I'm wondering if someone can give me a more in-depth reason why MP3Pro has not been added as a ripping option. In searching, the only thing I've seen is something along the lines of that it's not a popular enough format. Well, it's new, what do you expect? (Such a response is as useful to users who want the feater as Bantam's response about working with JRiver to make the products works together.)
From what little I know (so far), MP3Pro seems to provide a similar quality file in about half the space. At least that seems to be true for the "CD quality" level of 128 when I was ripping with MusicMatch.
I tried a little experiment. I've ripped some of my CDs (with MusicMatch) in MP3Pro format, a format that generates files that play fine on both my new mp3 player (a Nitrus) and my first-generation car CD/MP3 player, a Kenwood.. I took one and ripped it with the MP3plus plug-in or Media Center 9.
Thing is, I have no clue what the settings mean; there's a choice of Thumb, Radio, Standard, Xtreme, Insane, and Custom, which give no cluse how they match up to common quantitative settings for standard MP3s (although the library does show the resulting bitrate).
Still, I ripped CD twice, once at Standard and once at Thumb. the results of a 4 minute song:
MP3Pro: 1954 KB (bitrate: 128)
MP3plus (Standard): 5328 KB (bitrate: 175)
MP3plus (Thumb): 2518KB (bitrate: 83)
Oh, and the file extension is .mpc.. Whatis.com reports that to be the same extension as a Microsoft Project calendar file.
Please, no one suggest WMA as a viable alternative. It may be for some, but some want playable, good quality MP3 -format files.
From my experience in the software development world, many users who dont' find the feature they want either suffer in silence or find something else (again, in silence). A few inquiries have popped up here; they likely represent a much larger number of users and potential users who would like to see this feature in current or future versions.
So one question is: how much does user demand drive product features? (For me, basic functionality comes far, far ahead of fluff such as skins.)
I switched to Media Jukebox some time back, despite its slowness in ripping (which seems to be speedier in MC9, thank you very much), because it does so many basic functionality things so much better than MusicMatch (and some things that MM simply doesn't). To me, and probably to many others, MP3Pro is a gaping hole in MC. Will you fill that hole?