DB Your Music Folders as Real CDs!

very good
key review info
application features
  • Can rename and/or ID3-tag the files based on the information retrieved. It displays MP3 type (VBR/CBR) and bitrate and also includes a structure checker to verify the MP3 files. The list of CDDBp servers can be edited and it is even possible to configure the program to access a local CDDBp server.
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These days, music players are becoming more and more demanding...and not by themselves, but because people have become more demanding. Many people can't just sit and enjoy their audio CDs being played in their favorite software music player - they want to see the titles, their MP3s to have as many tag-fields as possible filled with proper information, so they really feel that they actually know music, have collections organized and sorted and so much more! This is why such music software has more and more options, sometimes even getting to annoy individuals who prefer music over additional information.

Especially when it comes to MP3 files, tagging can be a problem as we all know that both illegitimate data and info which is full of errors simply fills up the internet; well, for those who are into having the ID-data properly set up, this is the perfect nightmare - having a he MP3 collection out of which only some 20-30% has been correctly tagged! For such reasons, a software like CDDB MP3 Tool has been developed: to help you index your files with correct and true data!

The Looks

Being a software strictly oriented towards speed and functionality, the CDDB MP3 Tool hasn't got any cool-looking features and looks almost dull to the eyes which value GUIs over works. If we didn't pay too much attention to the way CDDB MP3 Tool looks we'd surely be tempted to say that it looks rather like some sort of weird Windows Explorer...which (I hope you'll all agree) it definitely does not.

First of all, the fullscreen-able window whose surface has been divided in 2 theoretical areas: the upper one acts like a quick-settings center and a tag editor, containing buttons and checkboxes for the most important operations available in CDDB MP3 Tool; the second area, in the lower half of the window serves as a proper explorer: the left side is for a tree-view of your PC's hard disk and the right (don't think about "half", it's more like ? of the whole width) will display the MP3 contents of a specific folder you selected. Below this tracklist (if you wish) there is a similar one, but in it you can preview the way the renamed filename of the above songs would look - only in case the CDDB MP3 Tool has found corresponding matches for the current MP3 folder.

The nice thing is that these 2 panels will display extensive data regarding each file in a folder, such as name, play time, CBR/VBR, bitrate, track number, year, genre and so on, making it very easy to see whether tags are OK or what should be changed in each file or in a batch-processing mode.

The Works

One thing is for sure: the CDDB MP3 Tool is one damn handy piece of software! It will treat your common MP3-folders as albums and will thus look for tags and data on the FreeDB. It's simply one of the best and easiest things you can do to have your MP3 files tagged; even more, you don't need to check the tags one by one: just browse for the specific folder you want to verify and the files will be all displayed, so you can easily and quickly see "how things are".

The CDDB MP3 Tool acts as a batch tag editor for the folders whose consistent data came from the web: you can instantaneously edit the corresponding tags. Not only setting the artist and album names, but - even more - converting the case of the filenames to Lowercase, Uppercase or Proper case; needless to say that you can decide to leave the case unchanged, if there's no need for such a change.

Along with case-editing for filenames you can edit the tags AND filenames at once: batching with multiple operations is not a thing you meet everyday...of course, such possibilities offered by CDDB MP3 Tool are sure to become default settings/features in future similar applications, but until then...the name format is customizable according to each user's wish or needs but it's not that nice, because it lacks the very convenient presets-list usually met in other programs from the same category.

Still, CDDB MP3 Tool remains a very cool thing to use: one can also edit the general comments for an album with one single click, choose the genre from a handy drop down menu, create M3U playlists by just ticking a checkbox or add further innumerable FreeDB-type servers to a list. Even more, when it comes to the rather difficult process of setting up the servers' specs, the CDDB MP3 Tool will also allow the user to autoconfig this process, simply pressing the corresponding button.

One single thing may not be that handy and useful when we use CDDB MP3 Tool: it looks to me that - as you have "unofficial-quality" MP3 files in a folder - the FreeDB will most likely not recognize them. All the MP3 files I have on my HDD have been ripped from the original discs at 320KBPS and at a sampling rate of 48kHz, thus becoming very atypical, due to their size. It's quite probable that in the opposite direction (meaning really lousily-encoded MP3 files) things won't be different either...

The Good

CDDB MP3 Tool is one useful program you're most likely to grow to appreciate as you'll see how it can make your "MP3 life" easier.

The Bad

I won't say really bad things, but rather things that need some improvement: the quality-size matter must be dealt with somehow, definitely. As well, maybe a more intuitive way to edit tags for individual files and also, presets for filenames!

The Truth

Only now have I understood why CDDB MP3 Tool has a Pick Award on softpedia.com. It really deserves this, because it's a good piece of software and - even though it does not bring up a groundbreaking technology - it really means a solid step forward for the digital audio.

See the screenshots below and try out CDDB MP3 Tool:

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user interface 4
features 4
ease of use 4
pricing / value 5


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
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