B.4 Options Menu

The Options menu lets you change your preferences for the look and feel of the program as well as controlling the actions within playlists, changing the settings for your Recorder and Radio, and working with your music library.

B.4.1 Player

From this one submenu, you can control most basic aspects of playback, including record, play, pause, volume, and mute. Other commands open more sophisticated dialog boxes.

• Previous track ( Keyboard shortcut: Alt+left arrow)

• Record

• Play ( Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+P)

• Pause ( Keyboard shortcut: Pause/Break key)

• Stop ( Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+S)

• Next track ( Keyboard shortcut: Alt+right arrow)

• Increase volume ( Keyboard shortcut: Alt+up arrow)

• Decrease volume ( Keyboard shortcut: Alt+right arrow)

• Mute ( Keyboard shortcut: Control+M)

• Seek backward ( Keyboard shortcut: Shift+Alt+left arrow)

• Seek forward ( Keyboard shortcut: Shift+Alt+right arrow)

• Skip back tracks

• Skip forward tracks

B.4.1.1 Volume Leveling

Lets you balance overall sound levels between different songs in your music library. To use this feature, you have to wait for the program to process all the tracks you want to level, which could take awhile.

B.4.1.2 Equalizer

Turns on the graphic equalizer feature so you can adjust individual frequencies in your songs or use configured presets (Section 5.6.3) for different styles of music.

B.4.1.3 Recorder

Another way to summon the MusicMatch Jukebox Plus Recorder controls (Section 5.3).

B.4.1.4 Settings

Takes you right to the Player tab in the MusicMatch Jukebox program Settings box, where you do things like modify the amount of time and number of tracks the Seek feature uses, or set your MusicMatch desktop wallpaper to change with each album played .

B.4.2 Playlist Menu

Offers several commands for working with playlists (Section 5.9) including:

• Open Music (that is, open a playlist)

• AutoDJ ( Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+D)

• Save Playlist

• Clear Playlist

• Shuffle

• Reorder by Album/Track

• Repeat Playlist

• Prepare Tracks for Volume Leveling

• Create CD from Playlist

• Create Radio Station From Playlist

• Print Playlists

• Submit CD Information

• Settings ( Keyboard shortcut: Shift+Ctrl+S)

NOTE

The Create Radio Station function analyzes the type of song you've selected in your library or a playlist and then streams in similar sounds through your Internet connection. (If you're not a subscriber to the MusicMatch MX service, though, you get a lower sound quality and more ads on your screen.)

B.4.3 Music Library

The Music Library submenu lets you work with your music collection on a grand scale. You can view everything in your collection by genre , mood, artist, and other categories. You can add tracks, import entire music libraries, export libraries, and delete unwanted tracks from MusicMatch Jukebox. This is also where you can get to the menus that let you edit track tags and choose how you want to sort and search your collection. Many of these commands appear in other menus around the program as well.

NOTE

If you have a long afternoon ahead of you and don't want to stop and change playlists, you can play every song in your entire music collection in a random order by choosing Options Music Library Play My Library.

B.4.4 Recorder

The Recorder command has several submenus that let you prepare the program for recording music. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+R.

B.4.4.1 Control

Sends commands like Stop, Start, and CD Info Refresh to the Recorder program as you prepare to rip CD tracks. You can select all of the tracks or none in the recorder list to rip.

B.4.4.2 Format

Lets you select the digital audio file format you want to use for ripping your tunes. You have your choice of MP3, WAV, mp3PRO, and Windows Media Audio, but only the first two are naturally iPod-friendly.

B.4.4.3 Quality

Lets you select the bit rate for recording digital audio files.

B.4.4.4 Source

Lets you choose where you're recording your music or audio from: the computer's CD drive, a tape deck or turntable, or a microphone. (Certain recording sources like a turntable may require the use of a stereo preamplifier or other audio equipment to record decent-sounding MP3 files.)

B.4.4.5 Prepare Tracks for Volume Leveling

Evens out major shifts in the volume to create a more consistent level of loudness from track to track in your music collection.

B.4.4.6 Submit CD Information

Upload new or corrected track information to the CD Lookup database on the Internet.

B.4.4.7 Settings

Opens the Recorder tab of the MusicMatch Jukebox Settings box, where you can adjust many of the above features.

B.4.5 Online Music

If you have even the slightest interest in exploring the MusicMatch MX online music service, this part of the Options menu and a live Internet connection can help you explore the offerings. If you already have a MusicMatch MX account, you can log in, change your settings, modify your WishList of tracks that you like or want to buy, or get help with using the service.

B.4.6 Add New Features

Takes you to a page on http://www.musicmatch.com where you can find additional plug-in software like extra visualizations or sound-enhancement goodies for MusicMatch Jukebox.

B.4.7 Get Music Recommendations

If you just don't know what to listen to anymore, you can choose this command to get some ideas from the folks at MusicMatch.com. (This service requires that you sign up and register with the site.)

B.4.8 Update Software

Searches for and downloads updated MusicMatch Jukebox software with just a couple of clicks. But be careful: You may accidentally download and install a version of the program that's not compatible with your iPod software (Section 2.4.2).

B.4.9 Shop for Music

If you absolutely , positively must purchase some new music right this very instant, choose View Shop For Music to browse albums for sale online. (These are physical CDs that come to you by mail, not instant downloads like the iTunes Music Store.)

B.4.10 Shop for Music Gear

This is another menu item designed to take you online to spend more money.

B.4.11 Settings

Opens the multi-tabbed Settings box, where you can choose your preferences for just about every element of MusicMatch Jukebox Plus that you'd want to modify.

NOTE

Other parts of the MusicMatch Jukebox Plus program, like the Burner Plus component for recording CDs from music library files, have their own settings and options within their program windows.

For example, to get to the settings for the built-in alarm clock feature, right-click the MusicMatch Jukebox icon in the Windows system tray and select Alarm Settings.