Important News About Winmx!!!

[Marius]

A post from another board that I thought interesting - though I'm sure it will be old news here, LOL (the exclamation marks are the original posters).


Post subject: IMPORTANT NEWS ABOUT WINMX!!!

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To down load albums thousands....thousands...of them use "entire" "complete" as a search word....7,000+ right now...

But, that is not the news...was having trouble with playback on some of these mp3s...thought corrupt...

but, no! they are really assembled with a program that I had not heard of "album wrap" free for 15dys....really neat!!!

It breaks the songs back into single mp3s with it's decoder... saves a ton of work with the previous single files....tried it and wow! it works

...you don't know about it without getting on the help chat and still they aren't upfront with it...

http://www.infamus.com/albumwrap/
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Marius

[Snarkridden]

I tried it for a while after enquiring what ALBW meant on some files I came across, indeed they are complete album rips.

There is litle information as to the encoder ALBW uses, and I doubt it would perform as well as the top notch standards do (X)

As for ripping the whole album, there is no point in CD's as most people will share individual tracks anyway, to save download time, improve availability.

If you (like I) also rip LP's then you need more serious tools anyway, to remove rumble & clicks, so again there is little point, except for the less caring (of quality) and those with no time.

Another "Nice Try" but gimmicky tool... Who would pay even $15 for something not really needed? Obviously someome didn't want to pay a cent, already a well known Russian crack site has a timeout removing patch (Shhhh, I never said that!)

Snark...

(X) Lame 3.92 converter / EAC (Exact Audio Copy) / CDDAE99

[JackSpratts]

well, an ideal program would rip all the cd tracks and artwork into one file using the encoder of your choice and maintain the proper between-track spacing and indexing (try doing that - one - cut - at - a - time - with pink floyd for instance), then it would allow your cd burner to extract it all with one click, making album transfers and cd making easy & practical. it's the direction the labels will have to move in when they start selling complete cd's online and i'm sure it'll be commonplace in a year or so. i'd just like to have an independent version too.

- js.

[db_]

AFAIK Albumwrap doesn't (re)encode the mp3 files in any way, it simply takes a number of individual mp3 files and compiles them into a single file can that can played as a normal mp3, and further allows extraction back to the original individual files.

Just try a search for _ALBW to see the popularity of the album wrapped files. From my own experience using them they've been very handy, being able to simply select a single wrapped mp3 for download and unwrap when the download completes, ending up with an entire album where all the individual mp3s usually originate from the same source/ripper, unlike many of the mix an matched mp3 albums you tend to see knocking about.

As a note though, not all the albumwrapped files like extracting, I think sometimes users that don't know what 'ALBW' and Albumwrap means modify the ID3 tags, causing the wrap to fail (so it seems), still, the majority extract without any problems.

The extractor is free btw...
http://www.infamus.com/albumwrap/extractor.html

db

[pod]

Originally posted by Snarkridden
If you (like I) also rip LP's then you need more serious tools anyway, to remove rumble & clicks, so again there is little point, except for the less caring (of quality) and those with no time.

What tools would those be?

As for album wrap... if it just marks up the id3 tag with extended info, well, that's crap. The mp3 stream format provides for all kinds of tags to be inserted anywhere in the file, like, say, a track separator in a single album file! (If you've ever connected to an mp3 radio station you know what I mean, when the title changes with the corresponding track, even though it's just all one big file/stream.) This is what album wrap should be using. But, since people say the file doesn't play at all (or sounds funny), smells like proprietary nonsense to me, and people would be better off not using it, providing instead a full album mp3 file and a cue file, for possible track separation by more advanced mp3 manipulation utilities (and now, burners). Or how about them zip files?

But, I've never downloaded one of these (definitely NOT a fan of full album files) and it would take far too long work and time for me to do so to see what really happens with these files.

[StereoDeluxe]

ALBW is ID3V2Tag (track separation info) + MP3file(may contain ID3v1 and/or ID3v2 tag) + MP3files +... so all together, it's not valid MP3 file. though WinAmp plays well by skipping ID3 tags between the tracks. and sometimes ALBW is a real crap, composed from all different sources.

I prefer Full Rip Album with Cue sheet

[pod]

Hmm, well, I got an ALBW file, and didn't notice anything strange with it. It just played like a regular mp3. I didn't play all of it, just skipped back and forth a few times. The ID3v2 tag said AlbumWrap, so I assume it's the real article. <shrug>, give me a cue file any day.

[Snarkridden]

Originally posted by pod


What tools would those be?

Yo, Pod!

In my case Sound forge, DartPro, AudioLab with a frightening array of filters, plus the most important ingredient, the EARS

Its a good job I don't do it as a business now, I like to LIKE the material I work on, being paid to edit some hardly musical stuff is a chore in itself, one I would not like to have to endure again.

Snark..