The Smorgasbord

I’m going to show you “How to Fix MP3′s” today because we all have digital music for our ipods, cell phones, computers, and laptops. Most people I know have thousands of songs, some have tens of thousands. Today I decided to sit down and cleanup my collection to make it more manageable, searchable, and listenable.

There are 3 basic problems with MP3 files:

1. The MP3 filenames are all screwed up and unreadable with crazy characters
2. The MP3 volume levels are all over the place, some are low and some are really loud
3. The MP3 “tags” are screwed up and the names come up wrong or weird in an iPod or MP3 player

I’m going to show you how to fix all 3 problems, using FREE software with no NAGS, no hidden things to install, no garbage, and no trials! 100% freeware utilities that just plain work!

How to fix MP3 filenames

First download 1-4a Batch File Renamer. It’s a freeware windows utility for renaming files. I have used dozens of file renamers, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this! There seems to be nothing it can’t do.

When you first fire it up it looks like this:

you have simple options to find and replace things. The left pane are your filenames before you make changes, and it shows what they’ll look like once you make the changes in the right preview pane. This works for a lot of instances – but there is an absolutely INSANE expert mode!

Here’s the expert mode screen:

You can use almost unlimited conditions. I removed all extra spaces, replaced underscores with dashes, and capitalized the first letter of every word on 1,000 mp3 files in about 5 seconds! I also remove the first 5 characters from 875 other mp3 files, and I had a bunch of files from one artist with song name but no artist. So I pre-pended those 50 files with the artist name in seconds!

You can clean up your MP3 filenames with this batch renamer utility more quickly than anything I’ve ever seen. The beauty of this little utility is that it works for any kind of file, so you can use it on your digital pics, movie downloads, or anything else you have!

How to “Normalize” and fix MP3 Volume Levels

The next most common thing wrong with MP3 files is that they volume levels are all different. Some are really low, so you turn it way up, and then a really loud once comes on and about blows you out of the room! There are many mp3 file editors that will normalize your mp3′s for you – but again, most of us have thousands of songs or more. I don’t have time to open my MP3′s one by one and fix them in a damn editor. That’s why I was so exited to find a batch file renamer – a utility that would rename all my MP3 files at once. I was just as excited to find this next one. Now, Download Mp3Gain and install it. It’s a windows freeware utility that does exactly ONE thing and it does it well – it normalizes the volume levels on MP3 files in batches!

That’s right – it can rename 1-10,000+ mp3 files in batch mode! Personally, I recommend doing them about 1,000 at a time if you’re in a time crunch or using your computer all day. Else, you could load say 10,000 in a batch and do them overnight while you sleep. See, unlike the file renaming, this utility has to actually analyze and change the volume level on your each MP3 file, and then save it back again. For me to do about 1,000 mp3′s on my laptop with 2GB ram as I worked took about 30 minutes. Oh – and don’t worry, it doesn’t change the sound quality of your MP3 files at all (just the volume level). It’s a completely lossless process.

Here’s a screenshot of Mp3gain in action on my laptop – you can see that the volume levels for my files was all over the map, some higher, some lower. I made them all a good default of 89db (decibels).

How to Fix MP3 Tags

The last problem we all seem to have is the tags on MP3 files are usually all over the place too. Some are great, some have artist but no song, others have song but no artist. You get all kinds of weird characters, mis-spellings, and more. Now download Mp3 Tag Editor, and install it.

When you start the program first you will need to open a folder that contains MP3 files, and it will read and analyze the current tag information like this:

Once your files are imported you click to look them up on freedb or Amazon. I chose freedb, and then you get a dialogue box like this one:

A lot of times you can just lookup your missing (or bad) song information from what’s already in the tags (or filename). I my particular case – that didn’t help me because my mp3′s (in this case) were karaoke files and the file information within them didn’t really help look them up in freedb at all. I chose to “determine via web search”, and guess what – JACKPOT!

You can see in the image above that my lookup found exactly what my mp3′s were down to the very last detail! Check out what happens when I click “ok” and the changes are saved:

My MP3 files are completely updated with accurate information – so they will (now) display properly in any CD or MP3 player! I’ve used a lot of Mp3 tag editors in the last so many years, and this one is free, fast, and very accurate!

Conclusion

If you use the 3 freeware MP3 utilities I told you about today to clean up your MP3 collection you will be much happier with your music collection! Maybe then your friends will want you to fix theirs too – or you could be a DJ!

I saw an ad from Newegg yesterday and came accross something I hadn’t seen before – it’s a USB Vinyl turntable under $100! Of course there are some of us (geeks) that still have turntables, and you can just take the line out and run it in a decent sound card to capture your songs and turn them into mp3′s. Or – you can buy this affordable solution to archive your old vinyl record collection quickly and efficiently.

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

The reviews say that the software that comes with it isn’t the greatest – but if you buy Spin it Again by Acoustica it creates mp3′s flawlessly from your vinyl. Spin it again can also be used to create mp3′s from your old cassette tapes. The portable version below can even be battery powered or run from the wall adapter. I thought this was pretty cool anyway. Have you run accross some cool geekery that combines old school hardware with new technology? Comment now!

ION iPTUSB Vinyl Archiver USB turntable

ION TTUSB05 USB Turntable / Vinyl Archiver With Line Input

This All-in-one Car Adapter is an FM Transmitter that plugs into your car’s cigarette lighter, and it has a usb port and or sd slot in the back. Just plug in your flash drive, and voila – you’re listening to your mp3′s in the car! Some even have an input jack for mp3 player’s or cell phones! Pure Genius! Some of these come with play controls on the top and even include a wireless remote. The average cost is about $29.99 or less. Can you beat that? Every geek has a spare USB stick or SD card lying around. That’s the price you pay for a good car charger, and for about the same price you can get an car 12 volt adaptor that allows you to connect any device with an output jack, any sd flash memory card, or any usb stick or key – AND transmit them through your FM car stereo.

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

For me, I always thought this thing was the coolest device because I carry my music and files to work on a USB key. Who needs an iPod when I have this thing? I keep some music on my phones SD card as well, and now I can connect either my phone (or the card) right in my car. If my son is in the car – we can connect his iPod to it, and if we’re on a long trip, we can connect the laptop if we want. You have all the options you want with one of these little devices. If you have trouble finding a good gift for that geek in your life – this would make an awesome gift idea for any geek, or for any gadget or music lover for that matter. Do you have a gadget that you love like this? Please share with us and add a comment below now!

Whether you love or hate Madonna, a groundbreaking deal was announced when Madonna signed a $120M deal with “LiveNation” out of L.A. The contract is for 3 CD’s, and they will also promote her concerts, merchandise, and license her name. I don’t know what else they do, but I know Live Nation primarily for it’s concert promotion efforts. It seems like every time I see a new concert announcement (in my area), you see the Live Nation name behind it.

I think this is key, because for years the P2P and torrent rallying cry by many was to “free the music”, because the artists make most of their bank on tour anyway. At least, they seem to get a greater percentage of it. I believe that some of the best artists only make about 20% royalty for their CD sales, and the less ones….well, they probably get much less. Let’s say a “successful” band, artist, or pop star sells 500,000 CD’s. That’s pretty good nowadays. What if the average retail was $16.99, their half million CD sales would equal just about $8.495M (about eight and a half million). Twenty percent of that is about $1.7M. But wait – they probably have to pay their manager, producer, agent, and maybe even a lawyer. We better take 25% off for that, which leaves $1,275,520. Let’s say in this scenario there’s 4 guys in the band, so each one would get $318,812.50.

If that same band went on a 100 date tour with an average of 5,000 people per night (I’m being pretty conservative here), and the tickets were $45, they would gross $22.5M on ticket sales alone. If only 1/2 the people in attendance bought one shirt or memoribilia (again being conservative) that would bring in $6.25 in merchandise revenue, for a total of almost $29M. Let’s say that 50% of the gross has to be paid to promotion, road crew, tour manager, etc. That still leaves $14.375M to be split by the 4 band members = $3.59M each!

Alright – I don’t work in the music industry, and my theoretical numbers may be waaaay off. But if they’re even close, it shows that artists stand to potentially make 10 times more money on tour than from their album sales! So (in my head) I believe that Madonna took the $120M deal because it’s more than she would possibly make from a traditional record company. A couple weeks ago Radiohead gave away their entire album on their web site FOR FREE. This TechCrunch article states Oasis and Jamiroquai and about to do the same. It also makes the bold statement “The deal shows that even for a world famous act, a record company is no longer required in the days of digital downloads and P2P music sharing.“. Is this the new frontier of music – will over major artists and music superstars follow suit?

Has P2P file sharing and Bit Torrent peer to peer networking finally won the battle? Especially now since earlier this year iTunes and other music download services are offering significant music catalogues with no DRM whatsoever?

I would love your comments on this hot topic – share view with everyone now by clicking on the comment link below now!

*UPDATE*

Here’s another article from Wired that describes the current state of the Music industry to a “T”. They’re busy sueing single parents for $222,222.00 in damages (for 12 ‘shared’ songs), while they are screwing the artists out of the lion’s share of the royalties anyway. Unbelievable.

[tags]riaa, music, p2p, download, itunes, drm, madonna[/tags]

Sanatana slams KISS, from contactmusic.com:

(From Contact Music)
“Latin rocker CARLOS SANTANA has slammed outrageous KISS frontman GENE SIMMONS by questioning his musical ability and branding him “Las Vegas entertainment”.

The SMOOTH hitmaker is appalled by the standard of Simmons’ music and insists the rocker hides his lack of skill behind layers of gothic clothing and black make-up.

Santana says, “He’s not a musician, he’s an entertainer. A musician is (JOHN) COLTRANE, BOB MARLEY. Kiss is Las Vegas entertainment, so he wouldn’t know what music is anyway. That’s why he wears all that stuff.

“A musician doesn’t need the mask and the mascara so there’s a difference between an entertainer and a musician.”

Response from Gene:

Carlos Santana is cool. His assessment? I have no problem with it. That’s why they make menus in restaurants. Not everyone likes the same meal. I wish him well.

Personally, I have about every Santana record ever made – and also every KISS record ever made. Santana is a good guitarist, but honestly I don’t think he’s better than KISS. I can put on Santana records for hours and some of it can just put you to sleep. He’s put out two albums now (including the lastest one) which are pretty good, but from a guitarist perspective – he’s playing the same old tired leads in each one. From a guitar player’s point – he’s a one trick pony.

I can get my fill of KISS too – it’s true, but my tolerance is much longer with KISS than Santana. Sure, the makeup is a novelty – we all get that. But the musical anthems they have put out over decades outshine the theatrics that are just part of the show. KISS makes fun of themselves all the time. When you compare the two Santana is to me as much a one trick pony as Ace Freheley. I’ll always love Black Magic Woman and Oma Coyo Va – but do most Santana songs have to sound like same? Sorry Ace – I love ya too, but once you learn the standard 6 “Ace” riffs, a guitarist can master any KISS song ever put out.

This does not however make either “not musicians”. Carlos – what were you thinking? You sound like a senior citizen…..wait, oh crap! You ARE a senior citizen. I guess that explains the sentiment.

I checked the genesimmons.com web site, where he had the response quote above – and a pretty classy response I must add. Check out his web site some time – you wouldn’t believe the amount of things he’s into and tv shows he’s got out right now. The man is a walking idea factory.

I subscribe to the email newsletter over at truefire.com, and once a week I read about all the new video guitar lessons they have.

This week they had a blurb about this wall in their studio, and how when it was built someone scribbled “Top 100 Guitar Albums of all time” on the newly dried fresh paint. Over time, all the artists that were in the studio have scrawled in their votes. In this newsletter they were looking for submissions from readers so they could add any that received more than 10 votes to the now legendary wall.

So – I scratched my head, and this is the list I came up with. It’s a work in progress I guess, because so far I only have 65. These are not in any particular order – just the order that I thought of them in. These are what I believe to be the best guitar albums of all time that I could think of so far – or modern and / or rock guitar at least.

If I knew of someone learning to play or just getting into it – this is the list I’d give them (again, in no particular order):

Eric Johnson – Ah Via Musicom
Joe Satriani – Surfing with the Slien
Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced
Led Zeppelin – IV
Stevie Ray Vaughn – Texas Flood
Kiss – Alive
Mattias IA Eklundh – Guitar Freak
Allman Brothers – At Fillmore East
AC/DC -Back in Black
Alice Cooper – Killer
Allan Holdsworth – Metal Fatigue
Black Crowes – Shake Your Money Maker
Cheap Trick – Live at Budokan
Deep Purple – Machine Head
Kansas – Two for the Show
Def Leppard – Pyromania
Eagles – Hotel California
Extreme – Pornograffiti
Gary Moore – Still got the blues
Joe Walsh Life’s Been Good
Los Lonely Boys – Los Lonely Boys
Ozzy Osbourne – Blizzard of Ozz
Pantera – Cowboys from Hell
Stanley Jorday – Magic Touch
Peter Frampton – Frampton Comes Alive
Rainbow Straight – Between the Eyes
Steve Miller – Fly Like an Eagle
Van Halen – Van Halen
ZZ Top – Deguello
Yngwie Malmsteen – Marching Out
The Who – Who’s Next
Whitesnake – Slip of the Tongue
Guns and Roses – Appetite for Destruction
Ted Nugent – Intensities in 10 Cities
Motley Crue – Shout at the Devil
Santana – Inner Secrets
Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers
Queensryche – Empire
Prince – Purple Rain
Montrose – Montrose
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Skynyrds Inyrds
Metallica – Ride the Lightning
Judas Priest – Screaming with Vengeance
Joe Bonamassa – Live at the Cabooze
Jeff Beck – Blow by Blow
Iron Mainden – Piece of Mind
J. Giels – Band Blow Your Face Out
Incubus – S.C.I.E.N.C.E
Green Day – Dookie
Rush – 2112
Pink Floyd – The Wall
Yes – Fragile
Derek and the Dominoes – Layla
Frank Zappa – We’re Only in it for the Money
Dream Theater – Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence
The Clash – London Calling
Chuck Berry – Greatest Hits
Dire Straits – Sultans of Swing
Black Sabbath – Paranoid
Mountain – Climbing
Pat Metheny – Tore Down House
Mike Stern – Odds and Evens
B.B. King – Deuces Wild
Bo Diddley – Go Bo Diddley
Queen – Killer Queen

do you have any to add? submit your comment now…

originally posted: 2005-10-20 23:20:10 -0400

One of the first things most people like to do when poking around the computer is to listen to some music. Linux is not like windows with one way to do this (Windows Media Player). There are dozens if not hundreds of ways to listen to music in Linux. Over time you’ll figure out which programs work best for you. You’ll probably find out that you like more than one for different reasons at different times. In ubuntu, under the applications menu you will find some installed be default under the heading “Sound & Video”. The default player for both sound and video in ubuntu is “Totem”.

I am going to list the programs I use most and the reasons why. If you are going to try any of these and they weren’t installed by default – install them yourself (for free!) by clicking on the “System” -> “Administration” -> “Synaptic Package Manager” heading. Just click “search” and type in the name of the program you want to install, and then “Apply” to get it installed.

Music Programs I use

Beep Media Player: I use Beep Media player (BMP) a lot. If you’ve ever used WinAmp in Windows – it’s exactly like that. You can even use Winamp skins on it. I like it because it’s small, easy to create and save playlists – it just works. I used Amarok for awhile, which seems a bit like iTunes – allowing you to manage your entire music collection. But Amarok was cumbersome and not intuitive for me.

Audacity: Audacity is a sound editor. If you want to trim the beginning or ending from a song, or merge sound clips together – this is a great tool.

EasyTag: You probably have MP3′s that have the tags all screwed up. This nifty little tool lets you not only edit them, but it can grab the right information right from the Internet and populate the tags for you if you want.

Streamtuner: Tool for finding and listening to Internet Radio stations.

SoundJuicer CD Ripper: This tool is for ripping CD’s to mp3′s for so you can have them on your computer. By default this only rips music to Ogg Vorbis or FLAC formats. But open up the help in preferences, and search for “mp3″. You’ll find instructions for setting up a new format to rip to mp3 if that’s what you prefer.

Serpentine: This is hands down the easiest tool and interface I’ve seen yet for burning just audio CD’s. Just add your songs and burn.

You’ll notice that the difference between Linux and Windows is that in Linux there is a tool to do just about anything you want – an individual tool. In Windows they try and make one tool (like Windows Media Player) do a thousand things. In Linux once you find the tools you like – just open what you want when you need it. It’s all about choice and preference, and it’s all free!

Please comment and add to this page what sound and music programs you use in Linux and why.

originally posted: 2006-01-19 01:14:47 -0400