I've added my collection to iTunes and Winamp, both are reporting 22,978 files, however windows reports 23,000 files. I deleted all jpg's and other assorted files in the mix. I even used a command line to search for files that didn't contain "mp3", and nothing showed up. So my question is, how can I find the culprits? Thanks a lot
My first question is what are you trying to do? Why would you delete all the album art for no good reason? Are you sure you are looking in the same place manually as the 2 audio management systems? Why 2 management systems? At least you know the file counts match.
My suggestion to you is think before you act!
Why would be deleting valuable files to try to get the file counts to match? Do you think something bad will happen if the file counts do not match EXACTLY? If so, what, your computer explodes? There is less than a .001% descrepancy! What is the big deal? I have never heard of this complaint before. It never occured to me to even check file count of different audio managers and compare them with windows counts. I have never counted the blades of grass on my lawn either.
How do you think the audio systems keep track of information? They are both databases. Databases are files. Not file. You have 2 managers.
It occured to me you might be having some kind of audio problem. Being a junior member you should know to explain the problem. I am sorry to be hard on you but I think you ought to know better. Had you explained the reason why you wanted to check the file counts you might have gotten the answer you wanted. Believe it or not this has been the most bazzar reading post I can remember in at least 5 years.
If you are having problems with audio files the problem would be audio files, not album art. If that is the case you are deleting the wrong files. The problem might be some of your mp3 files are corrupt.
I want to get rid of all the non-mp3 files so I have nothing but mp3 files exdclusively in the folders. A little nit-picky, I know. I'm not worried about deleting album art because I have embedded art in each file. What I am really trying to do is found out if I have a album or two that aren't in the right format and aren't addding to my databases, so I can re-rip those albums. Sorry for the vague-ness
Now that is a proper question. Give me a day or two I will post a url for a defunct quality tool. It has been put into the public domain. These QA tools are a must for the picky user. I love it!
Someone has it posted on their personel web site. Both itunes and Winamp will add total garbage to their database. If you told the app to import mp3s it will import any file with an mp3 extention. They do not care if the file is unplayable. I wish they were more picky but they are not. This tool will give you an idea how good your mp3s are. I run it per artist and save the datafile in the artist's folder. My folder structure is each album or disk has its own floder and sits the an artist's folder. I have all sorts of junk in my folders except none of my mp3s are junk.
However, there is NO WAY that will come CLOSE to the power of accurip. If you are ripping and you are picky that is a must.
Optical reads are not always right. Highend rippers take care of that.
Accurip is an internet database of probably checksums of tracks. It can tell if you read the block as the other 1,000 reads by 1,000 different devices for that block. Unless the surface is bad I do not recall being able to hear a bad track from a good one. I re-run that track anyway.
It is a powerful tool for the anal. I am anal myself to a certain degree. EAC and dbPowerAmp both use accurip. They are both serious rippers. EAC is free PA is 25 USDs a year. EAC is great but PA is a 'professional version'. It is easy to use, faster and better. For instance when it rips you do not set and modes. It uses burst mode which is an ultra fast rip. If it runs into problems it shifts gears into slower more precise reads. It has more modes than EAC. You set the EAC read mode for the session. PA uses a paid for tag database. If the CD was copyrighted it is in there. That alone is worth the $25 for me. I rip rare CDs. Only the paid for databases have those disks.
If you rip with either and use an encoder like LAME they are perfect if you don't get any errors. No need for QA.
Imbedding the art in the mp3 takes up more space than external and can lead to coruption. The mp3 tags are responcible for most corruption in the mp3.
