Evan Kleiman
- 2001.06.27
Q: I read your last
article on MP3 software. Are there any other ones that
will work with my lesser-powered Mac?
A: Yes, there certainly are! There are many different MP3
players out there for your computer that don't require as many
system resources as the others do, but remember for any MP3 player
to work properly, you need some type of a Power PC.
One of my favorite "budget" MP3 players is SoundApp.
It has many of the features common to larger and more expensive
computer-based MP3 players, such as the ability to play multiple
different formats and play lists. Also, SoundApp is the only
MP3 playing application out there that can be run on a non-PowerPC
processor.
Another good, smaller MP3 player available is GrayAMP.
Now in version 1.2, it has such features as a play list as well as
many others. The application size itself is a mere 295K, so you
won't have to worry about it taking up too much of your very
valuable system resources.
But if you want MP3 applications that have more features, what
do you do? Well, there are still more MP3 players out there.
All of the more feature rich MP3 players take up more system
resources, but this goes without saying. The best - and one of my
favorite - larger MP3 players that have more features is BayTex Party Pro
2.5. This application deems itself as a "virtual DJ," with
such features as an auto-mixing play list, two faders, and jingles
(short little snippets of songs that you can play, such as real
radio DJs use). It really is the "virtual DJ" it claims to be.
Other standard features included in BayTex Party Pro are skins and
a loop manager, which allows a song or jingle to be played multiple
times.
Another good more feature rich and of course larger MP3 player
is Sound Jam MP by
Cassidy and Greene. It has all of the common features, such as
skins and a play list, but also has a unique encoder. This MP3
encoder (the program that creates MP3 files) is unique because it
can compress your MP3 files to one-tenth of the size.
The last good larger MP3 player is Mac
Amp, an application that I've used for some time. It has
common features of the others, plus an ID3 tag editor. (ID3 tags
are those little things inside the MP3 files that display the name
of the song, the artist, etc. on your MP3 player's screen.) Also,
its $10 price tag can make anyone happy.
Unfortunately, it seems with most of Napster's services and
files shutting down, the MP3 craze is dying down. But until then,
you can get out there and listen to your favorite MP3 music files
with these great programs!
