just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

[dtclarinet]

I just purchased dbpoweramp bundle and installed. Windows 8.1 64 bit.

Where are the settings for dbpoweramp?? Where do the ripped files go? I want to rip to both mp3 and wav. How can I do that?

Where is the program icon? No desktop icon?

dbpoweramp sucked at getting track names and album info. It chose completely random and wrong track names from some album I've never heard of.

Doesn't PerfectTUNES work WITH poweramp?

I bought it because I assumed those things would be easy and obvious. Not so.

I would like a refund.

David Thomas

[garym]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

so your first post is to complain and ask for a refund. Instead, why not ask for a bit of help answering your questions as a new user (all easily answered), and then move on to use the program (which does exactly what is promised).

First, go in Windows to "All Programs" and look for the "dbpoweramp Music Converter" folder. Click on this and you'll see all the dbpa programs. If you desire, you can right click on any of these programs and "send to" desktop to create a shortcut for the program. Once you run any of these programs, you'll see places to click to do setup, select options, etc. You may or may not need to also download and install certain additional Codecs or DSP affects. For PerfectTunes, in all programs go to the "perfecttunes" folder and you'll find the program there. Again, you can create a shortcut if desired.

dbpa and perfecttunes "sort of" work together. When ripping, dbpa already does all the things perfecttunes does (check for accuraterip match, find artwork, etc.), so not needed. Perfecttunes is more useful for doing things to already ripped files.

[garym]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

I find dbpa metadata support the best available. The "perfectmeta" approach uses metadata from multiple sources to try to obtain the best results. I've ripped about 3,000 CDs so far and find that about 95% are right on the money with correct metadata. Many of the 5% corrections I need to do are from Box Sets, re-releases, or multi-CD sets. And in general, metadata is a somewhat personal (and timeconsuming) part of ripping/converting. Your idea of a genre may not be my idea of correct genre. And how one wants to deal with box sets, reissues, etc. in terms of album naming, etc. can depend on personal preference.

Also, in terms of where the ripped tracks go, they go to wherever you wanted them to go based on the setting you used in "dynamic naming". And it is possible to rip to lossy and lossless at the same time using the correct DSP (see Codec Central site).

[Spoon]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

Audio goes into your Music folder by default, set the Encoder to [Multi-Encoder] and add the wave and mp3 encoder.

About metadata, it is very rare for albums (note not cd singles) to get the wrong metadata, if this happens click the review metadata button and choose the correct one.

[dtclarinet]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

Apologies for ranting. I do not see any options for choosing the types of files or where files go for multi-encoder settings. There are none. If I choose the multiencoder option, the window for options is blank. And the save to place is not editable.

[Spoon]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

On the multi-encoder settings page, you click 'Add Encoder', note that each encoder has its own path as you will not want your wav and mp3 files intermingled, for wave click dynamic and paste:

wav\[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP]Various Artists[][IF!COMP][artist][][]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [title]

for mp3:

mp3\[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP]Various Artists[][IF!COMP][artist][][]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [title]

or change the outout folder from music to a different location for mp3

[garym]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

Apologies for ranting. I do not see any options for choosing the types of files or where files go for multi-encoder settings. There are none. If I choose the multiencoder option, the window for options is blank. And the save to place is not editable.

not sure, but you may need to install the [multi-encoder] from codec central? anyhow, once installed, on the CD ripper main screen, lower left, use the dropdown menu to choose encoder as [multi-encoder]. Then once selected, in the lower middle of that screen you should see "add encoder" button. Click this then choose WAV as encoder. Then go back and select add encoder button again and then select mp3 as encoder. On the screens where you choose WAV or mp3, you can choose the file destination there. You probably want to use dynamic naming (that uses album name, artist, etc. to create directories and subdirectories). You may need to read up on this a bit first.

[dtclarinet]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

Audio goes into your Music folder by default, set the Encoder to [Multi-Encoder] and add the wave and mp3 encoder.

When I choose multi-encoder there are no wave and mp3 encoders to the right.

[dtclarinet]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

Thanks for your help!! I missed the "add encoder" options, which only show in the full screen window, so not obvious at all. Apologies again to dbpoweramp for the rant.

[garym]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

Apologies again to dbpoweramp for the rant.

No problem. To be fair, dbpa is more complicated to setup initially than something like itunes, etc. But that's because it can do so much more. And I agree that it would be helpful if the dbpa programs would at least offer the option to install desktop icons when installing (as the lack of any icons stumps a lot of new users).

There are a number of things that weren't clear to me early on that took a bit of learning curve to discover. Things about dynamic naming in particular. But I think you'll find that the users in this forum are pretty helpful (that's how I learned everything) and will provide pointers, examples, etc. in most situations. And Spoon himself chimes in with help on a very timely basis. Try that with microsoft!!

In case you didn't see it, there is some useful info here:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/spoons-audio-guide.htm

[garym]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

my two cents. I also keep a lossless (FLAC) and lossy (mp3) archive. FLAC for my squeezeboxes and mp3 for my ithings. This said, I don't bother with multiencoder. Even when the metadata is correct, I often find myself fine-tuning things to suit my own needs, adding some custom tags (often done with mp3tag), changing genre, etc. Some of these things can be changed on the ripper screen before ripping, but I often find other little things to adjust. So my process is;

1. rip to FLAC with dbpa. While ripping the next CD, I go to these FLAC files and do any fine-tuning I want to do. Sometimes none.
2. After I've done a number of FLAC rips (and sometimes only once a month or so), I use dbpa batch converter to convert FLAC files to mp3 files. Using dynamic naming, it creates a mirror directory structure, naming, tags, etc. which is identical except the upper directory is x:\lossy\... vs x:\FLAC (and in mp3 I have the artwork embedded into the file where with FLAC I just have a single "cover.jpg" in the album subdirectory. When doing the batch conversion, it is smart enough to ignore the files I've already converted to mp3 and only convert the "unconverted" FLAC files.

Also, the dynamic naming string I use for ripping is as follows (puts compilations albums in a directory for compilations (with file name including track no., title, and artist), otherwise puts in: Album Artist (or ARTIST, if no album artist)\Album name\01 track name.flac, etc.

[IFCOMP]Compilations\[album] [IFMULTI] \Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title]-[artist][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[album][IFMULTI] \Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title][]

(and just above the dynamic naming entry, I put the parent directory where all this goes: (e.g., X:\music\FLAC\)

[BrodyBoy]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

Also....the Help button takes you to a good, basic introduction that answers most of these "start-up" questions:

[dtclarinet]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

thanks garym for the tips. I'm now triple encoding to Wav, Mp4 and Mp3, all too their own directories. Do you think it would be more efficient to just do WAV and then convert again for other formats? It seems to be working so far.

Most of my albums are classical. And I want to rip 300 albums. Your naming string really helps as an example.

[dtclarinet]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

Thanks Spoon, for this and the other suggestions. I feel much more confident now.

[garym]

Re: just purchased, VERY disappointed, many many questions

thanks garym for the tips. I'm now triple encoding to Wav, Mp4 and Mp3, all too their own directories. Do you think it would be more efficient to just do WAV and then convert again for other formats? It seems to be working so far.

Most of my albums are classical. And I want to rip 300 albums. Your naming string really helps as an example.

It turns out that no matter how good the metadata tagging support is in any program, that classical music is the hardest to tag. Combine this with the different options that users might prefer here (as compared to the generally more limited ways people want to tag pop music), the entire tagging process takes on a lot more manual adjustments in the classical world. There is no right answer, but lots of different things to think about with classical tagging. For this reason, my own preference would be to rip to lossless (wav in your case). Make sure my tags are exactly what I want, custom tags are added, etc. That is, fix everything ONCE. And then I would do batch conversion to m4p (m4a?) and mp3. Otherwise, you find minor edits you want to do and then you have to fix three sets of tags. Once the lossless files are perfectly tagged, batch conversion is just a couple of mouse clicks and highly automated.

p.s. The info in this link might be useful in thinking about how you want to tag your classical music. (I have maybe 25 classical CDs out of 9,000 + CDs, so I'm not exactly the right person to ask about this. ;-)

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Beginners_Guide_To_Classical

also, you can search within this forum (or the internet in general) for "classical music tagging" and find more discussions/suggestions than you can possible use. Again, no right answer...just do what fits your library management style and your player.