Memory sticks

[Aggers]

Because I am having little success in creating CDs of song tracks for my
Music Evenings, I have decided to use a USB Storage device ("memory
stick") instead. I have tried out the idea with a small capacity device,
with complete success, but I really need one that can hold at least four
CDs. Can anyone advise me regarding what size USB device I require?

[Diflower]

Aggers if you were to get an mp3 player - like this then you can very easily transfer your music onto it, compiled into playlists.
You can then plug the mp3 player into a stereo system or a portable speaker and play them.
The one on the link is just the first example I found, I have a Sony walkman version and love it.

It's honestly ever so easy, I have playlists that last over 3 hours, I just make the list on windows media player and transfer it. It's wonderful and I know you'd be able to manage it.

[Aggers]

Thanks, Di., but having spent as lot of money on a high-powered CD Player,
which is necessary in the large room we use (especially as some like to talk
instead of listen !), I don't want to spend much more, and using a memory
stick is so easy. I just need to make sure I get a device capable of storing a
2 or 3 hour programme.

[Workingman]

Hi John,

I want to say that I do not disagree with Di for one second, but I did wonder if you wanted to go to the expense of a dedicated portable mp3 player.

There are ways to do what you want, some easy, some fraught with problems, but here goes. You need a cheap USB flash drive. Examples here at EBuyer. If you are not going to do lots of read/writes to the drive any old USB 2.0 8Gig will do. You will not need to spend much more than a fiver.

The next thing you need is to get your playlists and their files to the USB drive, and that is where the fun starts. Windows Media Player, which you might be using to make your playlists is not ideal becaus it saves playlists in its own format .wpl and they would need to be converted. Let me explain a bit: the legacy industry standards for music and playlist that will play on most systems are mp3, for the music files, and m3u for the playlists. These are the formats you should be using. One of the best and simplest softwares to achieve this in one operation is the free player and media library organiser Foobar. To do the things you want to do in Foobar is simplicity itself.

When you rip files from your CDs they should be saved as mp3 files. This YouTube video gives a good walk through of what to do as you install Foobar. Just follow the instructions. Where it speaks of a Lame mp3 encoder you can get it here.. If using W7 x64 bit you need the second option from the top marked x64. Now, before you start anything else create a folder on your C:\ drive, shall we say C:\MusicRips. When the video speaks about the destination folder for your music rips navigate to the one you just created and all you files, whenever you rip, will go there. This becomes the parent folder. When choosing the destination folder for the music you are ripping the default can always be appended using \Artist or CD name, so C:\MusicRips will eventually become C:\MusicRips\Frank Sinatra or C:\MusicRips\Deano Greatest Hits and so on.

Creating playlists for your USB drive in Foobar. First thing to say is that if you already have a parent folder of music you have already ripped to your hard drive you can add it to Foobar from File>>>Add Folder and from the new window select your existing folder. It might be useful at a later date, but for now just load it - it will be one huge playlist called default. So, you now want to create your own playlist. Let us say that you ripped Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits to C:\MusicRips\Frank, the list would look something like this:

Track/Duration
1 Strangers in the Night 2:38
2 Summer Wind 2:58
3 It Was A Very Good Year 4:27
4 Somewhere In Your Heart 2:27
5 Forget Domani 2:36
6 Somethin' Stupid (feat. Nancy Sinatra) 2:39
7 That's Life 3:07
8 Tell Her (You Love Her Each Day) 2:41
9 The World We Knew (Over And Over) 2:47
10 When Somebody Loves You 1:55
11 This Town 3:02
12 Softly as I Leave You 2:54

To create a playlist in Foobar do this: File>>>New Playlist, a new tab opens in Foobar. Right click and rename it Frank. To add files to the new playlist keep the tab highlighted and from the menu: File>>>Add Files and in the new window choose the files you want in the playlist - you can add all or be selective. Once the files are in go back to File>>>Save Playlist, but this time navigate to your USB drive and save it there, also as Frank. The playlist is now on the USB drive but it needs the files as well. To do that, right click on the Frank tab and from "Frank" Contents>>>File Operations>>>Copy To.... choose Run from the new window and the files will be copied to USB. The pen is now ready to be played anywhere. If you want to check it in Foobar just click on any file in the list and Foobar will play it on your computer.

I know it all sounds a bit long winded at first, but once you have done it you will find it a breeze, and believe me using WMP is a lot more long winded.

[Aggers]

Thanks, Frank.

Actually the process I use will be much simpler than you describe, because
the Samsung CD Player I use is capable of recording directly to a USB device.
I have already tried doing so with an old 128 MB USB device, and it works
perfectly, and at playing speed. I just want a USB device with enough capacity
to hold the tracks from four CDs. From what you now say I presume that 8GB
would be sufficient.

[Workingman]

Oh poo, I did all that because I misunderstood.

But no! Copying files to a memory stick is dead easy, but they will play in alphanumeric order, which might not be what you want, and adding numbers to the beginning of every track to get some sort of playing order can be more trouble than it is worth. Using playlists as the key they are sorted in the playlist order and that order is up to you. There is another potential problem with CDs. They use .cda as the music format and that might not be compatible with the all the systems to be played on. Also, often the naming convention is Track 1, Track 2 and so on. Recording multiple CDs could give multiple files all called Track 1, Track 2 and unless they go to individual folders earlier recorded ones could get overwritten. That is one of the reasons playlists were developed.

And, yes, 8Gig is more than enough, even for a decent music collection. Using mp3 you should get upwards of 6 hours playback per gigabyte.

[Aggers]

Thanks, Frank.

I see I shall have to do some experimenting..

The CD player I use actually burns the track on the USB device at the same time that it is playing it,
and gives you the option of copying just one track or the whole program.

I'll let you know how I get on.

[Workingman]

I'll let you know how I get on.

OK, and meantime I will work out how to teach you to use Aimp3.... a music player streets ahead of most software players, including Foobar. It does playlists and plays music to levels WMP can only dream of.

Win Media Player tries to do too much. It wants to be your all-in-one media centre for TV, videos, music, pictures, DVDs.... and it copes, but it is bloated.

What most of us want is a dedicated program for each media type. I am never going to watch a DVD whilst listening to a CD and viewing my latest camera shots. WMP does all of them, but is not the best for each type of file. Your Samsung CD player is likely to be limited for what you need and also tied to whatever Samsung uses as its media format.

[Suff]

Hi Aggers,

If you have the music on the PC it would be quicker and better to just copy it. However you would need to know how the music system puts it onto the USB stick. If you put the USB stick into the Laptop you should be able to see what the Samsung did with it.

Your needs for 4 CD's (max 700mbytes with music), would be met with a 4GB stick as 4 CD's are only ~2.8gb.

I would mention only one thing really here. Access speed and USB type. Most sticks are USB2.0 and your laptop may only have USB2.0. However if you look at the write speeds of USB2.0 sticks, you will be hard pushed to find one which does more than about 4mbytes/s write and probably 16mbytes/s read.

USB3.0 sticks, on the other hand, are backwards compatible with USB2.0 and can use the full speed of the USB2.0 interface, which is 25mbytes/s. I would look at the read write speed of any USB stick before I bought it. I have two fast USB3 sticks which, when on USB3 work very well for me. One is 30mbytes/s write and 90mbytes/s read. The other one is 90mbytes/s write and 200mbytes/s read. On USB2.0 they work at full speed which means if you want to copy files from the PC to it then it will be quick.

Both sticks are 32gbytes and neither cost more than £25.

If, on the other hand, you have a lot of leisure time, a 4GB stick can be had for around £3. Just don't expect it to be very quick.

WM will be able to give you a lot of information about playlists etc. If you can make playlists on the Samsung it would be useful to see, on the USB stick, how it wrote it. Because there are playlist editors (free for the PC), which you could use and it would be much faster than using the Samsung player.

I've even stopped using my media players. I just use the music on my phone with a few playlists in shuffle mode. I have a Bluetooth receiver now and plug my headphones into it. I have a 64GB micro SD card in the phone but it only has 2GB of music on it. Now that I have two phones which can do this I find I'm no longer tied to a separate music player.

Just a thought.

[Aggers]

Thanks, Suff.

I'm not too keen on using my laptop for music programmes, as I've lost patience with it.
I've spent time making up a playlist and then burning it to a CD, only to find that the CD
won't play. The Samsung (Model MX-H630) seems to much more positive, and my initial
trials using it have been successful.

I will be attempting to produce a full length programme tomorrow, and I'm hopeful.