Thank you for the quick response.
I have been using older versions of both WMP (7.1) and JRiver (MJ 8.0.382), because I understood their effects on my data.
My previous post resulted from trying out WMP (9.1) and MJ (8.0.400) last night (after Ghosting my system of course). I was willing to try MC, if it worked out.
I am happy to hear that MC will not touch my MP3 tags.
But after my dismal experience with WMP and 8.0.400, my feet may be too cold to try MC.
The dismality is related to WMP "touching" both of the dates (Modified and Created) for each of my MP3 files. And I didn't even "Scan for New Media".
There must be a quiet WMP service running (in the background). Equally discomforting, WMP seems to want access to the Internet randomly.
In any case all of my MP3 files were touched. Their Modified dates were changed to a date&time shortly after I installed WMP (lastnight), and their Created dates to some random (slightly later than their original) Creation date, that has no relavence to anything I can determine.
Incremental backups from my working volume to a backup drive are based on Modified Date (using DirTool). Obviously I cannot have rouge apps "touching" my file's Modified Date attribute.
Can someone verify that setting "Update tags when file info changes" in MC will guarantee that my MP3 files will NOT be "touched", in any way?
And is the Library scheme and approach used in MC the same as in MJ? In other words, will perforimng a simple "Clear Library" and "Import Media" be all that is required to resync (after adding new files and fixing tags externally).
And can I use MC without WMP 9.1? And/or is WMP9 required?
Just like in the beginning of MP3's history, there is again too much activity in the media app arena today. Each app wants control, you can't browse without all three media applets installed, tags are modified willy nilly. There is little consistency, much incompatibility, and its very time consumming, even for this engineer to figure out which combination of apps will best preserve and serve his data.
Three years ago MJ was like a breath of fresh air. It knew what it was doing, did it simply, and didn't step on anyone's toes. Is MC really out of Beta yet! Have uncle's Bill and Steve really stabilized there platforms (XP, AAC, directSound, etc.) enough for creative folks like JRiver to begin to give us a smart media app again?
Please say yes, yes, yes , and yes!
Michael