Product Reviews

MP3: small name, big impact - at least on the music and computer industry. Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you've already heard about this new digital music format. You probably have a track or two on your Mac already. But the question is, what program is the best for making MP3 files and, equally importantly, playing them back?

One of the best-known MP3 player/ encoder tools is SoundJam, but the interface is confusing and poorly designed. Fortunately, there's a serious alternative. MacMP3 from Act2 is a fully featured MP3 encoder and player (based partly on the well-respected Audion) with some very nice, user-friendly touches. It has a clean interface which is easy to use from the moment you first launch the application.

MacMP3's main window looks like the kind of virtual controller that the Apple Audio CD Player should have been. It uses a clever drop-shadow effect which will make people do some double-takes, but if you tire of this it can be turned off. If you get sick of this particular look, you can pick from two other 'faces' (alternative interface designs) supplied with MacMP3, or download some of the hundreds of Audion-compatible faces from www.panic.com.

The Playlist window is designed to feel like a Finder list-style window, complete with hierarchical folders and sortable columns. Add individual tracks or folders to a playlist by dragging them in the window, and sort them by dragging them about yourself or by using the various automated sorting options. Dragging an entry back into the Finder copies the original track to that location, which is a useful touch when dealing with large numbers of MP3 files.

If you don't have enough MP3 tracks yet, the best way to get more (short of being naughty with Macster) is to simply encode or 'rip' tracks from your own audio CDs. MacMP3 makes this extremely easy to do: just pop a CD into the drive and drag tracks or the whole CD to your hard drive. The encoder kicks in, checks what quality level you want (the default is fine, and you can opt to hide this step), and then converts the audio to MP3

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files. Progress is shown via a very Finder copy-like progress window, and tracks can be played as it works - although this slows the encoding speed substantially.

There's also a separate MacMP3 Encoder application which presents a more visible interface to the encoding process in the form of a single window with four buttons. These are for encoding a whole CD, selected tracks, AIFF or WAV files, or recoding MP3 directly from live audio input. This last option worked extremely well, helping us to encode tracks from rare vinyl originals not available on CD, although trimming overrun recordings has to be done with something like the QuickTime Player.

Apart from being a flexible MP3 file player, MacMP3 provides a Net mode for playing MP3 streams across the Internet. A Stream Guide window lists currently active MP3 'stations', refreshing data when the user opens it, and a separate Favorite Servers window stores the user's own preferred stations for easy access. Most UK users still don't have flat-rate Internet connections, so it will be of limited interest for the moment.

It also plays CDs. When you're online, the MacMP3 extension will automatically match inserted audio CDs to entries in the CDDB (Compact Disc Database) Web site, automatically renaming the CD and audio tracks in the Finder. This is done without user intervention, and the data is stored locally, which means that whenever that CD is reinserted, the album, artist and track names are shown without having to revisit the CDDB site or even be online. Crucially, MacMP3 will automatically use this CDDB-sourced information when tracks are encoded to MP3 format, saving them as ID3 tag information, so your files contain everything you need to keep them organised in your playlists.

MacMP3 includes a number of useful keyboard shortcuts for controlling playlists, volume and so on. There's also an Alarm Clock feature which will start playing a playlist at a given time, although MacMP3 must be running for that feature to work. More generally useful are the Shuffle Play and Randomise Playlists commands, and the ability to pick a default playlist and play from that automatically when MacMP3is launched.

At MacUser we have roughly 72 hours'-worth of MP3 tracks on a Mac, hooked up to some VideoLogic Sirocco speakers. Now my CDs aren't lost or scratched, and MacMP3 picks tracks randomly from the collection - virtually eliminating arguments over who plays what.

MacMP3 makes creating, sorting and playing MP3 audio tracks as simple as using the Finder, and, unlike most other MP3 tools, the interface is simple and well-designed. If you like music, this is the MP3 tool you should get.