lol, at around 3:00 PM (45 minutes ago) I was just thinking that it would be nice to see some of the documentation that the Audioman team had prepared for Liam. I want to get more of a feel for the Audioman construction before I continue my real audio research. I realize that you have done a major refactor of the code but the 'jobs' of the various classes should be the same. Correct?

I have an end user question that I want you address as briefly as possible (think of it as your elevator pitch ;)

"Why would I use Audioman instead of something like iTunes or simply Windows Explorer?"

Just curious...

T.

The documents we did for Liam wouldn't be worth your time looking at now -- they are too stale. The best architecture diagram I have is this one:

http://www.ryanlowe.ca/blog/archives/001177.php

Which is still accurate but does not contain detail about file support.

The file support is off on its own, largely decoupled from the rest of the code. I'll write up a tutorial of sorts for just the file stuff. I probably won't change much now (knock knock).

The OGG support uses an existing library, whereas the id3v1/id3v2 support is custom code and is more tightly coupled with the AudioData class. The OGG code is more recent and makes a better guide. I'm going to refactor id3v1/id3v2 later to make it like a library and possibly release it under the LGPL instead of GPL so other projects may use it.

It is most definitely a replacement for Windows Explorer. AudioMan aims to support all of the major audio formats and consolidate and organize them all into *one collection*. None of the other players will do this because they are more concerned about supporting their specific format, like iTunes. So AudioMan fills the gap of being a Windows Explorer for audio, filtering out all of the other regular files on your computer so you can concentrate on audio files only ... but not specific to any one file type.

I like the 'Explorer for Audio' concept, I think that is the key seller.

Devil's Advocate if I may...

Wouldn't people who are savvy enough to download Audioman, also be savvy enough to organize their mp3s well. For Example, I have about 8000 mp3s (all legal of course ;) on my PC. They are pretty well sorted, and when I bring up 'add file'-type commands in Nullsoft or WMP I pretty much only see useful information.. directories, playlists and mp3s or wma files.

That said, I would say that 99% of the people I know do the same, or at least to the 'anality' level they like. Yes, I just made up the word Anal-ity for those of you keeping score at home ;)

There is a good chance I am missing the point... or I'm not technology-focused enough in my thinking, align me damn it!!!!!!!!!!!!

T.

No, that's definintely true. You can load all of your songs into Winamp and be happy as a clam -- if they are all tagged properly.

They probably aren't tagged, or tagged in the way you like them. Then you might want to dictate where files on your hard drive go. All of these features need a basic app to operate in, like AudioMan.

So what you would probably do for just MP3s for instance, is get them tagged the way you want and then be able to load everything into Winamp. You'll only have to "manage" your collection every once in a while.

The other side is collection management. Where are my songs backed up? What songs aren't backed up yet so I can burn them? These are things that Windows Explorer and Winamp don't do -- but are related to managing big files. You want to be able to see your *whole* collection even though it's not on your hard disk -- it may be on CD-R, CD, DVD-R, flash, your iPod, etc ...

There are more ideas in the Bugzilla repository, where we flesh out the details of the feature, see if it is possible or practical and the prioritize them.

The Bugzilla repository is open to the public and is here:

http://www.ryanlowe.ca/bugzilla/

To answer Travis's question of:

"Wouldn't people who are savvy enough to download Audioman, also be savvy enough to organize their mp3s well?"

The answer is: I don't have time to organise! I want a butler that does it for me. As for your 8000 songs, well uh, I have much less than that (4000), but I have hundreds of mixes that are 200 MB each! You do the math :-P I'm constantly running out of HD space, trying to back stuff up, and trying to update ID tags.

Have you ever written to the ID tag of a 200 MB mp3 file? It takes about a minute!! As well, the algorithm actually makes a copy of the file, so you actually have to have another 200 MB free and it hogs up CPU and Memory meaning you better not be abusing your computer or else it will crash. Think LARGE.

Personally, I download so many mixes that I barely have time to manage them and I'ld love it if many things were automated for me.

That is, after all, why we have computers. To ease the Human burden.

Ryan, you should look into stillmove! I think it is (er, I guess could be - seeing as it doesn't really exist yet) a much faster approach to getting at what is in your head...

How often to do you mispronounced a word versus mispelling it :-)

good feedback guys, I just wanted to make sure that you see the real NEED for this project. So many times people, and ESPECIALLY technology people, do projects just for the same of doing them.

This is not right... think 1999 - 2001 for a million examples.

The real key of any software is 'does it help a pain point, i.e. will it make things better.' And it's obvious that you think it does.

Let me know when we are ready to go to market, I'm in ;)

Now, back to my capitalist flavored double mocha frapachino and the Wall Street Journal.... :)

T.

Exactly, the need is important to recognize. But besides the software output I'm also learning a lot about Java on the way, so it's a good side benefit.

To also answer Travis's question of:

"Wouldn't people who are savvy enough to download Audioman, also be savvy enough to organize their mp3s well?"

I have many friends who's computer savvy ends with printing a file. There are many cases where I have asked them for a song and they cannot find it on their own machine. Asking around and the majority of these "non-savvy" users have more than 10,000 mp3s. Audioman would be a great tool for them and I am letting them know about it. If the product does a good job they will let others know about it.