News :: 15MR: Zortam Mp3 Media Studio Pro

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Zortam Mp3 Media Studio Pro by Zortam Corporation—Today’s application is an all-in-one MP3 application to help you with many MP3-related tasks.

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Zortam Mp3 Media Studio is all-in-one Mp3 applications suite translated into 12 languages. It includes MP3/iPod Organizer, ID3 Tag Editor, Zortam Mp3 Player, CD Ripper with CDDB/ID3/Lyric/Cover support from CDDB and Zortam Music Database, Wav/Mp3 Conveter, Mp3 Volume Normalizer, Batch Lyrics and Cover Finder, Lyrics Book, Playlist Manager, CD Burner etc.

Convert(Rip) your CDs to Mp3 and/or Wav format retrieving data from CDDB and the Zortam Music Database.

After conversion all Mp3s (Id3v1 and ID3v2) are tagged and you need just to transfer them to your iPod, or any other portable Mp3 players.

Autotag online your Mp3s collection (cover arts and lyrics included) using the Zortam Music Database(ZMLIMD) which contains more then 2,000,000 songs.”

Quick Pros

• Fast media search
• Feature rich
• CD burning & ripping a nice feature
• Easy to use layout
• Net music functionality and download music services
• Ability to get lyrics and pictures great

Quick Cons

• No file->ID3 functionality (Edit: Found it—See at bottom of review)
• Interface is a bit cluttered
• Doesn’t load ID3 tags from some files

Expansion

This application was too large to fit into 15 minutes well, but I have gotten a decent impression on it. Seemingly geared towards people who don’t want iTunes for some reason or another, (and there are plenty out there,) its features are surprisingly robust. Some of the features that stood out are noted above, but there is plenty here to make this an iTunes competitor.

While all the features are here and work great, the layout and design is a little soft; It doesn’t flow the greatest for managing your MP3s, however, the key points, the playback and collection windows are clean and easy to use. I do like how it sits all-in-all.

A few small issues I did have; I had 3 files from one album which I know and verified with WinAMP have a working ID3 tagset. For some reason however, they will not read into this. Even reloading the media database once and closing/opening the application, it would not read the tags. There are no foreign symbols in the tags, and I took the songs off of my CD and tagged them myself on this using another program. I am not sure if this is an issue with Zortam or with the program I used to tag these files; However, as since another program can read them, I am not sure where the culprit lies.

Only thing I do miss in this application that I would have hoped would be in it is the ability to interpret the filename and generate at least a basic ID3 tag, or at least prompt you. I have some MP3s that for some reason I did not tag properly when I ripped them, and I know other people have the same issue, and would love to see a batch program to quickly tag them so that they fit into the Library nicely. (Edit: Found it: see at end of review)

One other plus for this application as well which may make me move from WinAMP is the built-in ShoutCast support and the numerous download services placed right into the interface. Very nice indeed. I can listen to my favorite stations still! One thing though; they still launch in WinAMP for some reason. I am assuming that Zortam did not associate with the MP3 files.

Final Verdict

While iTunes is free, there is a lot not to like with it, including the forced install of QuickTime (bloat.) This application is very nice for what is included with it. For anyone wanting to wrangle a large MP3 collection and looking to avoid iTunes, this is the way to go. Zortam also has a sale on right now that Pro is $19.95 or $28.00 for a lifetime licence; if you were liking the idea of buying this at $24.95 and were going to buy it, you might as well spend the $3.00 more to get lifetime upgrades. For those of you who don’t need all the advanced features (See Product Page at Zortam for more information) then their free version is great too.

This will probably hang around my system and a full review of this software will likely crop up on my website in the next month or so.

Append (Thanks Sergei!)

Thanks to Sergei for pointing out the Filename->ID3 tag functionality. I knew I must have looked for it numerous times and wasn’t a big deal in the first place, but glad to have found it. Now, it’s time to fix my archive. It is under the ‘Tool’ menu.

Posted by BladedThoth on Thursday, February 22, 2007