14 DAY TRIAL // It looks very much like this day's afternoon is dedicated to sheer nonsense: first, a software looking horribly and doing almost nothing by itself (meaning this one here) and now a software that has a bit of a GUI, but works in a completely obtrusive and revolting manner. MP3 Slave is something which I can't really categorize: others say it's a player, while I guess it is rather a shameful mockery. The idea which stood at the basis of its development must have been somehow good, yet the final result is totally wrong. Oh, sorry, I meant WRONG!
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions and that the worst catastrophes come from the seeds of little things. Well, ?they? are right: I am sure that the producers of MP3 Slave have had in mind a very nice idea of making a music player with something different that would look funny and appealing at the same time. Unfortunately, the output is horrible: a bad, no-quality MP3-player with rather hard operation and a painfully bad sound as well. And - if all this weren't just enough - a very un-cool set of visual ?enhancements? was also offered. Let's fly by MP3 Slave and see what's cooking...
The Looks. The Works. The Auch.
The funny thing is that the GUI could have been at least decent if not even good, but things went down the drain. MP3 Slave's graphical interface is a window in whose lower parts a full set of playback control buttons have been placed. The rest of the surface serves as a playlist or as the visuals deployment screen. Again, the idea is pretty good: having a multi-purpose area is a nice thing, but as the visuals put there are absolute crap, things are suddenly going wrong.
This is the biggest problem: the idea was to have some ?dancing?-type characters in the visuals screen. But unlike other serious standalone programs which are dedicated ?dancing? software, the MP3 Slave has some very nasty animations or dancing-people movies, all at a very low quality and looped in a very-very unfortunate manner. Let alone the ridicule of listening to some black metal and having two people doing Latino moves on your monitor....
These visuals change as you keep on right-clicking and browsing the video files... What can I say, one more horrid than the other; at least there was a funnier clip with a cat spinning round on a vinyl deck plate...the rest are just dung when associated with the purpose of the player.
MP3 Slave has no taskbar item and definitely no tray icon: it just floats on you desktop in a permanent ?always on top? state, which can not be changed. There is no seekbar and to adjust the volume you need to right-click first, then choose the volume bar and only then you can access the levels...
I sincerely recommend you to download this software and thoroughly run it: you'll see that you'll finally laugh after the rage passes away? And here we are at the technical part of this article! Not much will I write here, since there is really not much to say.
First thing: MP3 Slave sounds really horrible! I can't even call it a player, it's more like a very special DSP-engine sworn to make crap out of every MP3 audio source it's given. Some sort of very annoying effect is running over the audio which plays in MP3 Slave... something like a notch-filter and a very crappy room-effect that sounds like a ?bottom of the barrel? and combined with a metallic flange that makes everything sound absolutely stupid.
Controlling the playback is very OK (I start to wonder when something is OK in this software) and the program responds really quick to the commands it's given. Adding files in the playlist is a fairly easy operation, even if the users are highly inexperienced. The fact that the software is always on top can be really annoying (in case you are wacko enough to really use this player, of course) as it will remain on your desktop even as you press WinKey+D (go to desktop command).
Altogether, I can really say that testing and even writing this article on MP3 Slave was almost an ordeal, one experience I plan to repeat as later as possible, since I am very sure that eliminating it for good from my life isn't possible. I am also very sure that some users of the MP3 Slave will be mad at me and - should need be - I warmly invite them to e-mail me the reasons for which they think that MP3 Slave deserves more than the one single star I'll rate. And believe me: this is not a low-enough rating for what I had in mind!
I rated "Fair" at the Price/Value, because I really doubt that it's worth downloading at all... Once again, in the end: WRONG!
The Good
You must be kidding! The only good things related to the MP3 Slave are the initial idea (long lost and abandoned) and the fact that I shift-deleted it from my hard drive.
The Bad
Read aloud the last word before my conclusions and this should say everything.
The Truth
The same as the above.
Please see the screenshots below, so you can better analyze the proportions of the disaster:
