News :: 15MR: Phelix v1.0.2
Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Phelix version 1.0.2 by Phonome Labs—An application to hunt out duplicate-sounding music files and help you clean up your collection size.
H2. Software Description
As Giveaway of the Day states: (Shortened)
“Phelix is a new audio-matching program that identifies duplicate and similar-sounding songs by listening to music files with a selected folder and comparing the audio.”
Quick Pros
- Did not erroneously detect any within the folder of ‘time deviation <= 5secs’
- Did find some duplicates
- Fairly quick
- Ability to adjust matcher strategy
Quick Cons
- Most of the buttons you end up having to hover to figure out
- Found myself having to resize all of the tables; end up seeing a lot of ellipsis
- Table sizes not saved between reopenings
Expansion
While my collection is fairly small; Limited to my personal works, samples and my CDs backed up for use on the computer, I figured I may still get a few results, especially around my samples folder. When I launched the application, it didn’t look too bad. The clutter of icons along the top was confusing at best; Many duplicated to what is in the sidebar on the left so not sure what was the purpose of putting them there, sidebar and in the menu especially since many of the icons don’t make any sense until you’ve figured out the program; And lets face it, this application wouldn’t see frequent enough use by most to memorize the icons.
I went to add files and found that when I added a folder, the little Music library was a farm of ellipsis which I had to spend a few to resize to actually see what was going on. I have a decent-enough monitor resolution (1680×1050) and had to maximize this application to see the whole header text fully in the box. I did resize the whole sidebar but found myself shrinking it back down and dealing with only seeing part of the headers when I actually ran the matcher. The table for the results start out similar; It’s a lot of ellipsis until I maximized the screen, and found I was still resizing all the table columns as well. Another downfall is after I got them perfect, I closed the app and reopened and to my disdain found it doesn’t save the window positioning or the table column sizes.
The application did do its job as advertised; It found two sets of my samples which matched each other audio-wise. Both did vary slightly in quality and ever slightly different. It also matched some of my personal works as well (backups and such.) As mentioned, I do not have a large-enough collection to test this accurately though.
When I flipped to the ‘Groups with time deviation > 5 secs’, I noticed it had a group in there. I had a while ago created an MP3 from when I reviewed Direct MP3 Joiner from a folder of tunes. This application was smart enough that it identified that the joined file matched with the whole folder of music with ‘Tags’; Very interesting indeed. It also seemed to have identified it using ‘Audio’ as well with the first song in the joined file. This may mean that when it compares the songs, it only samples the first few seconds of the song for a fingerprint.
Final Verdict
While this application does as advertised, as always you need to be extremely careful you don’t accidentally fry your collection. While my sample size for testing this application was small, it still did pick up some and showed itself as a decent idea. This application may be great for someone who has a sizable collection and adding to it all the time, causing duplicates; This application does have a hidden ability; With the ability to listen to each matching song, you could use this to weed out the bad versions of songs you’ve gotten over time from your collection as well. While free, this application would be great to grab for those who might not use this application frequently. For $29.95, this application would be worth it, if you use it enough outside a one- or two-use setup where someone is confident with their organization.
Posted by BladedThoth on Wednesday, April 04, 2007
