[ctviggen]

I'm having problems with Media Monkey.  On several of my CDs, it does not download the album art at all.  On several other CDs, it selects the entirely wrong CD.  For instance, my Jack Johnson kid's CD (music from Curious George), MM gives me the Japanese import edition, which is totally wrong.  Even when MM gets the CD right, it makes some choices I don't like.  For instance, I have Johnny Cash's Unearthed, which currently lists "Unearthed Volume 2:  Trouble in Mind" for the second CD.  The first CD now (courtesy of MM) now says "Unearthed (SCD)", which is no help (and I can't "undo" what I just did).  Yet another problem is when MM does collections of songs from various artists, it removes the artist names and just says "various artists".  So, if I want to determine who did a song, I cannot.

Are these settings in MM that can be changed?  Is there a better product than MM?

Thank you.

[Lyndon]

Bob,
I agree with you that MM could be smoother with the tagging. 
Down in the lower left hand corner, where they display the album art, you can get in and change the album cover.  Maybe more.
When you click the Auto Tag feature, it will search and come up with what "it" thinks is the correct one. But to the right is options of Amazon U.K., Japan, Canada, etc.  and there is a drop down button with lists of other albums.  It is certainly not perfect and has messed up some albums for me as well.  It can get especially frustrating with tagging a double cd album.  Also, their use of just freedb is not as good as some older program I used to use, jazzbox?, or something. 
Have you tried dbpoweramp.com?
I liked their gui, and approach, but settled on Media Monkey for their ease of use with FLAC.
Others love EAC, Exact Audio Copy, but I only use it when I have an older cd with some "hiccups".
All the best,
Lyndon

[kgturner]

i've never used media monkey so i can't speak to it's functionality. i use tag&rename:

http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

the learning curve is not very steep at all. it allows you to scan several different databases to get metadata. it also allows for full manipulation of tags and album art so if the metadata found is not 100%, you can change it any way you'd like. it's not freeware, but you can download it and use it for 30 days to see if it's really for you. i purchased a license because it was the best program i've used for entering/editing metadata.

kevin t

[ted_b]

I use MP3Tag and it's great.  It uses Amazon for one of its cover art sources, as well as one of its main tagging sources, but everything can be overridden.  I can tag an album in seconds.
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

[zybar]

I use MP3Tag and it's great.  It uses Amazon for one of its cover art sources, as well as one of its main tagging sources, but everything can be overridden.  I can tag an album in seconds.
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

+1

I use this as well and think it is well thought out, easy to use, and feature laden.

George

[Bob in St. Louis]

I use MP3Tag as well. It's fantastic for everything relating to tagging "information", but for album art, I haven't figured it out. Seems to be a huge PITA.
Maybe my head is in my special dark place? That's quite possible.
Good thread though. I'll be interested to see what else (and why) is recommended.

Bob

[Lyndon]

+1 on MP3Tag. I forgot about that piece of software.

I only used it for tagging Audio Book chapters, but I am sure it works for everything else as well.
Lyndon

[ted_b]

I use MP3Tag as well. It's fantastic for everything relating to tagging "information", but for album art, I haven't figured it out. Seems to be a huge PITA.
Maybe my head is in my special dark place? That's quite possible.
Good thread though. I'll be interested to see what else (and why) is recommended.

Bob

It's a pull down, under "tag sources"

[JEaton]

I user Mp3tag as well.  Easily the single most valuable piece of software that I use to keep my music library organized.

Maybe I'm old-school, but I go out and get all my album art myself.  The two sources I use most are Amazon and Google image search.  While a CD is being ripped I usually download anywhere from 2 to 6 images and select the best one.  Then I crop it, do any minor color, contrast or brightness tweaking, resize it, and put a one pixel black border around it.

A very nice, very simple image editing program that I use is FastStone Image Viewer.  Free.

http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

[Bob in St. Louis]

Ted, that's awesome. Thanks for the heads-up.
I don't recall seeing that pulldown option on my version. Maybe I need to update.
Cool stuff. thanks man.,

JEaton, that's pretty hard core dude. Actively searching for your own art, then "photoshopping" it to your liking....wow!
You're a stud.  aa

Bob

[mgalusha]

Another +1 for both MP3Tag and Faststone. 

[ctviggen]

Thank you very much for the suggestions.  I'll try these over my Christmas or New Year's break. 

I've been using EAC to burn to FLAC, but often I forget to check what EAC uses as tags.  So, I have "Cash, Johnny" and "Johnny Cash", which means that I "lose" CDs because I think in terms of "Johnny Cash" and not "Cash, Johnny".  Also, EAC does not download album art. 

I downloaded Media Monkey because I want to burn some CDs from my FLAC files and also update my iTunes library.  Currently, I've been ripping using both FLAC and iTunes.

[kwl]

MP3Tag only comes in the Windows flavor.  What do you guys use on a Mac?  I rip to FLAC and MP3 using Max, but I'm missing some artwork from some older albums.  Thanks!

[TomS]

MP3Tag only comes in the Windows flavor.  What do you guys use on a Mac?  I rip to FLAC and MP3 using Max, but I'm missing some artwork from some older albums.  Thanks!

I've used "Tag" which is from the same guy as Max.  So so.

[jqp]

I am not tagging digital music yet, but one thing to be aware of - Amazon may not always show album art in the same way they do now, so you may want to download your own copies while you have the chance. I went to manually download some album art and it was not available for download on Amazon! Seems a little crazy that they would stop allowing art download, but many sites make it very difficult to d/l images these days...

[ted_b]

Along with MP3Tag's aforementioned pulldown menu that automatically searches Amazon for album art, here's a nifty art and track listing website, powered by Amazon.
http://alf.hubmed.org/cgi-bin/amtra.cgi?kw=beatles