AudioExpert Free Edition 6.0.0.522

AudioExpert Free Edition 6.0.0.522 is launched to be a helpful and smart program which enables you to join/merge, clean-up, align, sort, organize and manage music archives resp. music libraries. Supported formats are  MP3, MP4, M4A, WMA, OGG, FLAC, MPC, WAV and AAC.

Major Features:

1. Automatically joining music archives
   • You have two or more large music libraries? And you also know that your collection contains the same title more than once? And you don't feel like sitting there for hours and do the work on your own? Here's the solution! Simply let AudioExpert do the work for you! AudioExpert will find the duplicates itself, while scanning the different archives. It will only copy those files that are not in your archive or have a better quality.
2. AutoTagging
   • Even completely untagged files can easily be identified using AudioExpert's integrated AutoTagging function.
3. Automatic detection of duplicate copies
   • The detection is done either via MD5 Hashsum (regarding the pure audiostream only) and/or via the recognized tags. AudioExpert decides which file will be taken over by the bitrate, the stereomode, the length of the title and the samplingrate. In the preview you can check, and if necessary, modify it.
4. Managing large archives
   • Even if your archive contains more than 100,000 tracks, AudioExpert will still run fast and easy.
5. Managing more than one archive
   • AudioExpert allows you to manage not only your main library, but also several subsets, called libraries. You can synchronize the defined libraries with your MP3-player for instance. Managing libraries is very easy using the features of AudioExpert.
6. Identification of interpret / album / title for untagged data files via filename
   • The identification is reliant on the required informations of the file names and file paths. Unfortunately, there is no way of an identification by 100%. A fingerprint searching function over an online-service like MusicBrainz is planned for future releases.
7. Auto-recognition of mistyping or different spelling
   • For example, AudioExpert recognizes that "Marilyn Manson" and "Marylin Manson" is one and the same artist. The identification unfortunately is not working by 100% and sometimes even makes mistakes, but it is very easy to adjust. Corrected once, the program is informed and won't do the same mistake again.
8. Phonetical search
   • You don't know how exactly to spell an interpret's name? Is it y or i? F or ph? No problem! The phonetical search will find the interpret, album or title, even if you are unsure.
9. Drag&Drop
   • Easy association of songs or whole albums to another interpret / album via drag & drop or context-menu
   • The program will learn and memorize, when an association was adjusted. At the next import of a similar file it would automatically end up in the correct folder. In addition, also the (id3-)tags of the musicfile and the file names will automatically be adjusted when committing the preview.
10. Automatic sampler detection
    • No more taking apart from sampler to interpret. The song "U and Ur Hand" from "P!nk" stays in the sampler "Bravo Hits 55", and it won't be misfiled under the interpret "P!nk" as an own album "Bravo Hits 55" with only one title. Of course the title will stay in the album "I'm Not Dead" from "P!nk" in addition.
11. Preview-mode
    • While editing, no files will be copied, modified or deleted on your harddrive. Every change will be done in the database first. So you can see pretty fast, which datafiles are new or how the modifications will affect it all. In case of a mistake, you can undo the last step via the UNDO-function. Finally, when you're happy with your changes, you can commit the changes. Only when committing, the musicfiles will be renamed, moved or deleted. Or you choose to discard all changes - and everything will stay the way it was before.
12. Inspection of completeness
    • Using this function, you can check: Are your albums complete or do they miss titles? If so, which? Also, when you only know the name of the album, AudioExpert will check and complete the missing title informations out of the internet. To use this functionality, you need to have access to MusicBrainz online service. Also, enough time, bandwidth and an appropriate download-contingent (depending on the size of the archive)
13. Tag-Editor with MusicBrainz-support
    • The most common tags can be edited directly within AudioExpert. Using the MusicBrainz online-service, you can save a lot of time.
14. Cleanup function
    • You can define a hierarchy of how you want your music-files to be stored, e.g. "d:musicNNightwishDark passion playThe poet and the pendulum.mp3"
15. Using subfolders
    • Classic music, comedy, charts - you don't have to mix this all to one subfolder! AudioExpert helps you to keep your archive clean by using subfolders. Simply assign your artits or albums to the desired folder via drag & drop - that's all.
16. Using user-defined tags
    • You can tag any of your tracks with user-defined tags. The import wizard offers to define a tag within the import-process, so all files will be tagged, even if they were not imported because they do already exist in your database.
17. Unifying notation
    • AudioExpert can adjust the notation by using several options, e.g. all lowercase, all uppercase, titlecase etc.
18. Removing comments, URLs or pictures
    • If you want to, you can advise AudioExpert to remove unwanted tags from your mp3 files.
19. Metadata
    • AudioExpert supports Metadata. Your Albumcovers, lyrics etc. will be kept, even if you rename or move an album.
20. Search Covers via Internet
    • AudioExpert can automatically search album-covers at Amazon or Google
21. Normalizing loundess
    • Using the functionality provided by MP3Gain or ReplayGain you can normalize the loudness of your files without having to re-encode the files or losing quality.
22. Adjusting playlists
    • AudioExpert will automatically adjust your playlists in m3u or pls format. That means: Your playlists will still work even if the files were renamed during the cleanup process.
23. Exporting playlists
    • If your MP3-player does not support playlists, you can simply export any playlist to a folder of your choice. AudioExpert can include a sequence number to your files, so the desired order is compiled to the filename.
24. Converting codepages
    • You can convert any codepage to unicode. Simply specify the sourcelanguage and AudioExpert will show you a preview of how the ANSI-text will look in unicode.
25. Converting UTF8
    • If you have UTF8 encoded texts that were saved in a wrong format you can easily reconvert them to a readable format

Enhancements:

• Long filenames
• • As of this version, AudioExpert can handle filenames up to a length of 2,000 characters - NTFS filesystem assumed. Updating an existing database to the new version might take some seconds. Please keep in mind that some programs have difficulties handling filenames longer than 259 characters!
• Exception-handling within long search processes
• • In case of an error within the autotagging-process, MusicBrainz alignment or coversearch because of a problem with the internet connection or because the called server is temporarily not available, AudioExpert will display a popup windows allowing to retry or cancel the process. If the user does not press any button, AudioExpert will resume after 3 minutes. So even longer search processes will succeed if running over night.
• Collation
• • The collation (esp. for special characters thinking of Umlauts, Accents, other special chars) will be done using the windows locale settings.
• Find moved or renamed tracks
• • In case you have renamed files manually in the filesystem or tagged musicfiles using a different tagging-tools, AudioExpert can search for changed files and offer to import the changes only. So you don't have to do a full reimport. Menu "File | Find moved or renamed tracks".
• Find and delete empty directories
• • AudioExpert can search for empty directories and delete them. If you want to, AudioExpert can delete "unneeded" files (that are files that are not referenced by AudioExpert's Database) before trying to remove a directory. Menu "File | Find and delete empty directories"
• Rename metadata
• • Albumcovers and other metadata can be renamed using menu "File | Rename and renum album covers"
• Search sampler albums
• • You can search for sampler albums that have been split up to different artists using the new menu "Search | Search sampler albums". 
• Mark albums as "complete"
• • You can mark albums as "complete" manually. Whenever you try to import other tracks of such an album, these tracks will be rejected. Menu "Edit | Mark as... | Mark as complete" or use the context-menu or the shortcut Shift+F6.
• Filenames
• • For naming files the new fileds  %YEAR% and %DISCCOUNT% are available
• Bubble-hint when moving files to the trash-folder
• • Whenver a track is moved to the trash-folder, AudioExpert can display a bubble hint or a small icon that willl flash for some seconds. This option is available in the Settings, page "Extended".
• Quicksearch
• • The quicksearch (Ctrl+F) supports now searching for filenames and the number of tracks per albuim.
• Memory usage on batch-updates
• • Doing larger updates (e.g. renaming a folder, changing the notation for many tracks etc.) AudioExpert will write the changes frequently to the database to reduce memory consumption. That means, larger changes cannot be undone using Ctrl+Z. However, a rollback to the last committed state is still possible.
• Switching database
• • Using the menu "Extras | Switch database" you can switch to a different database-file if you want to manage different music collection (not available in the FREE-edition).
• Additional album-properies
• • Albums that contain more than one CD might have additional information to the disc-nuumber, e.g. "ABBA - The Collection (disc 1: Classic)". AudioExpert supports this notation if you separate the additional text with a colon from the disc number, see example.
• Size of dropdown boxes
• • Dropping down a combobox, AudioExpert will increase the width of the dropdownlist to display more text.
• Importing files of same quality
• • If you are importing a track of the same quality, the track will be treated as duplicate and will not be emported as of this version.
• Repairing database
• • In case the database file got corrupted you can try to repair it using the tool "RepairDatabase.cmd" that can be found in the program-folder of AudioExpert. It is necessary to close AudioExpert before running this batch job.
• Musepack files
• • AudioExpert now supports MusePack files
• Convert UTF8 to Unicode
• • In case you have UTF8 encoded texts that have been saved with a wrong encoding (UTF16), AudioExpert can reconvert the texts using the menu "Edit | Convert UTF8 to Unicode".
• Quicksync mode
• • When importing files using the quicksync-mode, tracks having the same ID tags will not be imported even if you have set one of the options "Use Fingerprint" or "use MD5 checksum".This is to speed up the import process when aligning with a collection that was previously imported and you only want to check for new tracks.
• Autotagging
• • You can define the standard folders for normal albums and samplers within the autotagging result options.
• "Compilation"-flag for MP4/M4A files
• • The iTunes-Flag "Compilation" will be set for MP4/M4A files.
• Bulk-change in ListView
• • Having selected multiple tracks in the listview, you can perform a bulk-change for Genre, Year and Rating calling the title properties dialog.
• "Organize ID-tags for genre and year"-dialog
• • The default values can be set manually.
• Copy & Paste for albumcovers
• • Using the right mouse key over the albumcover, you can add, copy and pase (new) albumcovers
• "Complete"-flag
• • Renaming an album that was marked as "complete" will no longer reset the "complete" flag.
•  The following bugs were fixed:
• • Sporadic beep-sound while autotagging
  • Changing the case-mode for special characters only (e.g. "Ä" to "ä") could make the file being deleted within the next commit run
  • The quicksearch did not return any results when searching for a text enclosed with "*" that contained other wildcards (e.g. "*B?T*")
  • The case-mode of the subdirectories will also be changed within the commit run
  • Selecting anAlbum from the dropdown-box in the listview did not work
  • Errormessage "cannot commit - no transaction is active" fixed
  • After having moved a whole sampler-album to a non-sampler folder the next commit run failed with an error. The consistencycheck fixes this problem.

Requirements:

• Windows 7 (32/64 Bit), Windows Vista or Windows XP
• Computer with Intel or compatible 1-GHz- or faster processor 
• Recommended for larger archives: At least 2 GHz, DualCore or better
• At least 200 MB free disk space (this is enough for approx. 100,000 titles)
• At least 100 MB free RAM 
• Recommended for larger archives: At least 250 MB
• At least 16 mio. colors
• Internet Explorer 4.01 SP2 or later