Album art / MP3Tag tutorial (and other things)

[Prae]

I guess this is the best place for this - if it's not move it :P.

Anyway, when I got my e250, there were some boulders to deal with, and maybe by posting here I can help someone out.

So you just bought your e200...
Well, as any good audiophile will tell you - the earbuds that come with it are crap. They're uncomfortable and you might as well be listening to someone hitting the wall with a wet towel. So I actually picked up two sets of headphones: for home use, library use, anything "inactive", I use my Sennheiser PX100s. The sound quality that comes out of these are tier one. Not "for the price" - they're simply great. I spent 40$ on mine. For anything active, I went with my earbud of choice - Koss Spark Plugs. They're noise cancelling and really shine. Now if you have the money, you can drop a bill on some Shure e2c earbuds, or some Gradolabs supra-aural headphones, but I didn't have that kind of cash.

The next thing an audiophile will tell you is that - "I hope you're using FLAC!" Well, natively, as you probably know, the e200 series doesn't support the FLAC format, not to mention that none of these (except maybe the eight gigabyte model) have the capacity for FLAC. I rip all my CDs in -v2, which is roughly the same as APS, for you old-schoolers. If you're going to drop a couple hundred bucks on those great headphones though, -v0 may be worth it. I'm just using my e250 in the manner that I feel is most efficient.

Where's your custom EQ?
As soon as you opened that box, you should have checked for a firmware update. If you're here, chances are you have, or will soon :P. The presets are great and all, but you'll find a noticeable difference in sound - not necessarily quality, depending on your perspective - when you get those levels just how you like 'em.

I want album art!
Well, I actually didn't solve this completely until today. I know some of you are going to cringe at this, but I went with embedded album art. Having some image in the folder just didn't work out for me. You can use MP3Tag to embed your art - it's freeware too. Here's my little walkthrough for that:

Get the art first.
Save it wherever you please. I Google the album name, and that generally returns what I'm looking for - for some more obscure stuff you might check CDBaby, CDUniverse, or Amazon.

How big is that image?
I resized all my images to 200x200, and compressed them to under 10kb in a .jpg format. I don't know if there's .png support, but realistically, you're not there for "uber-clear" images. This is a perk .

Using MP3Tag
The first thing you have to do in MP3Tag is open the directory with your files - use the Change Directory option:


After that, select all of your files, and click on the extended tags button:


If there is art embedded already, look at the dimensions of the image, and the size of the image. If it isn't acceptable, click the red "x", then click the add cover button.

If there is no art embedded, simply click the add cover button.




You must not have multiple images embedded! This is the snag I just recently found!

Save your tags, synch up your Sansa, and you should be good as gold!

[CrowdAds]

[WalkGood]

Prae,
Good write up!

I embed all my album art as well, for me it’s much cleaner. Although I use a different process, it’s all the same in the end. Also use Mp3tag and it’s a great program.

Mp3tag: http://www.mp3tag.de/en/