Songbird 1.2: Two-way iTunes track, playlist sync plus a 10-band EQ
When I last looked over the open-source movement’s answer to iTunes, it was clear that in spite of a number of great features, it was also lacking in some significant ways. Now, a few of those caveats have been addressed, so it’s time to look again at this surprisingly thoughtful and functional jukebox application.
Songbird 1.2 (release notes, 18.5MB) is available for download and ready for a second look. This release comes to market with some significant improvements that overcome several of this open-source jukebox and music discover application’s most notable flaws:
Automatically organize the files in your library. This function consolidates your media in one location while organizing your collection in a user-definable folder structure and file name methodology Two-way track, playlist syncing. This automatically exposes iTunes library tracks and playlists into Songbird and also export tracks and playlists added to Songbird back into iTunes, so that they can easily be synced to your iPhone or iPod touch Equalizer. Use this to tweak the frequency response of the audio playback to match your room’s acoustics or your personal preferences See also:
— Songbirg 1.0: A real iTunes challenger?
Although Songbird now has an equalizer, which is an important step forward, you can’t tweak and then save settings on a per track basis. Further, there aren’t ready-to-use presets.
Moving right along, the most important benefit of two-way track and playlist syncing is that it provides back handed iPhone and iPod touch compatibility for Songbird. Whereas Apple’s iPod shuffle, nano and classic are all compatible with the application, you can’t directly sync the iPhone or iPod touch.
Songbird’s new organization features come with a big caveat—the application will import all of your stuff. That said, I’m rather leery of any application that wants to diddle with my stuff, especially when that means nearly 70GB of files that have been painstakingly groomed over many years.
Nevertheless, these new features add to an already impressive list of functions, including: Last.fm integration, which itself brings iTunes Store integration; SHOUTcast Radio; 7digital Music Store integration; concert ticket info; and mashTape integration (artist & track information and multimedia).
If your are new the Mac, Songbird might just be a better way to use and manage your music collection—it’s a rich and extensible interface that does some things better than iTunes, like present related information and third-party add-on functionality.
Still, for this longtime (long suffering?) iTunes user, the attractions aren’t quite enough to draw me away from the Apple flock…
What’s your take?
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