15-Minute Reviews :: MuvAudio2 v2.8.5.0

Hello everybody and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is MuvAudio2 version 2.8.5.0 by MuvEnum – An application to allow audio conversion through the use of virtual sound drivers.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Through the digital conversion using virtual soundcards, MuvAudio2 converts audio files that other programs can’t, at incredible speed. Most portable music players can’t play all audio files. MuvAudio2 takes the guesswork out of having to use multiple programs to convert all of your audio files to a format your play supports; MP3, WMA, FLAC, M4A, MP4, and more.

It makes sure that your converted files have the tag information you’ve come to expect, including Album Art. Using “Watch Folder Mode”, you’ll save time by never having to manually keep track of what you have or have not converted; simply set your options once, set your folder to watch, and MuvAudio2 makes sure they get converted to the format you know your player supports. MuvAudio2, it’s your audio, wherever your audio takes you!”

Quick Pros

• Auto conversion via a watch folder
• Easy to get up and running
• Lot of options for controlling output
• Resulting audio quality good – Speed decent if doing multiple files

Quick Cons

• VBR settings should also give a bitrate range for estimate
• Embedded the wrong album cover
• Can be an issue multi-tasking; Create skips in the re-encoding

Expansion

Audio files are still a major drive on the internet these days; People thrive on music and want to be able to have control over their music. MuvAudio2 attempts to help by providing an alternate method of converting your music files to other formaats for playback in portable players or otherwise. MuvAudio2 uses a virtual sound card driver to achieve this rather than raw conversion, allowing you to re-encode any file that Windows Media Player is capable of playing.

One of the features I noticed first was the support for a ‘Watch Folder’ – Essentially allows you to automatically convert any supported music file that is dropped into a folder. It will convert, then allow you to have that file automatically moved to another folder and deposit your converted file to another folder. To specify the converted file folder, you do need to set it in the main Options in the window (Can not be set in that dialog box unfortunately – An extra step required.)

I found that getting up and running was fairly quick. Drag and drop files or folders, or use the playlist button to build your list of media you wish to convert; plow through all the settings (And there is a lot of options of output formats and file handling); then click ‘Record’. Once you start recording, you get a screen that looks sort of like an audio rack. Depending on the ‘speed’ you chose will determine how many of those racks will be used.

The ‘speed’ is not so much the speed of which each file plays and records itself, but how many simultaneous recordings will occur: This application records at a 1:1 speed, so if you’re only converting one song, it will take the length of that one song; A pitfall of re-encoding via virtual sound-card driver. I found that to re-encode 18 songs it took about 10 minutes with 7 slots in use; My CPU usage was average around 93%. Wasn’t too bad of a speed, if you do plan on doing back conversions or leaving this idle in the background for conversions. The file audio quality is good; I have no detection of pops or skips which can be an issue if you max out your CPU usage or memory; Just heed the application’s recommendation for speed (slots) used and adjust up or down one depending on how your CPU usage is going. I would recommending giving yourself some CPU overhead for services that decide to run during this process or otherwise so you don’t end up with bad files and not realise it until down the road.

There are a few issues and concerns I did have. For the VBR setting, I do wish that an actual bitrate range was displayed instead of settings of ‘Fast Standard’ and otherwise; It is hard to gauge how much space will be used without this, and if planning on using for moving to a portable player, would be nice. Also, it embedded the wrong album cover on all the songs. I had previously backed up one of my music CDs for a previous review and used these files. The ID3 tags were all correct including the album title; MC Mario Party Mix 2K6 – Unfortunately, instead of putting on this album cover, it placed the one for MC Mario Party Mix Canada – Annoying to say the least.

One last note as mentioned above, this application relies on ‘live’ recording – Means that if something goes wrong somewhere (Specifically-speaking, CPU usage peaks at 100%), there is a chance you will have a skip in the encoding process, while a non-live (One that encodes directly from the other file rather than through a virtual soundcard) shouldn’t.

Final Verdict

While the concept is great for using a virtual sound card to ‘capture’ more formats, I really see the benefits usable different than a standard re-encoder being marginal; Limited to the possibility of re-encoding DRM-enabled media (Unsure if this works) or oddball formats that aren’t commonly-used anyways. That said, the ‘Watch Folders’ functionality is really interesting; Offering a method to automate the conversion of your music files. An example of a use of this could be if you are ripping your music CDs, and you also want to generate files for your portable player at the same go. Could also be used for other means too, but that is outside the scope of this review. While free, it isn’t a bad re-encoder and you may want to give it a try if you have a large collection of audio files you wish to ‘standardize’ into a specific format, or do as stated above. As for paying $18.99, it isn’t a bad price for the title, if you do have a need for this title which isn’t covered by applications such as dBpoweramp Music Converter or otherwise. I myself have no real use for this application over dBpoweramp, and I’d much prefer the reliability of ensuring no skips in an application, and continuing to use my computer while re-encoding.

Posted by BladedThoth on Wednesday, June 20, 2007