Manage Music with HTC Desire & Foobar: Simple Steps

[aronin]

After scouting around for the best solution to manage music files in HTC Desire, I finally found a very simple way to do it, using my favorite music player - Foobar2000, which I was using as my default player anyway. Steps are provided below.

1. Install Foobar: Ensure that you select the option to install 'File Operations'

2. Set up Foobar as per your liking with Music & Playlists (I use the Portable Version installed on my D: Drive so that I don't have to set up everything when I clean install my PC)

3. Connect your HTC Desire (or I guess any Android phone) to PC and select the option to connect it as a 'Disk Drive'. If you have 'Charging Only' as the default option, just pull down the Notification Bar from top and change it to 'Disk drive'

4. Now access your SD Card from Windows Explorer and for simplicity sake create a folder called 'Music'. Within this folder, create another folder called 'Playlists'

5. From Foobar, select the tracks you want to transfer to your phone. Right Click -> File Operations -> Copy... navigate to the path of the SD Card -> Music folder that you just created. (In Foobar Copy dialog, uncheck the option to 'Copy Entire Source Folder Content' unless you want to do it'.

ALTERNATIVELY: Just copy/paste your Music Files directly to the Music folder on the SD Drive (assuming you have the same files being played on Foobar as well...else Playlists wont capture all the right songs). You can bypass Foobar entirely.

6. Now select the Playlists in Foobar that you want transferred - Right Click -> Save as... m3u and save it in the SDCard -> Music -> Playlist Folder.

That's it.

HTC Desire will automatically map the Playlists to the relative paths of the Songs on Desire.

Note: Whenever you update your Playlists with new songs, just make sure to copy the Playlists again to the SD Card (along with the new songs ofcourse).

I have a lot of Smart Playlists in Foobar and this is a flawless method that works very well for me.

As you can see, the main purpose of Foobar just to have the right Playlists in place. Personally, once I get the 32GB SD card, I am just going to Sync my entire music folder to the SD Card everytime I connect my phone to laptop for charging (I use AllwaySync for folder syncing.. ofcourse there are dozens of great programs out there). And then will use Foobar to export Playlists as and when new songs are added to my collection.

PS: I was an iPhone use so far.. you can't imagine my joy the day I got HTC Desire and uninstalled iTunes... a bloated piece of junk!

 

[NZtechfreak]

If you're anything like me you'll love your 32GB card, I can't stress enough how much I appreciate having enough room on my card for my entire music collection (and some space left over for apps and suchlike).

 

[aronin]

Yup, but unfortunately most stores in my country are not carrying it as of now... so just waiting for now

 

[xenonn]

Guys, do you know any way to make it the other way round
I'd like to export playlists from my desire.
As I checked there are no m3u files on my sdcard so far.
I tried to search the phone memory for m3u with Es File Explorer,
but I doesn't seem to work.

Any help would be appreciated !

 

[zryder]

I have been using foobar for quite some time, so I would really rather not switch if I don't have to, However, the process you have showed here only works if the android can play the files you have in your foobar library, ie MP3. I have the vast majority of my media collection as Flac, is there any way for it to use the built in converter to compress the flac's into V2 MP3's on its way to the android?

 

[harisled]

aronin thanks for the suggestion of this wonderful program!
it really made it easy for me to organise the music i wanted to copy over to my desire!

 

[pstils]

I have been using foobar for quite some time, so I would really rather not switch if I don't have to, However, the process you have showed here only works if the android can play the files you have in your foobar library, ie MP3. I have the vast majority of my media collection as Flac, is there any way for it to use the built in converter to compress the flac's into V2 MP3's on its way to the android?

This is the reason I use MediaMonkey - for it's "on-the-fly" conversion, which allows you to just drag and drop practically any format into your android and it will automatically be converted to the right format. MediaMonkey is a really good piece of software for managing (and converting, organising, etc.) and playing all types of digital music. I do like foobar for its light weight+high power, but it's a bit limited with respect to syncing to devices. MediaMonkey works with iPod too, if you fancy getting rid of iTunes, which you might do. Cos it's sh1t.

 

[tofugoat]

"MediaMonkey - for it's "on-the-fly" conversion, which allows you to just drag and drop practically any format into your android and it will automatically be converted to the right format."

i don't seem to be able to do that with media monkey (gold) and my desire hd :-(

 

[GrenW]

I use mm gold too but never noticed that functionality either.

Great piece of software though.

 

[vanhoivanbinh]

Thank you very much, Sir. With FOOBAR, FLAC and other lossless types of music, also your sync method, now I have a mobile Lossless player in my Samsung Galaxy S!!!!!

 

[saltire]

I have been using foobar for quite some time, so I would really rather not switch if I don't have to, However, the process you have showed here only works if the android can play the files you have in your foobar library, ie MP3. I have the vast majority of my media collection as Flac, is there any way for it to use the built in converter to compress the flac's into V2 MP3's on its way to the android?

No way to do it on the fly that i know of, you'd have to convert from FLAC to mp3 first and then transfer to phone.

@vanhoivanbinh - intersted to know if you can actually tell the difference between lossless and lossy formats played on your phone through headphones or buds? I prefer ripping CDs rather than downloading, and using EAC + LAME to rip CDs to flac and VBR (V0) mp3s I can't tell the difference between the two when playing on the Desire (running PowerAMP and pair of SoundMagic MP21s). Having VBR mp3s saves a load of space on SD card compared to say flac, more space for more music at the end of the day .

 

[Rastaman-FB]

No way to do it on the fly that i know of, you'd have to convert from FLAC to mp3 first and then transfer to phone.

@vanhoivanbinh - intersted to know if you can actually tell the difference between lossless and lossy formats played on your phone through headphones or buds? I prefer ripping CDs rather than downloading, and using EAC + LAME to rip CDs to flac and VBR (V0) mp3s I can't tell the difference between the two when playing on the Desire (running PowerAMP and pair of SoundMagic MP21s). Having VBR mp3s saves a load of space on SD card compared to say flac, more space for more music at the end of the day .

pretty sure poweramp plays flac

 

[saltire]

Yep, does indeed Rasta - still a bit of a waste of card space though. And unless you're listening to say classical music or through a serious sound system, I reckon most people would be hard pressed to detect much difference in sound quality between decent lossy (eg mp3 @ VBR V0, vorbis etc) and lossless (flac, wavpack etc) played on a phone via headphones/buds - just mho

 

[Dom Pang]

Guys,

Go check out Music Bee. It does on the fly conversion to almost format you want from almost any format that your music is in. It also allows sync of mobile devices and/or sd cards just like itunes does with ipods and iphones.

The best part---It is free.

Dom