D-World, Let's talk about Digital Music: Helium Music Manager 2005 User reviews

(21 votes)

CNET User Reviews

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The "Photoshop" of digital audio management

10-Apr-2005 07:02:45 AM

Reviewer: [H]omer

Pros: This is without question, not only the best Music Manager available today, but also one of the most refined and professional pieces of software ever ... in any genre and on any platform; an absolute classic.

The extent to which you can manipulate audio file metadata with Helium is truly staggering, and the interface is slick, powerful, extremely professional, and indeed one of the most liquid and gorgeous UIs of any application I have ever worked with. It is also surprisingly stable (for a Windows application); easily one of the most robust on that platform. Tagging, organising and finding digital audio files has never been so easy, nor such a pleasure to do.

Helium was designed to do one thing, and do it well, and that is work with embedded metadata in digital audio files that support tagging. It is not, nor has it ever pretended to be, a clone of iTunes, etc. There are 'Jukebox' applications; there are Media Players; and there are Taggers. In the realm of Taggers, Helium is King.

Cons: None

To address some of the points in the main CNET review ...

"The confusing program installation prompts you to install MSXML files":

This is necessary support files for the application, just like the support files required by any other software. If your system doesn't already have them, then they are installed. How is this a problem, and how is this "confusing"? The reviewer must be easily confused.

"Gracenote CDDB hits a sour note with a registration":

CDDB is only one of several options, of which FreeDB is also one. Surely this is an issue with CDDB, not Helium?

"The nag screen appears at start-up and exit":

Yes ... and? It's 'evaluation' software. Just register and get rid of the nag screen. How is this different from any other evaluation software?

"people ... may find Helium ... quite helpful":

Yes, and people may find your reviews quite helpful ... once you've learned how to properly evaluate the software you're reviewing.

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Does it all!

08-Mar-2005 11:40:29 AM

Reviewer: dj kaah

Pros: Very complete, has it all.

Good interface.

The Music Information Browser is awesome!

Supports all formats I use.

Cons: Takes a while to learn.

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No 1 Music manager, awesome tag editing capabilites

18-Apr-2005 12:46:54 AM

Reviewer: yggmark

Pros: This product is THE STATE-OF-ART music manager, the tag editing cabailities are simply outstanding, it sorts the music in any way you like without a lot of expanding and clicking in tree structures. The internal player is good-enough to replace any other player (even though you can have it interacting with winamp etc if you would like. The development team responds to potential issues urgently and have a really good communication with the users through the web. I simply must say that it is worth every dollar.

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Best of all music manager

20-Mar-2005 11:25:12 AM

Reviewer: Bighead

Pros: Nice interface. Fast, and has all the links to find almost the ankown.

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hard to use

07-Mar-2005 08:00:45 AM