News :: 15MR: Alcyone Audio Converter v1.3

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Alcyone Audio Converter version 1.3 by Alcyonesoft—An audio file converyer which can convert an assortment of audio files to OGG, MP3, WAV & WMA.

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Alcyone Audio Converter is an effective multimedia software tool for audio conversion between the popular music formats like MP3, WMA, OGG and WAV having eye-catching skinned interface. With Alcyone Audio Converter everyone can easily create audio files in different formats by converting files to MP3, WMA, OGG and WAV. Moreover, you can play the audio files before or during conversion using the powerful audio player which is built in the program.”

Quick Pros

• Interface is easy to use
• Audio quality acceptable of resulting file
• Built-in player handy

Quick Cons

• Strange stick-to function; gets stuck to window edge and can’t move it from window edge
• No drag and drop support
• Slider for VBR has no description of quality selected at all nor min-max for quality
• 2 sets of ‘Play’ and ‘Stop’ buttons? (Big ones are for starting and stopping encoding)
• Encoding isn’t very quick
• Missing some common input formats, such as M4A

Expansion

While this application is pretty, simple and the resulting files come out fine, this application could have come out a little higher quality. This application seems to be lacking some common functions and also cover some of the functions that would normally pop up in other audio conversion applications in the $30 range. There is no drag-and-drop support; you have to manually add files through the ‘Add’ button. There are some notably-missing audio format inputs as well, the main being M4A for Podcasts that is common for the $30 audio conversion applications. Also, audio encoding isn’t the quickest I’ve used; Granted, I can’t specifically attribute it to better file quality, but this may be the reason.

One confusing aspect of the interface is the two ‘Play’ and two ‘Stop’ buttons. Granted, when you think about it for a second, you’ll realize the large buttons are to start and stop encoding, and the others are for playback. There may be people who are new to encoding or similar who may not be able to understand why there is a second set of buttons, or who may have read the ability to playback while encoding as to the reason for two sets of buttons.

I need to comment on the VBR slider; It is non-descript on what the resulting target bitrate is at all, nor does it allow for any setting for target min-max bitrates as well. When I use VBR, it’s a guessing game; I assume ‘center’ may be set for 128 kbps, but without encoding and then checking the file, I have no idea where the encoding landed.

One final note; This ‘sticky’ functionality of this application is irritating. When I move the window to the edge of the window, it gets ‘locked’ to the screen, only allowing sliding along the side of the screen. Move it to a corner, and it is stuck. You have to close and re-open the application to get it to unlock, even when holding down key combinations. I don’t know if this is intended or not, but it is irritating and needs to be removed.

Final Verdict

With a plethora of converters like dBpoweramp this is a hard market to compete in. You have to be top-notch, offer quality and unique features. While this application has simplicity on its side, it seems the quality is still being built on. I feel this application can one day compete within the ranks of the $30 converters out there, as long as it gets fixed up a little. For free, its not a bad deal, especially if you want to queue a large conversion set and walk away. For $29.95, I feel it is being lost in a sea of ‘faces,’ and at this point I would continue looking elsewhere myself. While the interface is better than a lot of others out there (dBpoweramp for one,) many people would rather have great functionality with a crappy face.

Posted by BladedThoth on Tuesday, March 20, 2007