pcSongster

pcSongster is a simple-to-use application designed to transform your computer into a karaoke machine. It can play audio tracks with the MP3, MP2, WAV, AAC, MP4, OGG, AIFF, Windows Media, AC3, ALAC, FLAC, WavPack, MOD music, CDA, and ZIP file types. Plus, it loads the song's lyrics during playback.

Before proceeding any further, you should know that this tool hasn't been updated for a very long time, and it's not compatible with newer Windows editions. You can still use it on older OSes, though, such as Windows Vista or XP.

The installation procedure takes a while, and Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package is automatically deployed at setup. pcSongster's wrapped in an intuitive interface that puts emphasis on graphical elements, giving you the possibility to add as many audio tracks as you want to the playlist, as long as they have a supported extension.

It's possible to play music, adjust the volume level, enable loop or repeat mode, apply a preset profile to highlight the bass, voice or treble, or configure the equalizer's rate, key, tempo and sample rate, along with the left and right channel.

It left a small footprint on system resources in our tests and played audio tracks without hanging, crashing or prompting error messages. There are additional buttons listed in the main app window, dedicated to ripping audio tracks from CDs, saving playlists to file to import them later during karaoke sessions, recording music, viewing a history with all played tracks, as well as for performing searches across all songs.

However, these are unavailable in the free edition. Under normal circumstances, you can gain access to these features by purchasing a Personal or PlayerPLUS license, but the developer's website is no longer working.

The free edition of pcSongster is more like a regular audio player than anything else. It may be easy to use, but we fail to see what special features make it stand out as a karaoke tool. We are also taking into account that it hasn't been updated for a long time.