved.

[Kelleytoons]

Yeah, Gracenote is pretty worthless -- it actually doesn't do what it says it will do (which is find album cover art and other info about the songs).  Best to just leave it off.

 

Now, for Dr. Diesel, in addition to CDex you can use Media Monkey or even iTunes to rip your songs to mp3.  ITunes kind of buries how to do it, but it's in settings/general preferences and where you see "When you insert a CD" make sure "Ask to Import CD" is marked and then go to Import settings.  Then choose MP3 Encoder there and change the settings to custom and make sure the bitrate is set to 320 and VBR checkmark is off (the defaults there).

 

I prefer using CDex, but iTunes is useful when you buy or otherwise acquire AAC files and need to change them to MP3.  You do the above and then, with the song(s) highlighted, right-click and choose "Make an MP3 copy" and it will do that.

[markd]

I finally figured out how to stream music from my amazon cloud. It works perfectly around town but out in the country LTE is a little sketchy.

[Kelleytoons]

Yeah, I was streaming exclusively when I first got Maximus but because it can get sketchy at times (for me even in town) I finally went to a local solution and I like it a lot better.

 

But, different strokes...