Tips and Tricks

Rely on the Master List

The Master list contains one entry for each song in the collection. Because you can use search filters to extract certain songs from the Master list, there often is no need to create a lot of other lists. Some MP3 players will create a new list for every artist or album. But there isn't really a need to do that in Avaga because you can easily search for all songs by a particular artist or in an album.

Keep Song Files in One Directory

Let Avaga handle your MP3 organization. Often it's easiest to just dump most of your MP3 files in one Music directory. If you need to move or copy some of those files later, you can use Avaga's Move Songs or Copy Songs functions. It's not worth it to try to maintain different directories for each artist or whatever.

Create Special Napster and Rip Directories

When I download songs using Napster, I don't dump them directory into my main Music directory. Instead I send them to a Napster directory. I have a special Napped list that auto-loads songs from the Napster directory. Once I have downloaded some songs, I run Auto Load and the new songs are placed in the Napped list (as well as the Master list).

I can then check the new files to make sure they aren't messed up (as much of the stuff on Napster is) and fill in any missing fields. If I don't like the song, I delete it. Otherwise, I use Move Songs to move the song file to my main Music directory. I then remove the entry from the Napped list.

I do something similar with new songs that I have ripped from a CD. They go into the Rip directory, which is watched by the Ripped list.

Use Relative Path Names

When you load a song or set the auto-load directory for a list, it is usually best to use a relative path name. A relative path name is one that is relative to the directory in which the collection file is stored. "." and "Songs/New" are relative path names. "/home/foo/Music" and "C:\Music" are absolute (not relative) path names because they start with "/" and "C:".

You should also put your .avc collection file in your main music directory. The reason for using relative path names is that you can then move the music directory without messing up the collection.

Let's say your MP3 files and your collection file are in C:\Music. If you used absolute path names for the songs, their Directory fields will be set to "C:\Music". Now let's say you want to move all your Music to the D: drive. You will have to change the Directory entry for all the songs to refer to the new location or you won't be able to play them.

However, this wouldn't be a problem if you used a relative path to refer to the song. In that case, the songs' Directory fields would be set to ".", meaning the song is in the same directory as the collection file. When you move the Music directory, the songs will still be in the same directory as the collection and everything will work just fine.