14 DAY TRIAL // Again I have come across software that simply wants more than it can handle, if I may say so. OK, I understand very well what comes with advertising and name-marketing but this does not mean I can't smile (politely) as I go deeper in the intricacies of a certain software and start testing it, and twisting it all sides to get the most possible out of it. When I think of "jukebox" I see a (let's call it) device which not only performs what people command it to do, but also has some extended capabilities of actually doing its job.
Acez Jukebox was intended to be a true jukebox and it has eventually become a player. Not one of the best, but definitely a good and reliable one. Why do I say this? It's just because it does not have support for more than some 3 audio file formats and the shortcuts are inexistent; "jukebox" means automation, if you catch my drift....
The Looks. The Works
Acez Jukebox looks good, this is a fact: a compact window, not too small despite its compactness, which houses all the components: the main controls the EQ, the VU-meter and oscilloscope and the playlist. Even if you might think all these in one place would look terrible, the developers of the Acez Jukebox have managed to pull this one out creating a really nice GUI and offering a clean and comforting experience.
With no skins and no color-tweaking, the Acez Jukebox may seem a bit too sober for certain users, but despite this feeling, I found its generic appearance very OK. The interface generously displays Left and Right levels in dBs, scrolling artist and song names, very visual master volume and panning settings, all in the "master command"-area, together with a very readable seek bar.
The VU-meter and the oscilloscope are placed in different areas and are neither that visible nor that useful, because the developers have made a little mistake: none of the visual level/frequency indicators shows the true levels in a track but the output levels. As I dropped the volume to zero, they all stopped working; when I started to gradually increase the volume, they came back to life and - as I went on into the clipping-region - they clipped as well; but nowhere could I find if the track itself clipped or not. The VU-meter bridge is a combination between the proper VU and a spectroscope as it moves like a VU-bridge, but for way too many bands, I guess more than 50 (as you'll see in the screenshots, I dared not count them all :) )
The 10-band EQ works quite well and also looks OK, no better or worse than others I have seen in similar applications; ranges from 32HZ to16.5 KHz are available, but the overall length of the faders is a bit too small for any precision to be attained.
The playlist annoyed me, because its size was fixed, therefore becoming almost useless when certain longer names-tracks were loaded. It does not show track times and you also can't move items inside the playlist by directly grabbing them. Instead, you have to click one song and then use the up/down buttons which is rather inconvenient. In fact, the only things you can actually do with the playlist (except the obvious PLAY) is save or load.
The Acez Jukebox has very few settings: Set on top, Continuous Play (repeat) and Shuffle are the only options available for the jukebox. As I saw the "Song Details" menu and clicked it, I thought it was a proper tag editor: I quickly entered the missing data and just when I was about to save the modifications, I noticed that there was only a CLOSE button! I am no programmer, but WTF is the meaning of this? You first put a tag-editing screen with fields (across which you can't navigate using the traditional Tab key, by the way) and then what? No Save/Apply/Write/ Remember/Modify/Submit button! That's really crap...
One thing is good though in the whole extent of Acez Jukebox's overall functioning: it does not sound bad at all. Not having at hand any settings at all for this kind of performance-tweak I can't tell if the Acez Jukebox works on 16, 24 or 32-bit; the fact is that if you are not raising too high pretensions, the sound will surely meet your needs. Of course, if you decide to spend almost 15 dollars on this program.
The Good
The Acez Jukebox has a nice sound and this would be about all I could say here.
The Bad
I won't write more here, except what displeased me most and that would be the wrong sourcing for the VU-meter, oscilloscope and the level-meter, the lack of shortcuts and the absent settings.
The Truth
Unfortunately, I must say that I would never pay this money on Acez Jukebox not even if it was the only player.
See some screenshots below and - if you feel I tricked you - just download the player and give it a thorough spin:
