What kind of MM user do you consider yourself?

[GQ72]

basic-Mediate ??
I have used MM for almost 4 years now since the WMP(vista) I had used for 7years RESET and lost ALL my library data statistics whence I reached a bit over 70k+ tracks. Upon searching for new player Found that MM could handle MORE library items (reached about 142k before the Vista motherboard static short-circuit blewout. I lost all of the generated statistics, etc. (do not yet know how to SAVE the generated stats,playlists to import to new PC...?) and was in the 3rd iteration of highly-structured library architecture when my new Win10 system that I have had for 14 months actually caught on FIRE (big flame in formfactor) at the storage HDD power input and melted it thus destroying over 700GB of hi-quality MP3 files I had developed and tweaked for many,many years. In the 4th iteration I am contemplating re-creating all files lost into the FLAC format (since storage is much less costly than 10-15 years ago and will likely need 20+TB to house the audio library with new archived items) I have not yet attempted to extract audio from CDs with the MM player with FLAC settings but I know I had just as much headache with MP3 320bitRate as I had with WMP on Win10 with rips taking over 10 minutes on FAR Too Many disks new and used. (WMP in Vista NEVER had a problem taking longer than 3 minutes to rip unless disk was actually defective and I have no idea to this day what is going on what is wrong?)

A few things I have liked using MM:
1.adding Hi-Res albumart that auto-sizes as you adjust size of albumart view window (WMP never allowed this in Vista so had to stick with 600~800px images to fit in the window...WMP in 7 and 10 did away with this view...total jank)
2.The ability to have media library with MORE than 70k items AND ability to randomly play ALL of them. WMP only allow 20k items to randomly play from various library view even though library consist of more...total jank again. To get all tracks to play randomly you have to sort filter and select all tracks and not just double-tick on one as you can in MM
3.Specific time-stamps with date added filter. WMP only grouped albums with a particular hour whence add and then arranged in alphabetical order. MM allows for much-improved date-added feature when you need a concise and coherent library structure. ThankYou MM

A number of things I do not like or find troubling using MM:
1.Not able to open 'containing folder' from the right-tick button as I can do in WMP ... any way I can do this that I have not discovered yet? always having to goto ThisPC-driveLetter-folder-folder-folder-folder when needed is heavily cumbersome
2.Not able to edit properties in main library view using the arrow down key as I can in WMP. i.e., most tracks with multiple or featured artists show up with the ;semicolon; separator and I prefer to change this to 'artist featuring artist' as an example. When I use the arrow down key to do next on list it always comes up with an 'auto-fill' of various whatever instead of just going to the next track for editing as it down in WMP. Always having to double-tick mouse on every track to edit individually is heavily cumbersome...are there any shortcuts I have not yet found to do this task?
3.When playing volume at lower levels the sound from the rear surround speakers is Horrific and distorted...In the WMP I used the SRS WOW filter to compensate and make a more pleasant surround sound experience. In almost 4 years of MM experience I have yet to find the right tool to fix this problem. I have tried an add-on or 2 but they just don't seem to work as intended or perhaps I don't set it up correctly? ... heck, maybe it is the Hi-Quality MP3 files in use that is the culprit and the FLAC format will do away with the low-level distortions?? … I have yet to do the blind-audio test FLAC vs MP320 and see what difference, if any, there is.
4.Not being able to drag and drop a folder with files into the main library view and have it added in track order as it does in the WMP. Is there a way to do this with MM that I have not yet figured out? ... The way I add tracks now is to open the containing folder, sort ALL tracks by track number filter (not alphabetical as is default in my view) then select all and drag with mouse way across to other monitor into the upper left corner of MM to the proper place to add files ... I am not sure Why I am not able to just drag and drop into the main window view of MM as I can in WMP? any clues as to why not?
5.The statistical filter I most use (besides play count) is the date added. In WMP I also used the 'date-created' filter as not all tracks from some albums are added to library at same time it was created. i.e., one genre I use I have 'random play addon days' a couple times per month, I then add to library when they are played for first time from containing folders. I have not found a 'date created' filter to sort in MM, just a date modified which is not of much use as it is variable and NOT static as 'date created' is. Maybe it is somewhere in options that I cannot see?

I likey have a few more Likes/Dislikes over the past many years but I have spent enough quality time on this post

Over the years I have investigated some other media players (Foobar, JRiver to name a couple) but neither of those could I figure out how to display the intricate statistics features available and offered in MM.

[Lowlander]

1) Right Click, Find More from Same > Folder (Explorer).


4) D&D on the first file in the selection.

[Luna Moon]

I am a novice user, but I plan to become at least basic. I think this forum will help me to find great advise.

[Peke]

hi,
5) You can use Timestamp and disable Modify file date on Edit under Tools -> Options -> Library -> Tags & Playlists

[oneoffbeat]

I consider myself still intermediate after odd 10+ years of MM use, since I'm not able to do much under the hood fixes or create custom scripts or perhaps be able to take advantage of all of its finest, advanced features, but I believe I'm pretty clever in utilizing MM's existing features to suit my personal needs, editing what MM has available for music organizing and management. Personally I don't use MM for general media management, only music to which I think it's the best ever database and organizer software - could be one of the best if not the best organizer and database for any purpose for a personal computer user.

I do hope there were two separate MediaMonkeys, or at least the video and music sections were under their own separate user interfaces without general overlapping. A general common user interface for playback in Kodi style would be ok though, but managing and organizing should be separated, such different are video and music for medias in their essence. Though the video or TV and other for me less interesting features can be ignored, they still tend to confuse sometimes and sort of get in the way a bit. At least for me, a music enthusiast, music has infinite re-use potential, but how many times can you really watch the same tv-shows or movies, or even music videos? I watch the same movie or TV-show episode usually just once or twice, never more than a few times at tops, hence they hardly need organizing and managing for the future keep and use like music does. I must have watched less than a dozen movies in my life for over five times each and perhaps the best chosen few each for 10 times at max. Some of my most favorite TV-shows have lasted perhaps mere 5+ re-watches per the best episodes. TV and movies get old way fast and there are very few that last the test of time indeed, unlike genuine artistically high quality music. People are different though, I believe, so each their own, but this is my take on the matter of media consumption. Another thing about the TV and video content is, that it consumes quite a lot of disc space, so keeping them in library has it's toll, especially if you only watch them for few times, hence I perform infrequent purges on them to gain back the disc space for new videos, something I hardly ever do for music, even if there are songs or albums that I rarely listen to, but even them are good to keep handy since they don't waste that much disc space after all.

Unlike watching moving images, I must have listened to thousands of my favorite tunes for hundreds of times each and still they feel fresh after a while again, if I happen to listen some of them too often in a shorter span of time. Maybe it has something to do with the thing that music deals with different section of the human perception, than audiovisual media does, music a bit like written words in books, leaves room for imagination and you can visualize the music yourself in different ways depending where and when you're listening it to. If you watch and listen something on screen, your senses are being fully catered and you just absorb it from there, hardly room for imagining things yourself. Or while on the go you can't watch things on screen, by foot or riding/driving a vehicle (at least not safely, with two of your main senses focused on something other than your actual whereabouts and where you're going), like you can with music (better use semi open headphones though, or speakers in a car and not blast the volume too loud to remain aware of the sounds from reality surrounding you). After managing the library in MM and crafting a good autoplaylist to go, playing that back on shuffle and repeat all, I can listen to the same playlist tens and tens of times before it starts to get old. That's what I need and use MediaMonkey for, to manage and organizing my favorite music by rating and tagging it in order to be able to generate perfect autoplaylists that keep the music fresh for re-use over and over again and for the plus I'm not tied to my sofa to listen to it.

Once long time ago I had this moment of enlightenment listening to a compilation CD in portable player, that if I select only the favorite songs from the tracks and only play them on shuffle and repeat, the CD would feel fresh much longer than just listening to all of the tracks in order they were printed on the disc. Then came the portable MP3 CD-players that could playback CD-R discs easily holding music worth 9 to 11 CDs and that's when managing the music became crucial, because it was no point listening to just isolated albums anymore, but it was time to release the potential of the most favorite songs playing them back on a common playlist. I must have few thousand favorite songs today that I keep swapping to my phone's player in couple of hundred of songs chunks at the time and couldn't live without MediaMonkey doing that, or at least music management without MM would lack an interface that offers all you need to keep your music managed and organized for repeated use on various playback devices, domestic or portable.

Anyway, for general media management and playback I prefer to use Kodi running on LibreElec OS in Raspi 3+, which is much more convenient setup for general purpose media browsing and playback when connected to tv and audio amplifier with speakers. I use MM's UPnP server to share my carefully crafted autoplaylists from my desktop computer to playback in Kodi and it works pretty good too, which I'm very much grateful for.

Long story, thank you if you had interest and patience to read it all.

EDIT: a typo

[GeorgeTheBB]

I've just started using MM but I already learned all the basics.

[Peke]

I consider myself still intermediate after odd 10+ years of MM use.
Long story, thank you if you had interest and patience to read it all.

Looks like you have not tested MM5

I've just started using MM but I already learned all the basics.

Welcome.

[filip3ffe3]

Only Basic MM.

[dypsis]

It is probably not the answer that Lowlander was looking for when he posed the question over 16 years ago, but I consider myself a fanatical user who values highly my play history and ensuring my library is correctly tagged.

I also value the quality of the music I play, and therefore, most of my music is lossless. I also have a large collection of HD lossless music.
I am in the process of looking for some great sounding speakers, so I am carefully considering my options.

If you would like to contribute to my question about quality computer speakers, see this thread about great sounding computer speakers.
All constructive comments welcome.

[NatalieK3]

I just installed MM so I'm a novice

[DavidMull]

I recon I'd consider myself just basis for sure