Starting OVER-Please help!

I think you're going to be better off with MC9. They're all good programs, but for what you want to do, in the long run you'll be happier with MC9.

You won't lose your tags, and you should be able to clean them up relatively quickly with MC9, and get synched. You can trial MC9 for free, and we can help you get everything cleaned up...

Hey, Adam, it's er, Adam.

First off, you might want to check out the Help Guide that's posted as a sticky at the top of this thread. It'll give you some of the basics.

But to get you started. Don't worry about tagging anymore in MMJB, just uninstall it. Then, import all your tunes into MC9, it'll read the tags that MMJB added. You'll need to do some cleaning up because as you'll find MMJB doesn't tag very well.

When you've got your library looking nice and pretty the way you want it, just connect your iPod, reformat it (from w/in MC9) and Sync. You'll be in business.

Check out the help file I did though, it'll give you the basics. Sort of the step-by-step you're looking for I think.

If you have any questions, just post back. Chris, Timmy, Kurt or many of the others will help you out.

Oh, and welcome to the 'lounge! (MC9 is the best IMO) ;)

Adam

Hey guys,

Thanks for responding. The help file is from Dec. 2002 though, so does it work for new 3rd gen. 15gb ipods. Also what about the new 9.1 beta version. Adam you said you like it a lot more and it works with 9.1, but as a mc9 novice, should i stick to the basics. Hope to hear from you soon.

~Adam

Sorry about the double post.

Another question is my computer hard drive is only 15 gb, and I'm going to need to delete the cd's I've put on already (I've done only about 1/4 of the music I want to upload). Once I do that and I sync with Ipod, what will happen to the songs/playlists on the ipod-are they lost b/c I delete the cd's from my computer? Because I know MusicMatch has a "Ignore Content Deletion" button-does MC9 have something like that also? Thanks again guys.

~Adam

I don't quite follow-will I have to forget about smartlists b/c I would delete the media or only when I get a new hard-drive then I'd be able to use the smarlists with MC9? Just curious, if I have a Dell Latitude Laptop w/ Win2k, is it easy to transfer my data from existing hard drive to my new one I would install? Thanks Adam.

~Adam

Asg25,

I'm the user that Adam and Chris helped out in the thread, "Will this Setup Work with MC9?"! Thanks to their input, I bought a 120 GB external Western Digital hard drive for my office computer and am happily engaged in what I call "The Big Rip." I'm ripping my music collection of 400-500 CD's onto the hard drive and organizing them on MC9.

The hard drive works like a charm, and it's lots of fun to fiddle around with MC9. The 120 GBdrive cost about $200 with a rebate. You can get external 100 GB drives for less from brands like Iomega and Maxtor, but Western Digital got the highest ratings for reliability in my research. Of course, you could buy an internal drive from Dell for your Lattitude. That may be cheaper.

I'm pre-Ipod. Once I rip close to 30 GB worth of my CD's, I will have justified purchasing the 30 GB Ipod. Then I'm going to verify (on these boards) precisely what I have to do to synchronize my music with the Ipod. By then, I will have invested much time and energy in "The Big Rip," so I hope everything synchronizes smoothly with my Ipod in a month or so.

I could have just bought the Ipod and worked with the 5-10 GB of empty space on my computer's hard drive, but, for reasons that Adam and Chris mentioned, I did not want to do that. It's best to have a drive dedicated to your music.

Hope that helps! Listen to Adam and Chris!!

Well, the new expert on the external HD is Yez--he can probably give you some insight on how quickly it went.

You'll import your music from your computer. It wouldn't be a bad idea to remove mmjb before you install MC9--they don't always work well together.

Not sure I understand the next part. Have you already upgraded to 2.0.1? I still have the ipod manager and updater on my computer, but I buried them so the ipod manager doesn't come up--had too many problems with it and MC9, so I just open MC9 and go from there. I left the updater (2.0.1) on my computer so I can restore periodically--I haven't had any problems, not sure why you'd have to delete it.

Also, when you rip tunes, you'll use MC9 to do it. It will rip the tunes directly onto your external/internal drive. So there's no need to move them after you've ripped them. It's all one process.

You can check out the help guide, I think I put this in there. Basically, when you set up MC9 you'll set up a "Base Directory". This is a location on a hard drive (any hard drive) where you keep your tunes. Like on mine it's C:\My Music, then when your rip tunes, MC9 will store the songs in the directory, it'll automatically create an Aritst Directory and an Album directory too (you can customize it to the way you want).

So, it's all done automatically.

Hope that helps. If I were you and you have the space, I'd get an internal drive. I just think they are cheaper and well a little faster. Not that I really know anything about it. It's just what I did.

Adam

You've already got an internal HD, right? Moving stuff from one to the other is a couple clicks away--you won't need to buy any extras. Overall the internal will be cheaper, and, provided you don't need to move an external HD from source to source, easier to use. Fewer hassles.

Delete mmjb first. You can leave the updater on your HD, but you might want to disable it--it seems to be hit or miss how well it works with MC9. Or you can get rid of it altogether; once MC9 is on you won't need it until another firmware update comes out--and even then you don't need the updater to update the firmware...