Soundjam Mp

Product Description

Review The MP3 revolution is the kind of event that doesn't happen often in the computer world, but when it does, it's the quick who survive. Casady & Greene's MP3 player, SoundJam MP, should make it to the top of the heap. This software MP3 player has the heat - it handles both local and streaming MP3 audio files, it ships with several cool "skins" to let you customize its look, it encodes CD audio into MP3 files quickly and efficiently, and it features several cool plug-ins. In fact, Diamond Multimedia thought it was cool enough to package with the Mac version of the forthcoming Rio 500 as the default software MP3 player. Installation out of the box is easy - just copy the appropriate files over to your hard drive from the CD, launch the application, enter your serial number, and you're ready to listen to your MP3 audio files. With a live Internet connection, you can listen to streaming MP3 files. You can also query a database (http://www.cddb.com) to fill in the artist, title, and album information on almost any song you have in your playlist. The boxed copy also comes with an audio cable to plug into your home entertainment system, instantly turning your Mac into an MP3-playing stereo component. SoundJam ships with several plug-ins that expand its abilities. The plug-ins include three pieces of eye candy - Eclipse, Melt-O-Rama, and Thumper - which you can open in another window. These psychedelic displays change with the music, creating hypnotic patterns. It's a great way to waste processor cycles (if you're wasted, it's just way great). SoundJam also ships with several different skins that can change the player's looks instantly. The package includes a converter utility that translates Winamp (a popular Windows MP3 player) skins into SoundJam skins. This is great in theory, but most Winamp skins look an awful lot alike. Also, the converter doesn't work with the more visually interesting skins for Audion or MacAmp, two competing Mac MP3 players. SoundJam played all of our MP3 files (totaling over one gigabyte) without a hitch, providing good-quality audio that we could modify with the built-in equalizer. Through SoundJam's Web menu, we accessed a long list of streaming MP3 stations, some of which sounded good even through an analog modem connection. You can also download Arboretum's Realizer plug-in, which lets you tweak and tune streaming MP3 sound quality until you get the best possible sound. Ripping audio CDs with SoundJam is also a simple matter. Just insert an audio CD, get the disc's information from CDDB, and start encoding. SoundJam does the job quickly, provided it's the frontmost application. You can move it to the background while it's encoding audio files, but - as you might expect - it'll slow down markedly. Finally, the latest version of SoundJam is Velocity Engine-savvy, so for all you Power Mac G4 owners out there (ya lucky jerks), SoundJam should encode audio files really quickly. So why buy an MP3 player at all when there are already several freeware and shareware alternatives? First, Casady & Greene has a long history of making great utilities, so you'll know you have a quality product, and you're helping to support the Mac platform. Second, if something does go wrong, you can go to a commercial developer with live, human technical support reps backing the product. Third, SoundJam is simply a way-cool product. Fourth, shareware fees for comparable MP3 players are about what you might pay for SoundJam. Casady & Greene has done a great job with its entry in the MP3 world. SoundJam MP delivers lots of features for the price, although there are MP3 players available for less. We were a bit disappointed when we couldn't get a couple of spectacular MacAmp skins converted for SoundJam use, but the application itself performed admirably. -- David Reynolds Good News: Plays MP3 files well. Great selection of skins. Fun visual plug-ins. Good streaming MP3 support. Web site with lots of add-ons. Can handle CD audi