Q: Is there a way to make the default playlists of WMP or AudioStation be
.m3u files? In other words, I don't want to always have to export to
update the playlist...
A: Neither will generate playlists from what you're playing without your
saving as a playlist first. Then you would need to export the playlist
with AudioStation. It will export as an m3u. Since an m3u is nothing
more than a text document with addresses of where files are, it shouldn't
make a difference whether the files are mp3s or wmas as long as the
locations are correct and they're within the share.
Windows Media Player has some power toys that you can use to generate
playlists based on certain criteria. It's limited but it works with
wmas too.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/bonuspack.asp
Winamp is just easy drag and drop for making a playlist or updating one.
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Q: Is there a way to see what playlists a song currently is part of? The
problem is that as I add new songs, if I don't add them all to playlist(s)
immediately, I may not remember if I've added them. But I don't want to
add them twice. If I could look at song and say "show me the playlists
that this song belongs to", I would be very happy. Does any program do
this?
A: Since song pathnames are held in a playlist, but there is no playlist
info held in songs, you would have to create a program that checked all
your playlist files for the inclusion of a given song. As far as we know
there is no such program out there now.
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Q: Are there different ways to implement the m3u standard? When I imported
m3u files into AudioStation that I had created with WMP, it simply showed
a bunch of empty entries, but no song information. (I imported them to a
different computer connected to the same network.) Did I do something
wrong?
A: Playlists can be very dependant on their location. It depends on whether
or not you included the full path or the relative path to the songs
included in your playlist. The relative path seems to have been the norm
for a long time, now most programs (including Winamp and Tag&Rename)
default to full path info. This means that no matter where the playlist is
it can find the files it points to (as long as they have not moved and
the new spot has access to the song files).
Some users keep all playlists in one directory, which is a habit from
non-AT days. You can put them wherever you would like in the AudioTron
searchable file structure and AT will find them. You can't, however, have
several different sets of playlists show up separately in the AT. You can
have a Blues directory, a Classical directory, etc of playlists and they
will all show up mixed together on the AT.
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Q: Is there a truly "ultimate", easy to use utility for ripping CDs and
managing playlists? Neither WMP or AudioStation seems to be it…
A: The newer version of AudioStation has improved ripping capability as well
as playlist management. Here are a couple of other 3rd party programs:
* EAC (Exact Audio Copy) - going from CDs to MP3s, to rip,
and LAME to encode.
(see http://www.r3mix.net/ for info on both EAC and LAME).
* LAME embedded in RazorLame, or SuperiorMP3
(http://www.lidbom.net/superiormp3/)
which helps set up EAC as both ripper and encoder - EAC can embed
LAME though you may use it separately so that you can encode while
you are asleep.
* Tag&Rename is another popular & essential utility
(http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm)
which allows you to create and edit tags on your mp3 files,
and create (but not edit) playlists.
* Winamp also works fine for playing and playlist management.
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