MediaMonkey forum

Hello, i will buy All in one media aplication and my favorites app are MM 3.1 and Helium Music manager 2009. What you think about these two apps? Compare, function e.t.c. Thanks for help and excuse my english!

Helium has a few interesting features (as of a couple years ago), such as their support for Multiple Artists, since you can have a string like "Artist 1 feat. Artist 2 & Artist 3" and still have it show up under all three artists, and the AllMusic like navigation/report dealies are nice. However, I found MediaMonkey to be overall a better program, both in performance (since it took several minutes to load up a node with less than half of my collection, compared to a couple seconds for my entire collection in MediaMonkey), and usability.

I agree Helium has some nice features. I especially like the to add artist-information like Picture, Country, Biography, Videos etc. Linking artist is another great feature such as Similiar Artist, Followers, Influence By, See Also etc. I hope MM will add these features someday.

However MM with all his scripts and functions is still superior to Helium

I haven't had the chance to really try Helium out - can't get the SQL/database thingie to work... But what I do like, from what I've seen, and what I also miss in MM, is the Artist and Album information. Just as Broumwerik mention, the ability to make anotations on artists and albums, linking bios, reviews, and such is a lovely feature. Now, that would be a perfect thing to ad in MM4! But still, I think the monkey is the to choice if you want to swing.

Annotations are possible, right click on the Artist node in the Explorer Tree and you can edit it's properties. These properties contain a comment field.

Take in account that the data isn't stored in the tags and that MediaMonkey itself doesn't display this information in any way.

@Lowlander I'm not at home so I can't try this out, but from what I can understand from your answer is that I can make an annotation to the Artist node in the explorer view, but I can't see it anywhere? As you write: "Take in account that the data isn't stored in the tags and that Mediamonkey itself doesn't display this information in any way." If it does work like that; I really can't see the meaning off making this comments at all - to the artist node in Mediamonkey, that is. Not your comment here But as I wrote, I've no access to MM now so I can't test it out, and I'm pretty sure that it doesn't work in the fashion I've understood, but that the annotations actually is accessible in some way in MM. And if it works for artists, it really should work for any other node as well. Which sounds good and I shall really do try it, and if it does work, as I think it does, it just makes Mediamonkey more swingable.

I am going to give Helium a try myself and see what it is like.

After a quick look at Helium, I am a bit concerned about it changing file dates after playing a track.
I am not sure what it is doing to the files. I am pretty fussy with my music and tags, and don't like players messing with them without me knowing about it.

Also. FLAC original year and recording year won't display in the Library columns even though if I right click > Properties, it shows them.

I haven't yet learnt how to simply add a track to the end of what is currently playing. If I double click a track in the Library, it plays immediately instead of queuing.
I have been messing with the settings, but can't get it to simply go to the end of the queue. In fact, I can't work out how to even display a play queue. It only seems to display in depth info of the current playing track. It can't be that hard surely.

I think, but could be wrong, that Helium saves the Playcount to the file tags, hence it updating the tag after a play.

@olle, right click on an artist in the artist node and select properties.

If you really care about your music collection, then I would strongly advise against putting this piece of crap on your computer.

Apart from altering file dates, it has strewn jpg images all through my music library. I now have to gradually go through and delete them 1 by 1.

It is a good lesson for me not to let an unknown player at my music collection until I have tested it with a few copies.

Apart from this, Helium has a few issues that are really annoying. But I won't go into them now because it has too many issues to bother about.

You've been warned.

dypsis wrote:If you really care about your music collection, then I would strongly advise against putting this piece of crap on your computer.

Apart from altering file dates, it has strewn jpg images all through my music library. I now have to gradually go through and delete them 1 by 1.

It is a good lesson for me not to let an unknown player at my music collection until I have tested it with a few copies.

Apart from this, Helium has a few issues that are really annoying. But I won't go into them now because it has too many issues to bother about.

You've been warned.

Wow, that is harsh!! Yes, Helium has some "problems" and compared to MM it is very primitive, but it also has some features that are superior to MM. I think it would be fair to other users to let them reach their own conclusions. BTW, both complaints that you stated can be turned off in the Options section, the fist in the current version and the second in the upcoming beta version. The first was really easy for me to fix because I do not keep pics in my folders, so I just deleted them all. And in case anyone is wondering, no I am not switching from MM, I am looking for something cleaner and simpler to use for my hubby, he hasn't taken to MM as well as I have.

Nyn

nynaevelan wrote:

dypsis wrote:If you really care about your music collection, then I would strongly advise against putting this piece of crap on your computer.

Apart from altering file dates, it has strewn jpg images all through my music library. I now have to gradually go through and delete them 1 by 1.

It is a good lesson for me not to let an unknown player at my music collection until I have tested it with a few copies.

Apart from this, Helium has a few issues that are really annoying. But I won't go into them now because it has too many issues to bother about.

You've been warned.

Wow, that is harsh!! Yes, Helium has some "problems" and compared to MM it is very primitive, but it also has some features that are superior to MM. I think it would be fair to other users to let them reach their own conclusions. BTW, both complaints that you stated can be turned off in the Options section, the fist in the current version and the second in the upcoming beta version. The first was really easy for me to fix because I do not keep pics in my folders, so I just deleted them all. And in case anyone is wondering, no I am not switching from MM, I am looking for something cleaner and simpler to use for my hubby, he hasn't taken to MM as well as I have.

Nyn

No. I should have been MUCH harsher. I was being constrained. Maybe you have a small library with a simple folder structure, but I just spent hours deleting jpg images.

Any player that messes around with your tracks or adds files to to your track folders without your permission is not worth having.
My collection was fully tagged including cover art. If they have to use images to display cover art, then they should use a separate folder. Not put them amongst your collection. I don't know how much you value your music, but I spend a lot of time ripping and tagging, and I don't want some rogue player messing with them without my consent.

It is something that MediaMonkey developers seem to understand.

dypsis wrote: No. I should have been MUCH harsher. I was being constrained. Maybe you have a small library with a simple folder structure, but I just spent hours deleting jpg images.

Any player that messes around with your tracks or adds files to to your track folders without your permission is not worth having.
My collection was fully tagged including cover art. If they have to use images to display cover art, then they should use a separate folder. Not put them amongst your collection. I don't know how much you value your music, but I spend a lot of time ripping and tagging, and I don't want some rogue player messing with them without my consent.

It is something that MediaMonkey developers seem to understand.

I still disagree with you, both MM and Helium have options in their setups to avoid these issues. Although like you I did not set them up correctly to avoid the problem. And seeing as how there are not that many complaints on their forum, this must be a behavior that many want or do not find that annoying. But consider it a lesson learned, make sure you setup the options before adding your music. The same could be said for MM, when the program is originally installed, it too has the default behavior setup to alter the tags of your music. And the default behavior is to put the art in the album folder and MM has not or probably will not give the user the option to setup a default location in which to store the art, something that Helium does offer btw.

nynaevelan wrote:And the default behavior is to put the art in the album folder and MM has not or probably will not give the user the option to setup a default location in which to store the art, something that Helium does offer btw.

Tools > Options > Tags & Playlists allows you to change the Album Art behavior and folder it will store it in. And if you don't configure it MediaMonkey will ask the user to embed or save externally.