14 DAY TRIAL // "Follow tha leader"
Winamp has no doubt opened a new road in what audio player softwares should be like, look like, behave like and ever since it has begun its ?age of glory" triumphing over many other important similar softwares there have been many who have tried to replicate the successful recipe which had brought Winamp in the place where it proudly stands now.
Some have succeeded somehow in their attempts to clone at least parts of the winning combination, while others have failed almost miserably and all they got was bad code. There is another category with softwares that stands between those I have mentioned above: the ones which share both success and failure, but in my (always humble) opinion, are still rather to belong to failure than to success.
The GUI
At a first glance, Lettore MP3 could seem like a wonderful software, but after I tested it, I guess this label could be easily peeled off. It starts by trying to be a Winamp clone and ends in a rather poor result. It tries to look very "modern" but the sole impression it has made on me was that the very good initial design idea materialized with too much haste, lack of care for detail and generally, little concern for effective functionality.
Even though the Lettore MP3 has some very nice elements in its graphic construction, I have quickly found out that they actually lack almost any sense when thinking of a heavy use for the program. Lucky me that I am quite used to testing and I am rather patient and meticulous in my analysis: otherwise, I would have abandoned writing on this program long time ago.
The main window looks pretty nice, with shaded and 3D margins, rounded corners and rounded buttons as well, each with graphic indicators so it's rather difficult to make mistakes. Too bad they are very small: if you want to understand the new meaning of small just click and bring forward the volume/panning slider bars and believe me, you'll say you need glasses.
The playlist is painfully small and it also has a fixed size: if you have tracks with longer names - forget about it, you'll get irritated in minutes. The info pane seemed placed there just for the record, since I haven't really seen any point in its presence. The CD-Audio menu did not work for the version I have tested, so the only graphic element remaining is the EQ which - thank god - looks just OK, even small as it is.
The default graphical setting has the seekbar hidden, as well as the Playlist, Info, EQ and CD Audio I've just talked about. If you want to access them, guess what? With just a push of a button they slowly slide into view. Can't imagine how? Just download Winamp 5 and play a bit with the default modern skin and you'll see how...Lettore MP3 was obviously "inspired" by Winamp.
The main info display shows the artist and track scrolling names, elapsed time, kbps and stereo mode and some sort of VU-meter, such a small one that is serves just to fill in the space. Menus are clear and ordered, but as I opened the Options, I was struck by the "about" tab - here called "Info": the copycat has now fully proven as even the animation of the software name was "inspired" by Winamp. The rest of the options are rather useless, except for the echo module which can come in somehow handy at certain times.
Overall, I definitely can say that the GUI for Lettore MP3 is a bad Winamp clone. Let's see the inner workings...
Does it work?
I admit I have asked myself this question and now, after having tested Lettore MP3, I can give you the answer in advance, even at the risk of you stopping reading: it works, but you need to push it.
I know that the producers of Lettore MP3 will be mad at me, but truth is beyond my power of altering: the software runs and everything is OK as long as you don't intend to use it for a long time. I simply lost my patience, as I learned how lousy the playback is. And I'll explain: you load 3 songs in the playlist and want to listen to song no 2. Doubleclicking the file 1 billion times won't do the job: you click it once and then click the Play button! Well, you suddenly decide you want to listen to the first song and, having learned the lesson, single-click, select the first song and push play. What? It does not work! Ha-ha, you must admit you were too hasty: click the currently playing song and stop it, THEN click song 1 and then Play. Well...any questions?
Classic and widely-used shortcuts are useless in Lettore MP3 and even the left/right and up/down arrows are powerless for both volume and seekbar-operation. Technically, you can operate Lettore MP3 only with the mouse. And if you just think that not even deleting files from the playlist can be simply done by pressing Del...I guess the "working while pushed" phrase I mentioned before seems more accurate.
You can save and load playlists in LST and M3U formats, but I could not convince Lettore MP3 to read an audio CD, let alone rip it to WAV, WMA or OGG format as the "manual" tried to convince me I could.
Fortunately, there are options like "repeat all" for those willing to leave the Lettore MP3 installation long enough on their PCs as to outlast the length of an album and minimize to tray, for those who still keep it on their HDDs but don't really want to see it; nevertheless, right-click options for the system tray icon remain just the EXIT and RESTORE, so if you intend to work the Lettore MP3 in the tray-mode you'd better forget it.
One more nice feature has somehow made me feel comfortable among all these uncanny elements and operating-modalities: the "Last Open tracks", which sort of gives you a shortcut to some of the tracks you have previously opened.
The Good
I am sorry to say this, but after spending the last 4 hours in Lettore MP3's company, the only good things I can say are like "it's a real happiness that it can play MP3" or "it really stopped as I pushed Pause". The GUI-theme could have made my day if it wasn't a (not that good) Winamp 5.x clone.
The Bad
Out of respect for the developers' work, I will not write down a list, but rather let you discover what goes wrong.
The Truth
As for the final phrase regarding a word like "truth", I have a question for which I'd like to hear a sincere answer from the developers: What MP3 player do you use at home?
Compare reality with what I've told you while running Lettore MP3 for yourselves and watching the screenshots:
