AudioManage
Version 1.20

Reviewers Guide

Contents

Who is this guide meant for?
The need for AudioManage.
Why AudioManage?
Salient Features.
‘Properties’ vs. ‘Tags’
A note about the installation
Adding files to the audio library
Accessing AudioManage configuration and related tools.
Opening (Playing) files from the audio library.
Saving files directly into the library
‘Tagging’ and managing the collection.
Renaming & Re-Organizing
Standard Properties
Unicode support
Updating album information
Self-Compilations
Managing Playlists
Creating New Playlists
Moving files out of the library
Burning audio files to a CD (Windows XP or above)
Accessing the file-specific context menu
Loan Manager
Duplicate Removal
Other miscellaneous views
Searching the library
Reviewing Tips

Who is this guide meant for?
This guide is intended to be used by people who want to review AudioManage, so they can quickly determine the most important features that AudioManage has to offer and try them out, instead of spending a lot of time discovering the features themselves. Since reviewers normally would have many software to review, referring to this guide while reviewing the AudioManage will save them considerable amounts of time.

Although this guide is primarily meant for reviewers, it can also be used by end-users who want to know about the features of the software in one go, before downloading the software. Again, note that this document is not intended to be a complete list of features: it only details the most important aspects of AudioManage.

The section ‘The need for AudioManage’ describes briefly why a media library application is needed, and what sets AudioManage apart from the rest of the media library software that’s currently available. The guide is best read in it’s entirety.

The need for AudioManage.
With the advent of digital audio, songs can easily be downloaded from the Internet, or shared among friends, or stored into computers or portable music devices. With the net having become faster, and disc-space becoming cheaper, many people have massive collections of audio files (in MP3, WMA, OGG etc. formats). Most of these files contain some meta data about the content of the file – often, this meta data is referred to as ‘tags’. MP3 files (and other formats, such as AAC), use a tagging system known as ID3. WMA has it’s own metadata system. A good collection will have tracks in which the tags are all properly filled in. In an ideal collection (or a ‘audio library’), these tracks will be arranged properly, so that any track can be found easily.

However, this ideal case rarely exists. Most people don’t get their collections at one go: they gradually build it, over a period of time. The might download a few songs at one go… or rip a couple of CDs, or dump MP3 CDs into a particular folder that they have… with the result that the entire ‘library’ becomes a cluttered mess. People frequently end up with multiple folders, containing hundreds, if not thousands, of files… which are grouped more related to the source from where they received the files, rather than a logical categorization of the files themselves. Many files don’t have tags as well, but have specially formed filenames, which help in identifying the album and artist information. However, to play any track, a user always has to remember where in the computer each file resides. This problem is compounded when the files are spread out over multiple machines, say on the home network.

For this reason, some media players ship with media library applications, which enable a user to categorize the songs (based on their tags) into easier to remember logical categories (say, by artist, or by album). However, all these media libraries come embedded inside the player themselves. To use a particular library, you have to use that player… there is no way to structure the tracks and make the library available to all applications in Windows.
Why AudioManage?
This is where AudioManage steps in. With a unique plug-in approach, it integrates completely into Microsoft Windows (2000/XP/2003), and makes available your entire library, dynamically categorized, in ‘virtual’ folder views. Many other tools are available that display collections using the folder metaphor, but these folders are normally all ‘fake’ folders: they just look like folders, but do not appear as folders to Windows. With AudioManage, these views are available wherever one can explore the Windows namespace. For example, you can access these virtual folders directly from Windows Explorer, or even from the File->Open dialog boxes of any Windows application. This means that this library can be accessed from any Windows application: you can now look for categorized tracks from any media player, without relying on a specific brand of media library application. Additionally, adding to the library from one player will automatically reflect the changes in any other player you open the library in. Also, with the integration of AudioManage into Windows, the audio library becomes available even in applications which do not have a library option!

The challenge was to make the software in such a way that it appears completely transparent to the user: the audio library would be visible to the user as a regular set of folders, which ‘magically’ show their collection in an organized manner. The whole process of managing audio files should not come in the way of enjoying the music itself, and a user should never be bothered with filenames, file formats, tagging etc. All of these goals are achieved by AudioManage.

Salient Features.
The main feature of AudioManage is it’s integration with Windows. After installation, AudioManage plugs itself into Windows Explorer, inside ‘My Computer’. Thus, it’s makes the audio library available from wherever ‘My Computer’ is accessible, in a consistent and intuitive interface that a Windows user is already familiar with.

AudioManage organizes all the audio files on a machine, network, device etc, and shows them as virtual folders (it uses overlay icons on files as well as folders to visually identify the their location, without checking the properties). These folders are dynamic, being created on the fly as they are opened. Thus, they always provide the latest set of files, in the correct categorization. Like in Windows, all standard views (available in the host Windows platform) are fully supported (Icon, List, Details, Tile and Thumbnail).

‘Properties’ vs. ‘Tags’
AudioManage hides the complexities of tagging, managing, and organizing in the interface of Windows Explorer, which everyone using Windows is familiar with. The standard operations that Windows users use in their normal day to day operations, when done inside AudioManage, automatically manage each effected file’s tags. Thus, unlike other organizers or tag editors, AudioManage has a two-way relationship with tags: modifying tags effects folders, and modifying folders effects tags. The user is no longer required to think of tags as something that needs to be edited using an editor. The tags are always kept synchronized based on the folders, hence they are logical correct at all times. 

In fact, AudioManage does not even mention ‘tags’ anywhere: AudioManage uses a more natural ‘Properties’ approach to audio files: instead of tags for Artist, Album, Title, which are dependant on file format, AudioManage displays these as ‘Properties’ of any track, in the standard Windows method. This not only is more natural, but also removes the dependency on file formats, as that is hidden by AudioManage: a standard property sheet is displays inside AudioManage, irrespective of the file format: AudioManage internally applies the properties to each file using the tagging system appropriate for the file (ID3 for MP3and AAC files, WM/* for WMA, ASF files, Vorbis comments for OGG files and so on). In fact, due to the file-format-independent nature of AudioManage, it’s also possible to add certain types of videos (like mpeg, mpg, etc) to the audio library: AudioManage simply indexes the audio stream of the video files.

Also noticeable is the superior quality of data extraction and classification: AudioManage not only determines the properties of a track based on tags, but also uses a lot of other criteria, such as file names, and even directory structure, to determine classification. After properties such as title etc. are determined, AudioManage runs another pass on the file, and using fuzzy logic, attempts to complete partial title names, albums, year, genre information etc. A ‘broken’ name is a very rare thing in AudioManage!

A note about the installation
After installation, AudioManage can be run from ‘My Computer’ by clicking on the ‘Audio Library’ icon. Note that no icon is created in the program group, as there is no program to run: AudioManage just extends Windows. However, there is an uninstall option which is available in the program group. AudioManage indexes all the data files, and keeps this data in a database. This database is used to generate all the virtual folder views. It is stored in the program installation folder. When AudioManage is uninstalled, this file is not removed. This is done by design, as quite a few people uninstall software before upgrading it. If uninstall would have deleted this file, then they would need to create the index all over again. If a user doesn’t want to reinstall, this file can be safely deleted. Detailed instructions are available in the FAQs section on the website.

Adding files to the audio library
When AudioManage is installed, it ends with a wizard which helps in configuring several important file locations. It then prompts the user for locations of their existing audio files, so they can be indexed. AudioManage tries to determine some locations automatically, which are included (if found) in the list. A user can add more folders to scan, or can perform a full-scan of the system for audio files. However, since most people have audio files in only a specific location, the best way to import audio into the library is to drag and drop the folder on the Audio Library icon in ‘My Computer’. The same result is achieved by dropping the folder anywhere in the Audio Library, if it’s already open.

Additionally, a user can simply right-click a folder, and select ‘Add to audio library’ from the context menu that pops up. We decided not to include an ‘Add to…’ option for individual files, as most audio files already have many different options in their context menus, with multiple players adding multiple options to each file. Also, considering that entire collections would normally be added to the library, it makes more sense to add the option to folders rather than files.

Accessing AudioManage configuration and related tools.
AudioManage has a Windows look and feel throughout the entire software. Since it adds itself to ‘My Computer’, it can be thought of as an additional, ‘virtual drive’ of sorts. To configure AudioManage, or to access related tools, one simply has to do what would be done for a drive: right-click on the main Audio Library icon, and select properties. AudioManage displays a multi-tabbed property sheet view, from which one can modify the various configuration options. The ‘Tools’ tab has several options using which the library can be managed, ‘dead links’ removed, new files added, or even the entire library cleared.
Opening (Playing) files from the audio library.
AudioManage is an audio library plugin for Windows. It is not a player: but it integrates with all other players, providing audio library services to any other Windows application. For each track in the library, AudioManage displays an icon: this icon is taken from the system settings, and depicts the program that will be used to open the file when the icon is double-clicked. This is standard Windows behaviour. If an application changes this file association, AudioManage automatically adapts itself, and even changes the icons to that of the new settings. Also, when a file is opened from the library, it is automatically added to a special internal playlist, which is available by the name ‘Favorites’ from the ‘Playlists’ view. 

If the file being requested is not available (say it’s on an offline AudioCD, or on a removable drive), AudioManage will prompt the user for the correct disc or drive, and will automatically be able to detect when the correct media is available. Thus, no ‘File not found’ will be displayed if the file is not available, as AudioManage provides an opportunity to provide the file.
Saving files directly into the library
Unlike other library applications which offer a ‘fake’ folder interface, AudioManage’s folders are real for Windows: they are internally treated by the operating system as folders. Hence, it’s possible to store files directly into the audio library. This saves a lot of computing resources, as directories no longer have to be polled for changes. Also, a lot of synchronization issues are easily handled in this manner. 

To save a file into the library, any Windows application can simply use the ‘Save As’ dialog box (for example, from a web browser, or a media application, or a ripping tool), and save directly into the library inside ‘My Computer’. When a track is saved to the library, AudioManage automatically copies it into a specific folder (which can be configured), and indexes the track. Additionally, AudioManage can be configured to automatically store the saved files in a hierarchical folder structure, performing an auto-rename or re-organization (see below for details on these features) on each saved file. It does not matter where the file is saved in the library… because AudioManage will automatically make it available in the correct place, in the virtual folder views.
‘Tagging’ and managing the collection.
AudioManage displays the audio collection as virtual folders. This are automatically classified under headings such as ‘by artist’, or ‘by album’ etc. Opening any folder dynamically organizes the collection, and displays it based on the folder criteria. For example, opening the ‘by Genre’ folder displays the entire collection in subfolders for each genre. This makes it easy for one to find, say, all ‘Jazz’ files. 

When a folder is renamed, it not only affects the database, but also the tags of each file that is ‘inside’ that folder. Since the files are not really ‘inside’ the virtual folders, AudioManage determines the affected files based on the current folder opened. For example, if the ‘Jazz’ folder inside ‘by Genre’ is renamed to ‘Smooth Jazz’, all the files in the audio library, which are of the genre ‘Jazz’, get their appropriate tags modified to ‘Smooth Jazz’. Even drag and drop operations effect the tags in a similar manner: if a folder for ‘Classic Rock’ is dragged and dropped in a folder called ‘Rock’,  all tracks in the library of the genre ‘Classic Rock’ get their genre tags updated to ‘Rock’ (and become available in the ‘Rock’ folder from then on).

AudioManage automatically determines which tags to modify, based on what folder is being viewed. Thus, the above works even when files or folders are dragged and dropped across multiple open windows, which are of different types. For example, dragging and dropping the folder ‘Aerosmith’ from the ‘by Artist’ view, to the ‘Rock’ folder in the ‘by Genre’ view, will set the genre tags of all Aerosmith tracks in the library to ‘Rock’. Of course, in this case, no files are moved across categories, and only tags are effected! Note that whatever applies to drag and drop, also applies to copy and paste. In fact, all the standard Windows keystrokes can be used across AudioManage, making it easy to use and reducing the learning curve!

Renaming & Re-Organizing
Dragging and dropping (or copy-pasting) is all that’s required to manage the audio collection using AudioManage. However, this only effects the tags of the files, and not their physical locations. While AudioManage normally does not modify filenames or the file locations of tracks at all, it includes some very powerful tools to physically restructure the audio collection if desired. These tools can be used at multiple ‘levels’ of AudioManage: they can be applied to a file (of a group of files), folders, or even the entire library. 

The ‘Auto-rename’ tool will apply a naming system to the selected files (or files in folders). This will basically change the names of the files to include the album, artist, and title information in a industry-standard manner Album-Artist-Title format. If any information is not available, a more compact name is used in accordance with standards. This tool is available from the context menu, under ‘Organize Files’.

The ‘Re-Organize’ tool will actually copy the files into a different folder structure, which is more meaningful than the regular names that a user may have used. This option, in a way, physically rearranges the files in a collection in a manner similar to that of AudioManage itself: for example, it can be used to automatically create folders of Artists, with subfolders for albums of those artists, and the copy (or move) the tracks in the correct artist\album folders. This way, the directory structure itself is modified, so a user will be able to see a organized collection even without AudioManage. Like the ‘Auto-Rename’ tool, even this tool can be applied at various levels – this means that it’s possible to Re-Organize a certain set of files, or, for example, all files by the group ‘Scorpions’.

Standard Properties
While different folders and views have different properties attached to them, some properties, like count, playtime, size, etc. are common and are available for all folders. This lets one have instant stats for different folders. For example, checking the properties of a genre, say, ‘Pop’, will instantly tell the user not only how many ‘Pop’ songs there are in the library, but also how much storage space they occupy, and how long they are in terms of playing time (if played end-to-end). This information can be useful for professionals like DJs as well. Also, this information is quite handy while making playlists, as the playing time for a particular playlist can be determined even before the playlist is created. It can also be used to determine if a set of files will fit a certain media that you want to copy them to. Some views include this information in window itself, when the ‘Details’ view is selected from Windows Explorer.

Unicode support
Another very important feature of AudioManage is its full Unicode support. AudioManage not only supports Unicode inside file tags, but also file names and paths etc. Also, AudioManage automatically selects the correct encoding to use while storing tags. For example, while storing ID3v1 tags, ANSI encoding is used. While storing ID3v2 or WMA tags, Unicode encoding is used (though AudioManage is correctly able to read the buggy ID3v2 ANSI tags that are created by Winamp). While storing OGG Vorbis tags, UTF8 encoding is used. While many other softwares are unable to deal with filenames using Unicode characters, AudioManage has no problems, even if the filename contains a mix of languages! It’s possible to use a mix of languages even in the properties of tracks, such as artist & album information, titles, comments, lyrics, genre etc.

When the views are dependant on the language, AudioManage makes sure that the correct reading directions are used. For example, for titles in Arabic or Hebrew (or other right-to-left reading languages), the ‘by Title’ view actually shows the right-most character instead of the leftmost ones for languages read left-to-right.
Updating album information
While in ‘by Album’ view, right-clicking on an album folder will show album properties. Here, AudioManage can automatically download the album cover and other information about tracks in the album. This cover is displayed as a thumbnail for albums when the thumbnail view is selected in Windows Explorer. For songs ripped from CDs, AudioManage is able to determine full track information even if very little is known about the files. AudioManage is even able to get the track names just by looking at a group of songs which are of the same album, even if they don’t have album name or artist/title information.

Self-Compilations
A lot of people now burn their favorite tracks on CDROM, to save on disc space, or to take the songs with them – say for their car audio systems. AudioManage is able to keep a track of these discs in a special manner: these disc become available in the ‘Compilations’ view. The unique thing about this is that the tracks in a particular compilation are organized not only in their own albums, but also by the physical media they are on. This way, it can become extremely simple to locate CDROMs that contain the track. This is very handy while searching, where all search results are returned irrespective of whether they are on online or offline media. When a file ‘open’ is attempted, AudioManage will automatically prompt the user to insert the correct disc.
 
Managing Playlists
Playlists are treated in AudioManage as folders. Logically speaking, a playlist is nothing but a container, which contains a list of files to play. Thus, AudioManage’s folder analogy is highly suitable for displaying playlists. Again, all actions that can be done in Windows Explorer, like drag & drop or copy & paste, can be done from these folders as well. Note that when files are added or removed from these folders, the underlying playlist files are automatically modified by AudioManage – the user does not have to bother about the file format of the playlist etc. Playlists can include other playlist folders as well, so it’s possible to have a ‘grouped’ playlist. It’s also possible to drag an un-indexed file directly into an open playlist. In this case, AudioManage not only indexes the file, but also adds it to that playlist.

When adding files from the Audio Library itself into an existing, indexed playlist, AudioManage does not require multiple windows to be open for drag and drop: simply right-click on the files, and select ‘Add to playlist…’ from the context menu. AudioManage displays each existing playlist right inside the menu. Simply clicking on the name of the playlist to which the files need to be added does the needful.
Creating New Playlists
AudioManage supports both Winamp-style M3U, as well as Windows Media Player’s WPL playlists. While the default playlist format is M3U, WPL format is recommended since it supports Unicode. It’s extremely easy to create a playlist using AudioManage: just drag and drop the folder containing the files you want in the playlist, to wherever you want to save the playlist, and the playlist gets created! If only playing a set of files is desired, then the folders (or files) can be directly dropped in the player application (both Windows Media Player as well as Winamp have been tested). For example, if the folder for ‘Opera’ from the ‘by Genre’ view, is dropped into a particular location using Windows Explorer, the playlist file ‘Opera.m3u’ is automatically created. Note that a user can configure the format of the playlist in the Audio Library properties. The user can specify that the preferred format of playlist is WPL or M3U, and from that point on, all drag & drop operations will create playlists in the selected format. 

Moving files out of the library
Quite often, it is desirable to copy these folders as files, instead of playlists. For example, if one wants to copy all ‘Carrie Underwood’ songs to an MP3 Player, one can simply drag and drop the ‘Carrie Underwood’ folder from the ‘by Artist’ view into the MP3 Player. However, normally, this would only create a playlist in the player, which will be of no use. For this, an option can be changed quickly in the AudioManage Properties, by which when folders are dropped, instead of making playlists, the files inside the folders are copied. One can use this option, say, when copying to a network drive, or a removable media like USB drives or iPod, etc If this option is selected, one can still create playlists from folders without changing the option by right-clicking a folder, and selecting the ‘Create playlist from this folder’ option from the context menu.

Note that all folders (except, of course, the top-level views) can be drag-dropped anywhere where drag and drop is supported in Windows. Also, if a user is not comfortable with dragging and dropping, copy and paste can be used. All standard Windows keyboard shortcuts are supported by AudioManage.

Burning audio files to a CD (Windows XP or above)
AudioManage makes it extremely easy to burn selected tracks onto a CD. It utilizes the CD burning interface that is built in into Windows (XP and 2003). Files can be put onto a CD individually, in groups, or even by folders. Simply right-click on the item (file or folder) that is to be copied, and select ‘Copy selected folders/files to CD’ from the context menu that pops up. That’s it! The files are then located by AudioManage, and copied into a temporary staging area which Windows uses to burn files onto discs. Windows will then display a notification in the system tray, informing a user that some files are ready to be copied to a CD. The user can then decide which files to actually burn, and add or remove files from the set, and the finally burn the set to a disc using the option in the Windows interface.

Accessing the file-specific context menu
While all folders and files displayed in AudioManage are ‘virtual’, there will always be a physical file somewhere behind a virtual one. This is the original file that exists in the user’s audio collection, that was indexed by AudioManage. This file would also have had some menu options that are not available (or do not make sense) in the virtual views that AudioManage offers. Some examples of such menu items are player-specific entries, such as ‘Add to Now Playing list’. Hence, to make it convenient for a user to access these options, and to make sure that the user is able to use the audio library with all other installed applications, AudioManage makes available the file’s original context menu by simply clicking on the ‘System File Menu’ option in the virtual file’s context menu.
Loan Manager
For tracks on CDs (both Audio CDs, as well as CDROMs containing MP3 compilations), AudioManage also has a built-in loan manager. This can help a user in tracking not only discs that have been lent out, but also discs that were borrowed from others. In fact, icons overlays in the ‘by Album’ view will always display the current status of an album. The icon overlay shows albums as being on a CDROM, or being lent out, or being borrowed, or even borrowed, but returned. This allows you to track your songs that you like, but don’t own. If you are looking for a song that is actually with a friend, AudioManage can tell you exactly who to contact. AudioManage can even launch Yahoo Messenger or MSN, or your email client to directly send a message to the person.
Duplicate Removal
AudioManage can help in removing duplicates by listing all the duplicate songs you have. AudioManage has two modes to handle duplicates: it can either list songs with the same title, or songs with the same audio data. Even when listing songs with the same title, it categorizes the songs with the same audio data, so one can determine whether a song is similar to another of the same name, just by looking at the ‘by Similarity’ view. In contrast, the ‘Duplicates’ view groups the songs by calculating the checksums of their audio data, which is independent of the file tags etc. Thus, two files of the same track, but with different tags, and in some cases, even different file sizes, can still be identified by AudioManage and listed. Of course, the files are displayed in the standard ‘folders and files’ view, so managing the duplicates is easy.

Other miscellaneous views
Besides the main ‘top level’ views (such as ‘by Artist’, ‘by Album’, etc.) offered by AudioManage, several other views are available in the ‘Tools’ folder. Some of these are for listing duplicates, as discussed above. There are other views which are included to make it easier to manage or search for files, which are not dependant on tag information. For example, the ‘by Bitrate’ view displays the tracks grouped by bitrates. This can be useful in deleting songs with low-bitrates from the entire audio collection in a single click. 

While making presentations, people often look for audio files of a certain approximate duration. AudioManage makes it convenient to do that by displaying the files grouped by approximate lengths (durations), in the ‘by Duration’ view. This can be used, for example, to find all songs which are roughly 3 minutes long.

The ‘by Location’ view allows a user to view the collection based on the physical location of the files. AudioManage groups all available tracks based on the location or media, and displays it as a hierarchical folder list. Some available categories are: online (disk), network, devices, and CDs. This makes it possible, for example, to quickly find the files which are on the network.
Searching the library
Since AudioManage indexes all files in a database, it’s extremely easy to search for files. The benefit of using AudioManage search, instead of using the standard file search of Windows, is that the search includes files not only from your computer, but also from the network, or files on devices, and even tracks on your AudioCDs!!! Also, a typical search for a few Gb of audio library can be performed in less than a second! AudioManage allows searching for title, genre, artist, album, comments and lyrics, and has full Unicode support, so the search can contain Unicode text as well.

With AudioManage, it is possible to store a specific set of search criteria as a custom folder for later use. These folders are displayed in the ‘Search Results’ view, and are ‘live’ folders: whenever they are opened, AudioManage automatically re-performs the search for you and displays the latest results. All this is done instantly, and the user only feels that a simple folder has been opened!

AudioManage also performs optimization of the search results: while searching for tracks, if an artist name is specified, then AudioManage lists the artist folders containing the tracks, instead of each file, hence reducing clutter of search results. This is true for album folders as well.

Reviewing Tips
AudioManage is best tried with a medium to large audio collection (typically a few hundred to a thousand files or more). We have tested AudioManage with about 7000 files, over 8 GB in total size - spread over a network - without any issues.

AudioManage extends Windows, hence uninstalling might require a system reboot.

AudioManage uses UPX in-memory compression/decompression technology to achieve a small footprint. For this reason, if there are some softwares installed on the system (such as anti-virus ‘innoculators’, which modify the file executable), AudioManage will fail to decompress itself when run, causing application failures. This can result in ‘Trial Period Has Expired’ warnings, or AudioManage may completely refuse to run (this is done so that the other running applications are not effected in case the program crashes).

AudioManage has been extensively tested on varied hardware platforms, from P-III, 600Mhz, and P-4, 2.8 GHz with HyperThreading, with excellent results. Generally, the faster the computer, the better, since all folders and views are dynamically generated.

AudioManage is a unique new concept. It presents a very simple and intuitive interface. Most people mistake this simplicity for lack of features, so reviewers are urged to spend some time and use the software so that it’s power can be seen. It is strongly recommended, especially for reviewers, to refer to this guide while trying out AudioManage.