Tweet
I installed dbPowerAmp Reference R13.3, WMA Codec, DSP Effects (in that order) on 4th January 2010. Last night (7th Jan) I found out the trial had expired and the program described itself as unregistered.
I was making other changes to the system, removing Norton 2009, and installing 2010 for example, and upgrading Nero from v7. It's Vista x32, with only mainstream software on it; Adobe Creative Design Premium Suite CS3, MS Office 2007. All updates and patches installed etc.
I've always stuggled with Adobe activation (and Norton to some degree) and have been left with non-working software at the most awkward times (9pm on a Saturday Wedding, midnight on a Friday evening when Adobe UK has a Monday support closure) and found Adobe UK unavailable outside office hours and Adobe USA actively unhelpful. When Adobe software stops working with no notice (not even blance of trial period as a warning grace), and with the problems installing/upgrading Adobe products, I actively look for an alternative to avoid this pain. We have similar issues with Adobe on Macs also - still haven't managed to install CS3 on our Art Room macs, adobe helpfully suggests we reformat the Hard Drives and reinstall.
Anyway, back to dbPowerAmp . . . I've seen a few threads for users that had difficulty upgrading dbPowerAmp and having to reinstall EVERYTHING - settings, codecs etc.
??? How can I get the trial to continue, with least amount of re-configuring (many of my settings are in the software) ???
My Findings So Far:-
1. Reference secure ripping, it does what it says on the tin. :D Having had about 2% of Windows Media Player 11 rips with errors (pops & clicks), which I only found out when later listening to, dbPowerAmp did as hoped. It found issue with those same problem discs, but managed to recover the tracks, mark them as secure, and they played without the problem. dbPowerAmp is fast, and once setup up, easy to use with the AccurateRip assurance on most of my CD's so far. :komisch9: It turned out that about 15% (4 out of 27) CD's had read errors, which dbPowerAmp was able to redo correctly - this also made me realise my WMP 11 library had more errors in it than I had thought.
2. Setup and installation is not too easy (EAC looked much more difficult). Finding and configuring settings was a learning curve. Have now found alternative settings that for me, do a good job of recovering difficult CD's. Still working on Tag's.
My Unresolved User Challenges (am searching forums for knowledge):-
A. CD Ripper handles Artist Compilations nicely, Music Converter did not. I'm hoping I just used the wrong tags (album versus album artist etc) and am looking into this.
B. Gapless - not sure if a live concert CD I'd converted to WMA Lossless is gapless, again working on testing this, maybe I need different player (e.g. Media Monkey).
C. Can I rip two Audio CD's at once. I'm sure I'd read you can with dbPowerAmp, but now I can't find any information on it. I continue to search.
D. Cue Sheets - I'd thought an early development of this was in R13.3, but I have not found it yet.
E. Tagging Conventions - should I use 'The Beatles' or 'Beatles, the' etc, have done number of test rips (WmaL) and conversions (Wma128) to see/test effects & implications. Again still searching knowledge forums for answers, but haven't found anything yet.
Overall thought - I usually find it easy to research information on the internet, but points A-E have left me with a lot of non-relevent information and no real answers - I keep looking.
I was making other changes to the system, removing Norton 2009, and installing 2010 for example, and upgrading Nero from v7. It's Vista x32, with only mainstream software on it; Adobe Creative Design Premium Suite CS3, MS Office 2007. All updates and patches installed etc.
I've always stuggled with Adobe activation (and Norton to some degree) and have been left with non-working software at the most awkward times (9pm on a Saturday Wedding, midnight on a Friday evening when Adobe UK has a Monday support closure) and found Adobe UK unavailable outside office hours and Adobe USA actively unhelpful. When Adobe software stops working with no notice (not even blance of trial period as a warning grace), and with the problems installing/upgrading Adobe products, I actively look for an alternative to avoid this pain. We have similar issues with Adobe on Macs also - still haven't managed to install CS3 on our Art Room macs, adobe helpfully suggests we reformat the Hard Drives and reinstall.
Anyway, back to dbPowerAmp . . . I've seen a few threads for users that had difficulty upgrading dbPowerAmp and having to reinstall EVERYTHING - settings, codecs etc.
??? How can I get the trial to continue, with least amount of re-configuring (many of my settings are in the software) ???
My Findings So Far:-
1. Reference secure ripping, it does what it says on the tin. :D Having had about 2% of Windows Media Player 11 rips with errors (pops & clicks), which I only found out when later listening to, dbPowerAmp did as hoped. It found issue with those same problem discs, but managed to recover the tracks, mark them as secure, and they played without the problem. dbPowerAmp is fast, and once setup up, easy to use with the AccurateRip assurance on most of my CD's so far. :komisch9: It turned out that about 15% (4 out of 27) CD's had read errors, which dbPowerAmp was able to redo correctly - this also made me realise my WMP 11 library had more errors in it than I had thought.
2. Setup and installation is not too easy (EAC looked much more difficult). Finding and configuring settings was a learning curve. Have now found alternative settings that for me, do a good job of recovering difficult CD's. Still working on Tag's.
My Unresolved User Challenges (am searching forums for knowledge):-
A. CD Ripper handles Artist Compilations nicely, Music Converter did not. I'm hoping I just used the wrong tags (album versus album artist etc) and am looking into this.
B. Gapless - not sure if a live concert CD I'd converted to WMA Lossless is gapless, again working on testing this, maybe I need different player (e.g. Media Monkey).
C. Can I rip two Audio CD's at once. I'm sure I'd read you can with dbPowerAmp, but now I can't find any information on it. I continue to search.
D. Cue Sheets - I'd thought an early development of this was in R13.3, but I have not found it yet.
E. Tagging Conventions - should I use 'The Beatles' or 'Beatles, the' etc, have done number of test rips (WmaL) and conversions (Wma128) to see/test effects & implications. Again still searching knowledge forums for answers, but haven't found anything yet.
Overall thought - I usually find it easy to research information on the internet, but points A-E have left me with a lot of non-relevent information and no real answers - I keep looking.
Comment