Getting Music INTO a Rockbox'd Gigabeat?

[micfit]

What's the best way to get music INTO a rockbox'd Gigabeat? I've got my NEW device with a fresh install of Rockbox, but I don't intuitively understand how to get music INTO the darn thing. Please help.

[Llorean]

Simply copy and paste the files to the player, the same way you'd move them to another folder on your computer.

[micfit]

So like, if I want to take an entire album off of a CD and have it show-up in the player as an album?? How do I actually "copy" the files from the CD? Which folder(s) do I place them into on the device? How do I have the collection of files (tracks) show-up in the player as an album? When I place an audio CD into my computer, it just starts playing--where do I go from there--how do I "copy and paste" from that point?
Thanks for being patient.

[Chronon]

There are a number of media players that allow you to "rip" music to various formats -- basically streaming the PCM data into a wrapper containing a header and the PCM data in PCM-based formats (such as WAV or AIFF) or transcoding into some other encoding (e.g. MP3, AAC, etc.).  You can rip your CD straight to the Gigabeat if you like.

I'm a little surprised that you have never stored any of your CDs on your computer's hard-drive.  I find it much more convenient to manage my music library from my hard-drive than by having to physically replace CDs in a player's slot each time I want to listen to a different album.

[DeanMurray]

I like to use Media Monkey to rip CDs and organize my music.

Here is a link to a "How To" document for using Media Monkey to load music on a Gigabeat if you are interested.  A couple of things in the document are outdated, for example when it was written the Gigabeat cradle didn't work. Rockbox does work with the cradle now. Overall though it is still accurate.

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/pub/Main/DeanMurray/How_to_sync_GB_Rock_MM.pdf

You can use WinAmp, Windows Media Player or any other number of applications to organize your music.

[micfit]

Thanks Dean--very helpful. Does Media Monkey work well with Windows Vista?
 
I appreciate the effort Chronon but this...

-- basically streaming the PCM data into a wrapper containing a header and the PCM data in PCM-based formats (such as WAV or AIFF) or transcoding into some other encoding (e.g. MP3, AAC, etc.).

Just went over my head. I guess it'll become second nature tough if I keep hangin' 'round these here parts long enough.

[Soaa-]

Simply put, CD music isn't music that Rockbox can understand. You need to extract (commonly called 'rip') the CD into a format that Rockbox can read, such as MP3.

[micfit]

Thanks, that's helpful. I still have a question about where/how to save an album on the device (which folder, how named) so it will play like an album in the gigabeat?

[cool_walking_]

Delete my off-topic post will ya? I was in the middle of editing it with this:

There was a thread on how to organise music a while ago.  I think the resolution was

ABC\A Perfect Circle\[2000] Mer de Noms\01 - The Hollow.ogg
DEF\David Bowie\[1970] The Man Who Sold the World\01 - The Width of a Circle.ogg
etc.

But basically, if you start playing a file, all the subsequent (alphabetically ordered) files in the same folder will be queued.

[Chronon]

Simply put, CD music isn't music that Rockbox can understand. You need to extract (commonly called 'rip') the CD into a format that Rockbox can read, such as MP3.

Yeah, the main point is that you can't just drag and drop a CD from your file browser onto your player.  You need to encode the PCM data into a format that some media player will be able to decode later.  If you search the internet for "media player" you'll find some programs that allow you to do this sort of thing.

[DeanMurray]

Does Media Monkey work well with Windows Vista?

Sorry, I don't know how it works with Vista.  I just upgraded to XP .  The Media Monkey website should have information about compatability with Vista.