Herman,
The link sent me to the wrong site. |
Try this. Sorry. I can't go back and edit. |
Herman,
Here is the one that I've been using. www.collectorz.com . I can say that so far I've been very pleased with the results. I did download the trial version of KIX music master 4 and it did nothing for me.
|
Microsoft Access 97 has Music Collection.mdb
It is very good and free.
If anybody interested, I can e-mail copy. |
Does the program have the ability to add the CDDB information for vinyl? |
I have been using CDTrustee and just downloaded the trial version of this program. They seem very similar except this program may be a little cheaper. The problem I have with my current program is the format of printed reports. Reports are limited to preset formats in the program. I would like to have a program that allows customized reports or at least reports that are based on vinyl collections. My ideal report would have one printed line per record. The records would be sorted and grouped by artist and listed by year of release. Information for each record would include Album title, year of release, label, cat. #, condition & notes. In the very limited time I have been playing with this trial version the reports don't appear to be able to be customized. All of predefined report formats seem to be designed for a CD collection played on a 200 disc jukebox or from a hard drive.
Is anyone familiar enough with either of these programs to know if the printed output described above is possible? Or is the only option to use a data base program as mentioned in a prior post. The internet search features on these programs allow for instantly adding most all album info which allows building a collection in a fraction of the time of typing everything into a data base manually. They do have their advantages in this reguard. To be fair both programs also include report formats that print all album info. But I figure this type of report would use a couple reems of paper and a few printer cartridges for a thousand plus piece vinyl collection.
Please excuse the rant, but does anyone know of a better way? |
A programmer friend could build exactly what we want for not much money at all but I wouldn't be interested if it couldn't access the CDDB database. He and I have talked about every feature I could dream up and he indicated it's not much work for him. I had thought that I'd just give him some money and offer it here for free but nobody would want to enter that much information. It would be an M$ app only too which is, how do I say it correctly, too bad? I assume the CDDB is not free. Anyone know? |
It looks to me like the collectorz is a better program than the one I found. It looks like it can print out the way you want bld63 and both access the cddb stuff but the collectorz goes further and looks more places. |
I have been playing with these and it appears that the only one that accesses a site called freedb is the Kix Music Catalouge. This site has a database of LPs that the other program doesn't find. CollectorZ is far superior in features, but it can't find the vinyl. Since I'm looking to catalog 1000's of records I may not have a choice but to use the clunkier program.
Any other suggestions? |
Herman,
Thanks for the heads up on collecorz. I downloaded the trial version for it also. The ability to customize reports looks promising. I have been able to find some vinyl but it seems you have search artist & title. Maybe this weekend I will have time to figure out which program is best for me.
Thanks, Bryan |
I'm going with kix since I have about 4,000 pieces to enter. The others have better interfaces and more features, but the ability enter the entire inventory of each artist at one time will save me hours and hours of work. The kix presents a list of everything it found and you can pick what you have.
With over 1000 CDs I'm not willing to put each one into the computer for it to search CDDB. You get more info but it is very slow compared to picking from a list and I'm really just interested in a list of what I have so I can quit buying duplicates.
The kix program also pulls up a lot of old vinyl that the others miss so that will save a lot of time. |
Herman,
I have over 10K classical LPs and have long wondered how to inventory them, with lots of detail, as efficiently and inexpensively as possible. It sounds like you're done a lot of research on the subject and I assume that you've spent a lot of time inventorying your own collection. What is your opinion today about the best way to go? Is it still Kix? Of Collectorz? Thanks for the time
Jeff |
Funny you should ask. After almost 7 years I never took it any further and my collection remains un-inventoried. Then, a few weeks ago I was shopping for home insurance and the agent suggested I do so. I once again downloaded the trial of Kix and have been playing with it.
It still looks to me like Kix is the way to go for vinyl. It looks through several internet databases and finds quite a few titles. I'm not so sure about classical though as most of my collection is jazz and rock.
Before I take the plunge I'm waiting on word from the underwriters what they will accept as proof of value. No point in doing the inventory for me unless it will serve as proof of value and I'm think I may need an appraisal. I'm also considering just taking a picture of each album and storing that.
. |
I'm cataloging my vinyl collection of some 3500+ jazz and classical albums. First of all, any software that only allows one artist per album is conceptually broken and unusable, IMHO.
The only thing I found that does it right (but not entirely) is CollectorZ. It's buggy and the UI is absolutely hideous (the Mac version is a very bad port of a Windows UI). It gets others things wrong, and the list management is very flakey, but it's still the best I have found. I does have some very nice reporting and listing features. In the end it is the best I have found. So far I have cataloged some 360+ jazz records. It finds most of them via Discogs and CollectorZ, but almost always requires further editing. The classical stuff will be more problematic. I have 2000 classical LPs and most are imports, many somewhat obscure. |
I just tried the MCM software. I can't believe just how bad it is. UNINSTALL. |
