I'm very tired of seeing posts regarding whether ALBW works or not. It is a very good product and I have been using it for years... the problem is not whether it works or not, it's whether or not the person using it knows how to use the ALBW file or how to properly create the file in the first place...I've seen this all too often. Here is the basic info and what I've discovered.
1) An ALBW file is basically the tracks (mp3's) that are compiled into 1 single MP3 file (whether it is album tracks that are being used or any series of mp3 tracks being used) after compiling the tracks the program creates the MP3 file with an ALBW designation at the end of whatever title you decide to give the particular file (eg. "David Bowie - Diamond Dogs" will become "David Bowie - Diamond Dogs_ALBW".
I've seen many posts ssuggesting it's better to use winzip/winrar to compress or store each of the mp3 tracks you wish into a single file. The advantage of ALBW is that now you have an mp3 file that can be played on any MP3 player and you also have the ability to extract individual tracks using the free ALBW Extractor program that is available. There are also other fine extractors such as ALBA extractor and Moosewrap out there as well. With Winzip/Winrar all you have is a single file that is unplayable until you unpack them.
2) Some posts complain that they have downloaded an ALBW file and tried to play or extract the files without any success....well the most simplest explanations for this is
a) The file even though it is marked as ALBW is not actually ALBW file....Wow...wonders never cease that some idiot intentionally or unintentiionally has misnamed the file just to screw with you.....Hmmmm...that could never happen.......RIGHT!!!!!!!!!
b) The file has been corrupted and is actually an ALBW file but needs to be fixed first in order to bring back the proper settings in order to allow you to play and extract individual tracks if you wish...the program that you should get is albwFix (free product)...run this program and Voila...you mave have your file working again, however If this doesn't work then delete the file and move on to the next...it's not like you haven't dowloaded a file before that either didn't work or wasn't the one you were looking for.
One thing that you should note while playing back an ALBW file is that you will only see the name of the ALBW file in your MP3 player you will not be able to see the individual tracks or skip to play and individual track (unless you FFwd) If someone could create that I would buy it. I'll just have to be satifield that I can compile individual albums and store them offline or play them, without having to unpack the file into various subdirectories in order to listen to the album.
I've found the best way to prepare an albw file is to first use a tag editor (eg Tag & Rename) to create a consistant order to the individual tracks...Artist-Album-Title-Year-Genre-Track#-Bitrate etc....whatever you want to name the file...consistancy with Tags will benefit you in the long run...consistancy in Bitrate will also help (why have a song with a 256k bitrate in the file with one at 96k or less...makes it sound crappy)...you can also have attached photos in the tags ALBW doesn't care as far as I can see...it does of course make the file much larger than it needs to be...expecially when I constantly see attached picture files in every track on the album.
Hopefully this will stop all those questions about ALBW not working once and for all.
ALBW (Album wrapper and extractor)
I'm very tired of seeing posts regarding whether ALBW works or not. It is a very good product and I have been using it for years... the problem is not whether it works or not, it's whether or not the person using it knows how to use the ALBW file or how to properly create the file in the first place...I've seen this all too often. Here is the basic info and what I've discovered.
1) An ALBW file is basically the tracks (mp3's) that are compiled into 1 single MP3 file (whether it is album tracks that are being used or any series of mp3 tracks being used) after compiling the tracks the program creates the MP3 file with an ALBW designation at the end of whatever title you decide to give the particular file (eg. "David Bowie - Diamond Dogs" will become "David Bowie - Diamond Dogs_ALBW".
I've seen many posts ssuggesting it's better to use winzip/winrar to compress or store each of the mp3 tracks you wish into a single file. The advantage of ALBW is that now you have an mp3 file that can be played on any MP3 player and you also have the ability to extract individual tracks using the free ALBW Extractor program that is available. There are also other fine extractors such as ALBA extractor and Moosewrap out there as well. With Winzip/Winrar all you have is a single file that is unplayable until you unpack them.
2) Some posts complain that they have downloaded an ALBW file and tried to play or extract the files without any success....well the most simplest explanations for this is
a) The file even though it is marked as ALBW is not actually ALBW file....Wow...wonders never cease that some idiot intentionally or unintentiionally has misnamed the file just to screw with you.....Hmmmm...that could never happen.......RIGHT!!!!!!!!!
b) The file has been corrupted and is actually an ALBW file but needs to be fixed first in order to bring back the proper settings in order to allow you to play and extract individual tracks if you wish...the program that you should get is albwFix (free product)...run this program and Voila...you mave have your file working again, however If this doesn't work then delete the file and move on to the next...it's not like you haven't dowloaded a file before that either didn't work or wasn't the one you were looking for.
One thing that you should note while playing back an ALBW file is that you will only see the name of the ALBW file in your MP3 player you will not be able to see the individual tracks or skip to play and individual track (unless you FFwd) If someone could create that I would buy it. I'll just have to be satifield that I can compile individual albums and store them offline or play them, without having to unpack the file into various subdirectories in order to listen to the album.
I've found the best way to prepare an albw file is to first use a tag editor (eg Tag & Rename) to create a consistant order to the individual tracks...Artist-Album-Title-Year-Genre-Track#-Bitrate etc....whatever you want to name the file...consistancy with Tags will benefit you in the long run...consistancy in Bitrate will also help (why have a song with a 256k bitrate in the file with one at 96k or less...makes it sound crappy)...you can also have attached photos in the tags ALBW doesn't care as far as I can see...it does of course make the file much larger than it needs to be...expecially when I constantly see attached picture files in every track on the album.
Hopefully this will stop all those questions about ALBW not working once and for all.
Enjoy