Tracker jukebox on a CD

swamp daddy · Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 3

Hi all: I am a newbie here and I am trying to find the source of some software I got years ago. I was in a store and found a disc which promised to deliver over 200 Louis Armstrong songs and playable on Win 95 and up.

The sound was quite good. The titles were in English and as well individual album covers were displayed. The "jukebox interface" looked Russian and as about 1/2 of the drop down menus did not work I think some one had created this Russian version from the original.

The program was in two parts
1) a little loader to bring up the menu
2) the jukebox player itself.

The Jukebox part was simply labeled "tracker" on the exe file. The about button did not work.

Anyone out there ever hear of this program. I blindly substituted some traditional jazz of my own in the folders, retyped the ".ini" files to the correct titles and it still works fine. I would like to buy this program if I can ever find out where it came from.

Brien · Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 4:44 am Post subject:

Your not trying to reinvent the wheel are you? It reads like you just need an interface to access your music files any of which the realaudio, windowsmedia, etc can do for you.

The "sound" is not produced from the player itself so has little value in the matter of reproducing Louis' work.

But you knew that right?

Thanks,

Brien

swamp daddy · Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 3

Hi Brien: No, I don't need to reinvent the wheel; I guess my explanation may have been a few 1000 words short of complete clairity. I don't need anything for my own computer. I have lots of catalogers, etc. Several jukeboxes, etc. Many things to organize and tag music.

The Louis example is what I got. It is ok; but, the music was obviously obtained from some well worn LPs. It was a self-contained disc with 10 or 11 complete Louis Armstrong LPs on it plus the player. The end user needs nothing additional (besides the correct codecs) on his machine. But it is set up in a sort of Jukebox style. And the player is very basic, no frills, no visualizations or anything. (this is a 1995 style program). But it is good for playing music in the background, or for sending a collection to someone else, basically a self playing MP3-style disc that could hold 100s of songs.

I made several such discs from my traditional jazz collection by experimenting around after examining the folders. Mine work and play fine (and sound better than the one I got). But the "player interface" is in Russian. I would like to find and buy the program with an English interface to use to assemble like collections. I think one could put 300 - 350 78rpms on there with little quality loss. I am now working on transferring some old 78 music to the computer.

Still, it is an old program; and, I suspect the real name is not "tracker" as it was obvious that the Russians who put out this Louis disc had perhaps ripped out a section of a larger program and used it; or, hacked the original player to suit their needs.

The little front end loader (autoplay engine) to fire it up when you insert the disc is standard commands from the "El torritos standard" for self-booting CDs so I was easily able to alter that part to suit my needs.

Hit Squad was maybe my last hope for finding out where this came from.

I personally don't care for the very invasive Real Player; I'm not a big fan of Windows Media Player either. I normally use MusicMatch Jukebox on my own machine. As well as playing MusicMatch Jukebox encodes too. And, the free version is very good. I bought the PLUS version myself.

Basically, this program I was talking of is a good way to assemble self-playing collections; and, to be able to send them to people without any need of any knowledge or any software (real player), etc. for computers with Win95 and up.

Although the sound is not in pure MP3 it is essentially the same thing (compression techniques and size as an MP3 at 64 Kb/sec) so you can squeeze an awful lot on one disc. And, you could sample higher if you wanted less music on the disc.

I am still interested in buying the program if I can find out what (it's real name is) and where it is.

Have fun, Harry Cool

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Brien · Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 3:05 pm Post subject:

Win95, long time ago brother. This product could be from the imagination of a young programmer using various coding routines that has long since given up on the project.

Or, if it was put together by a soon to go public corporation, the product name may have changed, the company name may have changed hands 3 or 4 times. Such is you dilemma having nothing but a file name based on a defunct OS.

MP3 is a compression method and, all things being equal, is not relavant to the sound in this day and age.

Bit rate can increase/ reduce quality a smig but the difference between a WAV, MP3, etc in sound quality is neglegable.

If I could reitterate: The player playing back the songs should not have any effect one player to another. It should act like a faucet that lets water flow. If it DOES(and does not require user input to do so) color the music in any way...it MAY be because of a lesser quality recording.

So if Louis has some scratching sounds, the Russians could not remove the sounds, they located a routine that EQed the scratch sounds out. Doesn't make the player better by any measure, in fact, it would be subject to get lost fast in my collection due to this coloring of sound if control of this aspect were not available to use at will.

You can find software here @Hitsquad that aids in scratch/hiss/vinyl noise removal from prerecorded work. You could start @ http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/

Maybe your really interested in a cd-burner and just don't know it:)

I wouldn't look at Hitsquad as the last hope, it is often the place of a fresh view and start for many.

swamp daddy · Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 3

Hi all: Well, I don't think I can be any clearer than I have been so far; but, I will try this one last time to focus readers on what I want.

1) the Louis Armstrong material is NOT the subject of the post; it simply happened to be the style/genre on the disc I orginally found with this program.

2) The quality of the Louis material has absolutely NOTHING to do with what I am trying to find out. It, again, was simply mentioned to show that the disc while made in quantity was obviously not by a normal Commercial outfit. I own many of those same LPs that were on the disc in high quality. I have 4 or 5 programs to process sound and I do know what to do in that area As I noted, the ones I have made are much higher quality to my ear.

3) I don't really need a CD burner, I have 3 (if you count the DVD burners) on the system now. It takes a CD-burner to make the discs which I noted I have done already.

4) MP3 compression (and the quality thereof) is also NOT the main idea of this post. I simply mentioned bitrates as an indication of approximately how many songs could be contained along with the player on one CD-ROM.

5) I am NOT talking of playback quality; nor of ways to increase that. I realize the player merely says do the song.

6) Yes, brother, I know Win95 is long gone; and, that is why I considered the Hitsquad my last chance. If anyone might have a handle on this program it would be those with a wide ranging interest in music and computers. And, you could be right Brien, it might be an abandoned project from a single amateur or small group. And, I sure know looking for a program from a file name is almost impossible; also, that is another reason I thought to bring it up on HitSquad. Yes, I look to the future; but, not everything in the past is worthless. This still works fine on WinXP after I updated the front end loader to 32-bit style.

7) The perceived advantage of this program that I see is it's compact size of 314 Kb and that it operates equally well from the disc as on your machine. It is very plain, which for this application is just fine. It displays total time, current time, and the album cover art or a picture of the artist that you supply in the original folders, and it displays the folders in an index to the left with the one you are now playing from open to show a list of songs in that folder.

Cool

all information supplied is simply to describe the program fully in case someone would recognize it under another name or even as a part of another program. Louis Armstrong material is not the point. Noise reduction is not the point. MP3 bitrates vs. anything else is not the point. CD Burners are not the point. Win95 (or any O/S) is not really the focus.

9) All I am interested in is locating the program; if I can not find it, I may try to take it apart myself though it will be much easier to simply buy it if it is commercially available. Even another version with an English interface would be nice. I like making self-playing collection discs and this compact player lets you use most of the disc space for songs and not for the player.

So thanks everyone for taking a look.

Is anyone else out there making similar self-playing discs from their collections, or maybe just MP3 discs with a ton of songs on them?

Have fun, Harry

Brien · Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 7:14 pm Post subject:

how about you send this application to me at brien@getadotlife.com so I can help pull it apart and "maybe" point you in a better direction.

It could happen.

Thanks,

Brien

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