Questions from a new user

[Strikersfan]

Ok somehow my first post ended up with my name instead of a proper title, so let me try this again. 

Hello, I'm a new user to Music Box Alpha, and I'm working at getting familiar with the product. I am having a few issues that I am uncertain about whether they are problems with the program, or somehow user error on my part. I am hoping for some feedback please!

• One CD I have attempted to rip multiple times keeps having an error that I don't know how to fix. The album is The Labyrinth of Time by a band called Soulspell. What happens is, after the rip is complete, it takes most of track 5 and merges it into track 4. Any suggestions on how to handle this?
• The shuffle feature seems to be real intermittent. I can add multiple albums to the Now Playing section and they will start playing. But I find that what happens is, after the first song completes, instead of shuffling amongst all the titles in Now Playing, it grabs another track from the same album as the first song, and it keeps doing this. I found this also happens when I just click to play my entire collection with the shuffle on. Is there a way to add things to Now Playing differently that will truly shuffle amongst everything in there?
• I have noticed that when I put a disc into the drive and Music Box Alpha recognizes it, I have to wait a few minutes before attempting to start the rip or it will fail. Is there a reason this happens?
• I have found that trying to edit the metadata at the song level doesn't save. It will stay for as long as the current session is open, but when you close and re-open a new session it is wiped. This isn't a huge deal because it does save properly when you edit at the album level, just thought you might like to be aware.

All in all it's a good product, and I am looking forward to all of the future enhancements, thanks!

[Jason Carr]

Thanks @Strikersfan and welcome.

On 5/7/2020 at 5:24 PM, Strikersfan said:

One CD I have attempted to rip multiple times keeps having an error that I don't know how to fix. The album is The Labyrinth of Time by a band called Soulspell. What happens is, after the rip is complete, it takes most of track 5 and merges it into track 4. Any suggestions on how to handle this?

To be honest, I've never heard of that happening before. Could it be that the disc is actually encoded that way?

On 5/7/2020 at 5:24 PM, Strikersfan said:

The shuffle feature seems to be real intermittent. I can add multiple albums to the Now Playing section and they will start playing. But I find that what happens is, after the first song completes, instead of shuffling amongst all the titles in Now Playing, it grabs another track from the same album as the first song, and it keeps doing this. I found this also happens when I just click to play my entire collection with the shuffle on. Is there a way to add things to Now Playing differently that will truly shuffle amongst everything in there?

We have found some bugs in the shuffle stuff that we have fixed for the next release. I'm hoping to put out a fixed release here soon.

On 5/7/2020 at 5:24 PM, Strikersfan said:

I have noticed that when I put a disc into the drive and Music Box Alpha recognizes it, I have to wait a few minutes before attempting to start the rip or it will fail. Is there a reason this happens?

Unfortunately I haven't seen that issue either. I do know that we have had trouble with certain CD/DVD drives in our testing. CUE Tools (the utility that we use for ripping) sometimes has problems reading discs on certain drives, so that may be the issue.

On 5/7/2020 at 5:24 PM, Strikersfan said:

I have found that trying to edit the metadata at the song level doesn't save. It will stay for as long as the current session is open, but when you close and re-open a new session it is wiped. This isn't a huge deal because it does save properly when you edit at the album level, just thought you might like to be aware.

Is this happening with music files you've ripped with MBA or imported? What types of files are they? I can look into it.

[Strikersfan]

14 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Thanks @Strikersfan and welcome.

To be honest, I've never heard of that happening before. Could it be that the disc is actually encoded that way?

We have found some bugs in the shuffle stuff that we have fixed for the next release. I'm hoping to put out a fixed release here soon.

Unfortunately I haven't seen that issue either. I do know that we have had trouble with certain CD/DVD drives in our testing. CUE Tools (the utility that we use for ripping) sometimes has problems reading discs on certain drives, so that may be the issue.

Is this happening with music files you've ripped with MBA or imported? What types of files are they? I can look into it.

Thanks for the response Jason! For the track issue, let me walk you through the steps I take. With MBA on, I insert the disc into my DVD drive (it's an ASUS, I don't know the model number, sorry), the disc comes up as unknown, so I select the option to edit the metadata and rip. When it is done it says it finished without errors, but when I look at the tracks I can see the merger which also reflects during playback. But when I go to the files on my C:Drive, and I look at the .txt file it creates with the rip, the track listing actually looks correct with the proper times. Track 4 should be 8:08 and track 5 should be 7:12, but when ripped they come out in MBA as Track 4 14:27 and track 5 0:53. I am attaching the .txt file from my latest attempt, as well as a screen shot from the result in MBA. If you have any ideas on it, or want me to upload anything else you think could help diagnose or resolve the problem, please let me know.

I'll try out the shuffling again in the next build, thanks!

I am wondering if perhaps it's my DVD drive that is causing some of the problems. At some point I can try with a different one I guess. This isn't a huge deal, it just makes the ripping slower, that is only an issue because I have a ton of cd's. LOL

I have only ripped using MBA, it's one of the features that attracted me to the program. They are the FLAC files that are normally output. This for me is not a big deal, it's actually easier to add the metadata for songs at the album level anyway all on one screen. I just thought I would mention it.

Thanks again for the responses, and if there is anything else you can suggest I appreciate it!

 

Soulspell - [2010] The Labyrinth of Truths.log

[Jason Carr]

I see, interesting. The ripping is actually done by CUE Tools. I've contributed some interface code to the project (or at least offered it up), but I'm honestly not an expert on their code base, so I'm not sure I'd be very good at trying to get that ripping issue fixed, unfortunately. I will say that we have run into a number of issues with CUE Tools though, but I know that CD ripping is surprisingly complicated, so I'm not sure if there are any better options out there currently.

Good to know about the tag editing. I will see if I can reproduce and fix that metadata editing issue. :)