Mp3Tools 5.1

Mp3Tools is an open-source software application that incorporates organizing, playing, editing, and maintenance functions for MP3 and audio files in general. It includes a lot of tools that will allow you to manage and manipulate your audio files in every way you need, and to keep a clean and well-ordered MP3 database, regardless of how big it is.

Even though this is an open-source program that you can access and use for free, in fact it offers many features that you will not find in other commercial programs. Among the most important ones, I should mention its built-in media players for both speakers and headphones, separate MIDI and MOD players, a video player, an equalizer, a tag editor, a URL Player to play back Internet media files directly, a genre editor, a SQL editor for executing queries against the audio database, a complete CD ripper, an MP3 gain analyzer, an Ogg tagger, a Wave recorder, a file converter, and a separate module for managing artists, and many others. It even offers functionality that, at first glance, does not seem to be related to audio files, like the web browser, the ftp client, the e-mail client, the URL checker, and the hash generator. Thus, we could fairly say that this is a really comprehensive tool.

Finally, when you first run the program, it gives you the chance to automatically scan your hard drives for MP3 files, and add them to your existing database. If you add or change your audio files later, Mp3Tools can re-check your disks for you, adding the new files when necessary, and analyzing their names in order to avoid duplicate entries. Moreover, the program will change into background mode as soon as you minimize it, installing a little icon on your system tray area, thus preventing taskbar congestion.

The only negative point I can find about Mp3Tools is that the program is a little bit heavy. For example, it incorporates a transparency effect on its entire interface, which seems to make itself heavier by consuming unnecessary system resources and making some of its tools to run slower. However, I would highly recommend this program for anybody owning a large number of audio and music files, because of its versatility and helpful features.