One reason Jackie is slowing down is that AG already is pretty much optimized, and new functions aren't really needed.

New features I know he is looking into are e.g. cuesheets for ripping live albums and ofcourse the secure ripping. And some minor bug fixes that has already been fixed although not released in a new build.

Stay tuned, there WILL be a new version out in a while.

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moonroy

www.mp3.com/enuresis

Is there any news on the feature of moving all the configuration options into a single tree format?

Would it be possible to make the track display layout include cells for more ID3 tag fields? When ripping compilation discs, I get tracks with different years as well as artists; I'd also like to include BPM. I'd like to build my discs.txt file with all the tag info so when I decide to discard one encoding format and switch to a new one, I will have all the tag info there when I have to re-rip and encode everything. Also having it all display without having to right click each track and then the several tabs would make my job easier - although probably not yours.

Thanks Jackie for a great ripper/encoder front end. Live long and prosper!

Granted this has nothing to do with the continued development of AG features, but AG is in need of a face lift. Due to so many additions to AG its UI has become a little cluttered and hence getting to some of the settings isn't as intutive as it could be.

AG has been the best $25 I've spent on software, hopefully it will continue to be.

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-I love my Empeg!-

The GUI sure is cluttered and a face lift would be nice but that is for the version 2 of AG.

And sure, every Tom, Dick & Harry are having an MP3 player, but they also have their Musicmatch or whatever software thinking that it is so great. Some even know how to download a song from the amazing Internet. AG has never really focused on the newbies but rather the pro's.

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moonroy

www.mp3.com/enuresis

out of sync 27 times.
pent 133(updating soon)
also if jackie would like me to test the
new version i will just email me

Not sure about the secure ripping though. The CD-G seems to need some sort of verification so it will probably be implemented to start with for that kind of albums and then improved in the 1.90.

And I know there will a be a neat feature for all those groups that are releasing albums on the scene. Not telling right now what is up but it will most likely annoy the record companies just a bit.

Other great features that are planned are extended OGG support, shipped with AG and maybe an improved interface for LAME.

So, Jackie may have been a bit lazy the last couple of months but he is really working hard at the moment that's for sure.

Latest release at the moment is still the 1.81 build 3 that was released this spring.

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moonroy

www.mp3.com/enuresis

192 kbps FULL Stereo CBR should be forbidden. preriod!

Every release group should have to use Lame 3.92 --alt-preset standard

192kbps is pretty good when considering space and quality. VBR is ofcourse pretty nice but not all players handle it too good. And it takes longer time to encode as well.

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moonroy

www.mp3.com/enuresis

1.) Delivering the Vorbis dll in the executable install-file.
2.) Not supporting blade and other old encoders any more, so people must use the good ones.
3.) For OGG Vorbis, implementation of a slide-control for the -q - Modes
4.) Remove of the separation beetween internal and external encoder: Only one big form with all options for vorbis, mpc, lame, flac, atrac and a individual, other encoder. Especially an implementation of the lame-presets, so AG could work with the lame-dll (many people have problems by using the stdin/stdout-function and VBR).
5.) For Lame dll the standard- and extreme-presets should be implemented. Also, VBR should be recommended. Also in fact the alt-presets bring much better quality, so all CBR/ABR/VBR-options should be mapped onto alt-presets.
6.) Since Windows 2K the standard font isn't Sans Serif any longer, but Tahoma. In fact, Tahoma looks quite better than Sans Serif!
7.) When you hit the freedb-button, the Standard-DialUp-Entry of Windows should connect to the internet. Also a function (whitch can be disabled) whitch hangs up the connection would be very useful.
8.) Also to the "Normalizer"-function is something to say. Normalizing could clip over your Wave-Files to a hopeless level. A better developement is Replaygain for Mp3. While not all portable players support replaygain, about all available players support Mp3Gain, whitch elevate all pegels to a optimal level. Big advantage: Mp3Gain just modifies the Header of the files, not the data itsself, so it's possible to remove Mp3Gain after preccing your Mp3's trough it. The Normalizing-function should stay implemented, of course, but at least a short popup or phrase when someone opens the function wouldn't be bad (unluckyly most of the people don't read the help-file).
9.) The box in the main-window, where you can select the genre for the whole CD, should be extended to a combined box allowing custom inputs so users can choose an ID3v2 tag for the whole cd - to do this now, it's necessary to change that for every track, what's quite irritating.
10.) SecureMode!
11.) The checkbox "shorten last track by 10 frames" is activated by standard. The option itsself is very important, but there are few drives today whitch have this problem. The checkbox should be disabled by standard.
12.) The option to fade the tracks should (as I already proposed for the Line-Module) be extended, so you can select a fade in and a fade out for it's own, and also to change the fade-time not only in the ini-file, but officially in AG.
13.) A MP3-Decoder! Often people ask how to do this, and they have to use RazorLame at last.
14.) The "Rip to Ram"-option should be engaged by standard.
15.) Some people are searching for a range copy-function, which is useful if you want to copy a whole CD to one track. At the time, this is only possible by changing the start/end-frames manually. A better way would be to implement a function "grab selected tracks in one track/file".
16.) Users asked for an implementation of Ogg vorbis and APEv2 Tags, which should be writable using encoder functions. (artist, album, track, year and genre fields)

There were some more ideas which I already sent Jackie, especially for the Line-Module, but we'll see what would be the result...

Cheers, Christof

[This message has been edited by Cheinzle on 23 August 2002 @ 08:21]

Some answers, not official though but still likely:

1) Yes, will happen in a near future
2) No, don't think so, people will have to decide for their own what they want and there is always the external settings
3) Eventually, improved encoder settings
4) Hmm, no. The external and the internal are different and need to be separated.
5) See 3)
6) Not planned at the moment, maybe later
7) Isn't it already working like that? Are there still people using modems?! Just kidding, I guess the dialup depends on peoples internet settings, right?
8) Nope, simple normalization does not clip. Most users don't even know about the advanced normalization. Let the mastering people set the levels. Use a limit plugin in winamp instead of messing with the MP3's.
9) Yes, eventually
10) Yeah yeah, on its way
11) I think it is best to keep it on, won't do much harm anyway.
12) Still waiting for the new and improved GUI
13) MP3 decoding is not the main task for AG. Winamp and most other players support decoding to file. No need for extra programs.
14) Yes it should
15) Yes that would be nice. And also a "split track" for those last ghost tracks and so on. And a search for hidden first tracks before track 1
16) See 3)

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moonroy

www.mp3.com/enuresis

ad 2) If someone really wants to encode with Blade or such old stuff, he could use the "external"-function. Most of people don't think a long time about quality, so this would prevent them from creating bad Mp3's!

ad 4) Why? I can't send you the screenshots, but please look at the site Benjamin postet here. There you'll see what we're meaning. If you have all these good encoders "on board", you can use your individual encoder as an external as well! There's imho no particular reason to separate this - if you think so, please inform me.

ad 6) This shouldn't be that much work, since we have search and replace... don't you think so?

ad 7) No, it's not. You have to connect to the internet and then to hit the button.
This hasn't much to do with a question if you use modems. Even a DSL-Connection is established by using the VPN-Adapter, and this creates a DialUp-Entry. And there are not so many people who have a Tx-Backbone (all right, I have one, but I'm one of the few guys).

ad 8) Well, we had a long discussion about that, and we all tried it - in a few cases this is possible (when a track is not so loud but a few parts have a maximum peak). Normalisation shouldn't be removed!

ad 9) and 10) I hope so!

ad 11) If someone have such problems, he could engage it, I think. This option concerns very old drives, I don't think that someone still uses them.

ad 12) I already wrote Jackie, that all this would be to much for a litte 1.82-update, but trying to implement this in a V 2.0 would be a great job!

ad 13) There are many things whitch are not the main task of AG, but they are implemented. Why? It's that easy: Because they're usefull. Look at the Line-Module. Is that a main task of a digital ripper? But it's great (it's my main function, I especially support this feature in german forum)! The time where people used 5 programs for one job is over. We should leave the opinion, that AG is just a small ripper, finally behind us. AG is a center for everything concerning computer and audio, e.g. ripping, recording, denoising (algorithmix), compressing, normalizing - everything is implemented, there's just one thing missing: A decoder. All you need to decode is the lame.dll, so the problem wouldn't be that big!

All right, so far, so good...

Cheers, Christof

[This message has been edited by Cheinzle on 23 August 2002 @ 18:38]

All right, and here I'll write you about the other functions and features we collected for the "greatest AG ever".

Let's start with the functions for the main window (the digital ripper):
1.) The vorbis-dll is not the original one, but were made by the author of CDex. Noone really knows why he wrote all libraries in one, but the original dll's should be implemented. They're more actual. A link to these files is this one: http://ogg.benjamin-lebsanft.de/files/vorbis-dlls.zip
2.) The Tab-Key is not working, what's quite irritating. Of course you can use the cursors, but that's not really windows-conform (for example in the submit to freedb-options).
3.) One guy often claimed about not supporting Mp3-Players. Well, a long time I didn't know what to say about this, as long as I still don't have or need such a player. Also a time ago, each player needed his own driver, so it was completely impossible to implement a function which moves the grabbed files onto such a player. More and more, the player all support a protocol called Windows Media Audio Device Manager. It has nothing to do with WMA, you can write MP3's or OGG-Files straight to your player. Don't know what you're thinking about. Most of the software delivered with the players is not so good, so people wanted such a feature to be implemented. Don't easyly say, taht wouldn't work: Look at sveta for an example ( http://www.dbpoweramp.com/sveta-portable-audio.htm )

And now to my preferred theme: The Line-Module (already tired from reading? Sorry, but now we really begin!)
1.) The abrupt-cut option doesn't work in time-scheduled mode, it always fades the tracks. A bug?
2.) People wanted to have the same options for fading the tracks as in digital mode. Means controls for fade-in- and fade-out-time.
3.) My favorite (important!): An estimated playtime-function. What's that? Often AG is not able to autocut the files exactly, especially when you record classical music. Long pauses - or was this the track end? It's impossible for a machine to recognize that. But there would be an easy way to help AG to find the right time. On many vinyls you'll find track-times - mostly they're not really correct. If you can give AG this times in an new tab for each track, the autocut-option could be disabled during the track and automatically be engaged at the estimated track-time. I guess 10 seconds around this time would do the job.
4.) An option "Begin new track every XX minutes" - many people ask for something like that.
5.) Since 1.81 Build 3 you can fix the option "tracks are at least 35 seconds long" by editing the ini-File. The option should be offical in the GUI of AG.
6.) Again: The tab-key doesn't work in the trackname-tab and in timeschedule-tab.
7.) What about options like compress/normalize/rename/delete this track now? So you don't have to leave the Line-Window (There's a screenshot in the german forum, just click on the link a gave you above).
8.) An overmodulated-counter, how often the peak is 100% or over, would be great. Such an counter should be resetable (see the shot, too).

All right - That's all. For the moment...

Cheers, Christof

[This message has been edited by Cheinzle on 24 August 2002 @ 19:11]