RMC vs RM for recording Pandora?

[Anthony DePaula]

I would like to capture Pandora music. RMC 2.30 doesn't get many of the tags, but RM 3.0 does. Is there a difference in quaility between these 2 products?

[Cheryl Wester]

HI

They both should be tagging the music. Replay Media Catcher is capturing from the stream itself in the native format so it is an excellent quality. Replay Music is capturing what you hear. If you are happy with what you hear you will be happy with the quality.

[cain]

For what it is worth, I have captured hundreds of songs from Pandora, successfully, with RMC 2.30 - very rarely do I miss a song, but about 20% of the time I have to retry the tag.

I just installed RMC 3.0 today and have only just begin testing the new functionality.

Great job guys, so far, so good. (This from a 15 year Enterprise Systems software engineer.)

Update:

Testing capture with Pandora - much more reliable (so far) and much, much faster (maybe just me, but the responsiveness and capture speed seems faster.)

[Andy Heinlein]

glad to hear it.. The reason why it's faster is because 2.3 was converting from m4a to mp3 then fingerprinting the song...

Now, since RMC can tag/lookup m4a files, it just downloads and fingerprints... much faster than the old version.

thanks for the feedback!
-andy.

[cain]

Originally Posted by Andy Heinlein

glad to hear it..

thanks for the feedback!

As a software engineer myself (having developed commercial software for years and years) - this type of feedback is needed, I know.

It seems like all you ever hear about is when it is broken.

... or, when there is a problem, you get vague details and concise demands.

[Andy Heinlein]

haha exactly... "IT WONT RECORD. THANKS BYE"

[cain]

First, the potential bug (and I may have just missed the change in behavior):

I first opened a single tab in FireFox 3.01, running Vista, to Pandora. Captures and conversion to MP3 were automatic, no problems.

I then decided I would be greedy, opened a second tab to Pandora, different channel.

Bug? : What I now notice is that the captures, while named, are not being converted. I checked the settings and didn't notice anything to indicate that the captures should be converted to MP3 on completion.

Moreover, the ID3 tag information that shows in Explorer is incomplete (the file has the right name, but I don't see the Artist, Album, Track, etc info like I do with my MP3's - maybe a function of the file type or something else.)

Second: The Pet Peeve

Capturing Pandora I have a slew of files left over in my capture directory. If they are converted or renamed, get rid of them! OR, if they are indeed temp files, use the temp folder and hide them from me - I don't want the clutter.

UPDATE: Looks like those were left over from my capture last night with 2.30 - 3.0 renames the capture and without the conversion, there appear to be no intermediate files.

And, I now understand that conversion is not a part of the new capture process (or an option) and that M4A's are what is captured for Pandora. Not a big deal, really, I can use the converter for my non-IPod.

[Tasha Heinlein]

Just a quick note..
I started up Media Catcher 3.0, opened Pandora and let it run for an hour and a half - It tagged EVERY SONG!!!! Very cool stuff!

Best Regards,

Tasha Heinlein
Applian Technologies, Inc.

[Andy Heinlein]

Originally Posted by cain

And, I now understand that conversion is not a part of the new capture process (or an option) and that M4A's are what is captured for Pandora. Not a big deal, really, I can use the converter for my non-IPod.

Converting inside RMC was causing tons of problems for users so I took it out... M4A files are pretty standard so I just leave them as is. Since RMC isn't a converter-tool (and i don't want to take away from Replay Converter) I took out the conversion...

Overall it should be a much smoother process when capturing from Pandora.

In theory, you should be able to open 20 tabs to pandora and it should download everything fine and tag everything perfectly.

-andy.

[cain]

Originally Posted by Andy Heinlein

In theory, you should be able to open 20 tabs to pandora and it should download everything fine and tag everything perfectly.

Totally fair - all too often we get caught in scope or feature creep. Your decision was fair and reasonable - the performance is a welcome "compromise."

I haven't jumped to 20 tabs... yet.

But I do have Wootalyzer, a Hulu movie and 10 pandora's going... I'll watch for stability and keep adding.