Digital Audio Players and Their Softwares

Mentis

I own a Zune and an iPhone, both of which require me to use their bloated, underfeatured proprietary software to manage the music that's on them. This wouldn't be an issue if I wasn't forced to use third party programs to accomplish different tasks on top of being forced to use these programs just to crunch music onto my players.

Recently, when the new Zunes were launched, the old Zunes got a nice firmware upgrade and the Zune Media software got a nice facelift as well. Great, everything looks prettier, but it still hardly manages to be an end-all solution for things I need. Firstly, it manages to get stuck on files with incorrect ID3 tags. Then, when I decide to fix it, I'm forced to go to an external program to edit tags because the Zunes tag editor is an abortion. At least this problem doesn't carry over to the Zune itself. The only major pro it has for it is the media sharing/server option. Because I have an XBox 360, I enjoy streaming my media to my living room when I have BBQs and Parties. I also enjoy the concept of wireless syncing to my zune via WIFI, even though I don't actually use this feature. When I'm at home, I'm plugging in my zune to charge it anyways so I may as well enjoy faster syncing (if any) via USB.

Now, onto iTunes. Alot of people really enjoy it. Over the course of the last 6-8 months (when I got my iPhone), I've managed to establish a truce with iTunes and best. I have the same ID3 tag issue that the Zune software gave me, except that even after fixing the tags, most of the "broken" files still don't work. Even worse, any files that won't play in iTunes also won't play on my iPhone. I don't know exactly why they won't play, I believe it's either encoding or unicode ID3 tag related. But I've used other software that don't have any issues with this. Even the Zune will play these files, as mentioned before.

Great, so I'm forced to use the Zune software to put music on my Zune. I don't have to use it as my media player, at least. I have to use iTunes to plug files onto my iPhone, but because nothing I've tried will 100% solve this "files won't play" issue, I'm left with a crippled library as far as any Apple Products are concerned.

So, to enjoy my media on my PC, I'm either left with WMP, Winamp, or Foobar. WMP has great sharing compatibility with my 360 and laptop, but it's bloaty and I prefer the media library on winamp. Winamp has been getting more bloated with each consecutive release, although it is highly skinnable. Foobar is my favorite media player. It has no problem with any of my files, and with all the plugins, it has great media library functionality. The only problem I have with it is occasionally it locks, and I can't manage the music on my DAPs with it.

The only reason I can't manage my DAPs music is because both MS and Apple want to keep it locked down so you're forced to use their software and perhaps enticed to purchase music from them.

People have managed to add compatibility in other programs for iPods, etc. But They've yet to do the same for either the Zune or iPhone (unless I've overlooked something).

Am I the only one getting entirely sick of this?

I know it's unlikely to get some sort of unified system here, but it's really what we need. Even some sort of intermediate solution would be great.

Maybe I'm just being nit-picky.

How do you all feel? Has anyone here managed to find a great solution to this problem? Some amazing third-party app I haven't discovered?

TL;DR
iTunes and Zune software suck.

shadydentist

I sympathize. The iPod is a fantastic music player, but I really wish it didn't force you to use itunes. Also, was slightly optimistic when Microsoft announced the zune, only to be crushed when they unrolled Zune media player.

I don't have a solution, and have avoided buying both the ipod and the zune for this reason.

RandomEngy

I love MediaMonkey so much. It's fast, reasonable on memory consumption, syncs to all sorts of devices, has all the great features (media library, search, smart playlists, mass-tagging, embedded album art) and is extremely customizable.

Some people have issues with it but I encourage you to give it a shot.

Tharghor

Mediamonkey doesn't work with Zune. There's a registry hack that makes the Zune a portable HDD, however it needs the Zune software and registry hacks installed on all computers it connects to. It's a bit weird that there hasn't been made a custom software to sync with the zune.

I recall there was a hack that made the zune sync with WMP 11. I'll edit once I find it.

EDIT: Wow, that was fast. I haven't tested it yet, but it seems to work with the newest software.

Silvoculous

My player is a somewhat-old Toshiba Gigabeat F10, with which I had software problems like yours on top of firmware issues. There's a battery switch on the bottom of the player, and last year a friend of mine switched this, unwittingly killing the firmware (though I don't think it was supposed to do that).

Enter Rockbox. Easy to come by, runs on a variety of players (all iPods, several Archos and Sansa models, and a few iRivers), and grants me freedom from shitty proprietary music managers. Not to mention it's customizable up the wazoo. The F10 only did music and photos on its original firmware, but now I have it playing MPEG movies, trippy screensavers, and Doom, on top of a bunch of other smaller games and apps.

Not sure if they'll offer Zune support anytime soon.

Tharghor

There won't be Rockbox on Zune anytime soon. The "OS" is heavily encrypted (SHA something) and part of it is on an actual chip, the rest on a seperate partition on the harddrive. At least it's being worked on.

Mentis

Tharghor wrote: »

Mediamonkey doesn't work with Zune. There's a registry hack that makes the Zune a portable HDD, however it needs the Zune software and registry hacks installed on all computers it connects to. It's a bit weird that there hasn't been made a custom software to sync with the zune.

I recall there was a hack that made the zune sync with WMP 11. I'll edit once I find it.

EDIT: Wow, that was fast. I haven't tested it yet, but it seems to work with the newest software.

This is a workaround. I still have to start up the Zune program to sync music, which is lame. Still, for a single sync for correct Meta Data it seems good.