First of all, I tried very hard to find the answers to my questions here in the forum and at several other MPC sites, but I haven't had much luck. So, I apologize to those of you who probably see these questions over and over, but I'm tired of pulling my teeth trying to figure this whole thing out.

So, through all of the reading I've done at various sites, I've come to find that Musepack is a great audio format that compresses audio with minimal audio loss. Then, after ten pages later, I'm still reading all about the scientific explanation of audio compression and it's pros and cons. Seriously, I have yet to find one site or one forum that really just lays it out for you. I have so many questions about this stuff and almost no straight forward answers to be found. If I ever really figure this out, I plan on making a site for "NEWBIES". Damn noobs. :)

OK, got that out of my system, let's move on:

I've managed to encode without any problems. Unfortunately, I have to use Streambox Ripper to convert a CD's .cda format to WAV. Is there any way of encoding to MPC straight from the CD or does it always need to be in WAV format?

Secondly and most importantly, I'm having a huge problem with Tag editing. Once I've encoded an album to MPC, the file comes up as such:

CD Digital Audio_Track_1
MPC File
5,801KB

When it should really look something like:

We Are All Made Of Stars
Moby
18

First, I just tried to use the tag configuration in MPC Batch Encoder, but it didn't add the tags. Afterwards, I installed Tag.exe and used Tag Frontend to edit the tag info, but when i pressed GO, the following came up:

"'tag' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. Press any key to continue"

I installed the VB files, and the additional files required for Tag/MPC Batch Encoder, and still the same thing. I'm obviously missing something here.

Now, I read over a few posts that mentions command line stuff, but I don't know how to use any of that jazz. Is there any way to learn how to do it? What is it for? Where does it need to be applied? Is this the reason the Tag editor won't work?

Also, what is ReplayGain? I keep hearing a lot about it, but don't have the slightest clue how it works.

I REALLY want to figure out how all of this works, so I'd appreciate anyone who'd take the time out to give me a hand with it. Most importantly, I need to figure out how the Tag stuff works.

It's too bad encoding and tagging isn't as easy as decoding. :)

Thanks for your help.

Zigo

Welcome to HA and congratulations for picking MPC. This is the thread that will answer most of your questions. Your ripper should do the tagging for you apart from exceptional cases. Hence you wouldn't probably need a tagger for now. EAC is the ripper of choice for most members here, so you can start reading on that. * is nice for beginners. Otherwise ripping, encoding and tagging by hand is most cumbersome.

ReplayGain is a software that adds additional info to your files. This info is about its perceived loudness. Hence you can listen to all your music in the same loudness level. You don't need to readjust volume each time you listen to a different track. It will be taken care of for you by the decoder plugin...


MOD: * no links or names to ripping group guides please.