Music and My Hard Drive

I have a couple of questions that I'm hoping someone can help me with. I've been told that having a lot of music on your computer/hard drive takes up a lot of space therefore making it run slower. Without having to take all of my music off of my computer, is there any kind of freeware anyone can recommend that will compress my .wav and .mp3 files to free up some space without messing up the sound when I listen to them?

My second question is if you had to choose between Windows Media Player v9 and Music Match Jukebox, what are your opinions on them and which would you choose? I have WMP v9 right now and I haven't been real thrilled with it. I tried Real Player and hated it. I'm kind of afraid of downloading something I'm not familiar with because of the simple fact of security (or lack thereof). Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

Wendy Peek - Dallas, Texas

 

First of all ".WAV" are huge -but pure sounding -if you can hear the diferrence between your .wav and well encoded mp3s (or any other compression format) then stick with the .wav. -I consider myself an 'audiofile' and I find no auditory problems with WELL encoded compressed music (I still use .mp3) -though many people say that my demand of 320kbps is unneccesary.
Second: What I have done is moved all of my audio files to a second hard drive -if you don't have that option then I would *at least* suggest creating a second partition that you dedicate to your audio files.
As for MusicMatch vs WMP -I've tried both and I'm kinda' ashamed to say that the latest Windows Media Player is more usefull *to me*. -You should try both before deciding. The only thing 'Real Player' has going for it is it's 'toolbar mode' which places a toolbar ontop of your desktops toolbar. -It's a nice feature but it doesn't make up for Real Player's other faults. -I would really suggest sticking t either Music Match -or Windows Media Player -though many people would also strongly suggest WinAmp.
Try a few things out before you make a decision: My favourites might -or might NOT suit you.
Hope this helps,
522.

 

lol

have you ever read the EULA for WMP?

this is a statement straight from it...

* Digital Rights Management (Security). You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management ("Secure Content"), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update.

what that means is that they can download stuff on your computer that can stop you from using certain software. they said they would send your a notice but i wouldnt count on that.

 

the more files your have on your harddrive the slower it will be.

The main reason is because the harddrive is mechanical unlike RAM which is a chip. your harddrive looks at all the files that are before the file you want to load.

the more files on HD the more files it has to search through.

 

Welcome to Major Geeks,

How much hard drive space do your MP3s and WAVs take up? How much free space is on your hard drive?

Don't be overly concerned with music files if you have like a 40GB hard drive. Anything less, convert those WAVs to MP3s, if possible.

MP3 files on average are 5MB each. Think 200 MP3s per GB. If you have 2000 MP3s and a 40GB hard drive, the MP3s use 1/4th of your hard drive. Throw videos and pictures in the mix now we're talking, but music files on a recent hard drive, in itself, won't slow it down too much.

Run Disk Defragmenter every couple months to avoid loadup sluggishness.

Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter. Click Analyze, Then Run it (couple hours to complete).

 

Welcome to Major Geeks.

I use Winamp & I like it much better than just about any of the media players. It doesn't hog the system down like some of the others, has more features & it's skinable.

Quintessential Player is another decent player.

 

I have over 30GB of Music on my Hard Drive. (All backups of my own Music)

I use WMP 10 and don't have any problems with it, I prefer the .WMA compression and the "Built In" Cataloging system of WMP is great for me. As I have over 400 albums by almost as many different artists, it makes things easily navigatable for me, and the integrated Ripping, and Burning, (which I am aware other programs have) work well with my hardware and personal preferences. My g/f prefers to use winamp, which I don't particularly have a problem with except for the fact that using it as a default player sometime causes problems with certain files, in my experience. Not looking to get flamed here, and I know that if I were to say "IT ALWAYS HAS PROBLEMS" there are people out there who it works wonderfully for, and they would get defensive.

 

I encode in LAME 3.90.3 mp3s with the --alt-preset standard setting (producing around 180-200 vbr mp3s). As for the player i would suggest Winamp. What hardware are you using (soundcard, headphones)? The reason i ask is because hardware effects quality (and the ability to distinguish between levels of compression) and on a 'cheap' setup 128kbps mp3s may sound the same as wav files. Note also that going from one mp3 quality to another (transcoding) will always reduce quality to some degree (whether u can tell or not).

 

First thing I would do if I was you, and if finances permit, is to fit a second harddrive. Buy the biggest capacity drive you can afford and shift all your music to it. This would free up your main drive a lot. After you have transferred this music, checked out that the new drive has your music and plays it, then defrag your original drive. This will probably take hours, so run it overnight. If you can't afford a new drive, implement the earlier posts here. Bazza

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