KaraWin

There’s no real party without some good musing pumped through speakers at an insane volume, and sure enough a lot of individuals start to sing at a certain point. There’s also a method to this madness that actually encourages people to sing along, but also showing lyrics so they don’t just mumble. It’s called karaoke, and applications like KaraWin want to be the life of the party.

As far as the visuals are concerned, the overall design can feel a little overwhelming, especially because of the upper toolbar that is fitted with many buttons, all with a different, not so clear icon that creates a bit of confusion. However, if you use the menus, things get better, because they hold the same functions.

On the left side, there’s a navigation panel you can use to quickly get to the location where songs you wish to play are located. Content is then shown in the rest of the space, with a list that includes details like file name, index, title, artist, and duration. It can be filtered for easier identification, or quickly jump to a specific entry by writing down its index number in a dedicated field.

When a song starts to play, a new window is brought up with a preview area in case the file loaded also comes with built-in lyrics. If not, it can be used as a simple preview for video files. Sadly, trying to skip through content messes up the default system volume, and even if you adjust it, gets messed up again.

The application is equipped with several other utilities found in the window menu. As such, you can create playlists and manage songs through the jukebox and catalogs section, access a virtual piano, open the midi window that’s fitted with an equalizer for midi and MP3, and a few more.

On an ending note, KaraWin has a lot more to learn from other of its kind before being the life of the party. It can take some time to get acquainted with the confusing interface, with elements that don’t really seem to be related to one another. Lyrics can’t be managed, nor can you make a karaoke file yourself out of an ordinary MP3 file. Playback capabilities are rather poor, and the application leaves a lot to be desired overall.