Alive MP3 CD Burner

Being able to create your own custom CDs with your own music is something that many people enjoy, even with the advent of the digital age and portable MP3 players. Alive MP3 CD Burner is a useful application that you can use to play MP3 audio files on, as well as burn them to a CD for your own use. A limited, but useful capability as an audio player, with some additional features

While the application is primarily designed to be used as a CD burner, it can also play your songs. The application is not a particularly good audio player, with only a few functions. Songs can be played, but there is no skip forward or skip back option, no fast forward, no repeat function either.

It does include a few functions as a player though and users can create a playlist, they can be saved to a computer, with the option to print out the list of songs if users want to create a label or CD cover. The application also includes a tag editor, so users can edit any information such as the artist, genre and year, as well as any custom comment they feel is appropriate.

The CD burner aspect of the application works as one might expect, once a list of songs is created by users, a file name and destination can be selected. The application contains no formatting options or anything else, but it does support a few other formats than just MP3.

Alive MP3 CD Burner's interface is rather small, it cannot be resized or stretched to make it larger and easier to read. The small font and small buttons are a little bit difficult to work with, but each one does have a tooltip to make it more accessible, a useful feature since the buttons have text. The lack of button symbols and the tiny font means that each button is actually quite hard to read, the burn button itself has a giant play symbol, which can actually be a bit misleading. The addition of themes or skins for the player would go a long way to increasing the value for money and appeal of the application as an audio player.

Overall, the application is decent and operates as expected. The duality of the application as a reasonable audio player is welcomed, but the exceptionally small interface is an odd choice. The attempts to make the application more stylish and attractive are hampered by the awkward design. To conclude, Alive MP3 CD Burner is a useful application, but it could use more features and a more customizable interface.