15-Minute Reviews :: AudioGrail v6.9.4.141

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s applicatn is AudioGrail version 6.9.4.141 by KC Softwares – An application with the ability to help maintain your MP3 collection.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“AudioGrail (Formerly K-MP3) is the swiss army knife for everthing that is related to audio files (MP3, MPC, OGG…). It can very easily rename and tag (tag: info such as artist name, album, track title) your files automatically. It can also analyse quality, organize files on your system, find duplicated files and improve your everydays audio experience!”

Quick Pros

• Tons of different features which seem to relatively work; Some are temperamental
  • Tag tools (Incomplete tags, Identification, Tag Editor, Tag Remover)
  • File maintenance tools (Duplicate Finder, Quality Analysis, Cleaner, etc.)
  • Many other various tools including playback, music file copying and burning
• Drag and drop functionality for adding new files
• Speed of scanning is fairly quick, though likely to bog down under large collections

Quick Cons

• Could have benefited from folder monitoring
• Interface awkward and a bit dated
• Can’t reorganize layout by other tag entries
• Identification process not intelligent enough to do entire or part of the collection
• Helpfiles are not complete; Only short Flash videos on 4 features

Expansion

While there are many products out there on the market to do various tasks to MP3s, this application seems like it rolls them all into one package. While I did not have the time to test them all (There are a total of 15 tools, each with its own settings), I did get a good feel of the more common tools. The Incomplete Tags Finder is handy – It finds whichever fields you denote you’d like to find out are empty, and then allows you to queue them up for fixing in the Tag Editor. The Tag Remover does as it is supposed to by butchering off selected tag types such as ID3v2 (Have to use the Cleaner to remove tag fields) though really don’t see a purpose of doing so. The Quality Analysis tool allows you to search your collection for files with bitrates or sample rates below a certain point and remove them from your system (I think that there should have been more selections in the drop-down, and allowed to remove or move files with settings too high.) The Duplicate Finder worked well; It actually found a duplicate that previously-reviewed didn’t find (as well as the ones the previous tests did); The tags didn’t match closely at all (I wouldn’t have been able to spot it by filename or tags) but it was indeed a duplicate. The cleaner is very handy in that it can clean up bad filenames or tags, as well as clean up pesky underscores or other characters that invade your filenames. There are plenty other functionality here as well but would take a short book to touch on it all.

The best part of this process is that file adding is fairly simple; You can drag and drop entire folder structures, or what you need as you go. You can also use the ‘Scan’ button as well to add a directory tree worth of files; Would have been nice to be able to selectively add files, but this application intends to be a ‘library’ for your files, rather than a case-by-case tool, which is fine by me. With that said, the application should have handled like a ‘library’ application, with the ability to monitor for new files added to the folders which have been added; Instead, you have to re-add the directories each time you add files, which if you’re an MP3 collector could be a pain. The overall speed of scanning went really quickly, though I would be afraid of running a scan on a massive collection; Almost every tool in this application has to ‘scan’ the entire database itself, and for every step, this could quickly become very painful with a large collection.

While the interface does appear functional, it is dated and is awkwardly laid-out. For the main window, you have a group of 18 icons which aren’t laid out in any logical setup except the application-support buttons (Settings, Help and About) are on the bottom. Tag maintenance, file maintenance, search, playback and additional tools are just scattered around with no logic; It is not a huge issue and I’m sure would become easier with time, but still the matter of ‘wading’ for the icons as well. I also dislike that the file listing is in a forced Artist->Album->File format. I’d prefer to at times to sort differently, but there is absolutely no option for this at all. Many of the dialog boxes aren’t laid out great, and aren’t resizable, so files with long paths, you’re not going to see their information until you head into the Tag Editor, for instance.

While most of the tools ran okay, one I did have issues with was the Identification. I understand that it has to be by album just because the application uses the CDDB, but why can’t it step through the albums if you select an artist or even the entire collection?

My biggest issue with this application is the helpfiles; You click help, and it takes you to their website. At their website, you see a list of 11 points, but out of those 11 there is only 4 that you can click on (The rest are similar to ‘How can I edit audio files tags ?’ with no other information or link) – Through these 4 links there are Flash videos; Their quality of information is okay, but really don’t touch on a lot each. On the bottom of the page is ‘More question ? Want to share exeprience with other users ? Welcome to the Forum !’ with Forum being a link. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to wade through a forum for further help; This application is 6 major versions later with no major helpfiles; A major downfall indeed.

Final Verdict

While most of the functions pretty much work (And in case of the Duplicate Finder work well), the interface is very uncomfortable and difficult to be vastly productive. Concerns about speed when speaking of large collections also should be a factor here. While free, this application is still a decent find. As for paying $19.95, I’m not sure if there are other applications do what this application does wrapped in one package, and while not very-well polished, it still does what it advertises for the most part and might not be too bad of a purchase for the price, IF you’re patient and can deal with the interface.

Posted by BladedThoth on Monday, August 20, 2007