MusicMagic Mixer software review

MusicMagic Mixer software review
Introduction:

Even though there are dozens of options when it comes to music software, most are simply derivations on popular programs like iTunes and Winamp. Still, every once in a while something unique pops up that is worth checking out; case in point, MusicMagic Mixer by Predixis, a piece of software that analyzes individual music tracks and then creates dynamic playlists based on their attributes.


The Fingerprinting:

As opposed to rule-based playlists (“smart playlists” in iTunes, “automatic playlists” in Windows Media Player 10), which rely exclusively on ID3 tags, MusicMagic Mixer (hereafter referred to as MMM) actually scans each song and obtains a ‘digital fingerprint’ of the track (it recognizes properties like what instruments being used, speed and style, etc). It must be noted that it takes some time for MMM to fingerprint each file, around 1-3 minutes, so you’ll likely want to let the program analyze your library overnight. Once the lengthy process is complete, setting up a playlist based on these fingerprints is easy as cake. Simply selecting an artist, album, or song, and hitting ‘Mix’ will create a playlist based on the attributes of said selection(s). The options menu lets you adjust the size of your mix (by # of tracks, total time, or total megabytes), and alter variety and artist style as well.

Once your playlist is created, you can shuffle it to your liking, and save it as a .m3u file, meaning it is compatible with most DAP's and media players.

All these options are nice, but of course the million dollar question is, how well does this fingerprinting feature work? How about a few tests…


Test #1: Acoustic guitar/piano

For the first test I created a playlist based on the fingerprint of ‘The Elements’ by Greg Graffin, a tune that contains no more than vocals, a piano line, and an acoustic guitar accompaniment. Naturally, I was expecting the playlist to contain songs that used acoustic guitars and/or pianos. And it did. By using those two instruments for a benchmark in similarity, I judged that about 95% of the songs in the playlist featured both instruments and sounded close as a whole (some Beatles and Third Eye Blind tunes with the same instrumentation were among the songs in the playlist).

Test #2: Brass group

This test created a mix around a track entitled ‘3rd Man Theme’ from Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, an ensemble that includes several trumpets and trombone, along with the rhythm section. The resulting playlist included mostly similar sounding songs, including some more Herb Alpert tunes, some brass quintet pieces, and impressively enough a number of songs using synthesized brass instruments rather than real ones. This test was about 95% accurate like the first one, with only the occasionally odd unrelated rock song in the mix.

Test #3: ‘Tagless’ music

After casually creating a half dozen playlists and being reasonably impressed, I still wondered how much of the playlist selection in MMM was actually based on the fingerprint, rather than some sneaky sorting using ID3 tags. I decided to create a playlist around a grungy, punk rock jam, ‘Born to Lose’ by the Bouncing Souls, an untagged file as it was. Though not as accurate as the first two tests, about 80% of the songs chosen were of the same genre and sound as ‘Born to Lose.’ This definitely convinced me of the legitimacy of Predixis' fingerprinting feature.


After experimenting with numerous methods for mixes, I’ve come to the conclusion that this fingerprinting feature basically works as advertised. It's a neat feature that is great fun to play around with.


The other stuff:

While MMM’s big draw is its analyzing and mixing capabilities, that’s not all it can do. You can also use it to batch edit ID3 tags, and manage music on portable devices (ones that are seen as removable storage drives in Windows). The tagging interface is simple and useful enough, and is similar in function to iTunes and Windows Media Player 10. The device feature (only available on the retail version) itself is pretty straightforward. It works with any USB mass storage device (DAP’s with the feature include iRiver, iAudio, Archos, and more), and when connected MMM displays all songs and .m3u playlists on the device for easy editing of ID3 tags or editing/creating of mixes. Dragging and dropping files from your music library to the player is possible as well, though it’s really just as easy if not easier to use Windows Explorer for that task, so the feature isn’t super necessary. Also, like other management software, you can set MMM to watch a certain folder on your computer for new files so it can automatically import them into its library.

It’s important to know that MusicMagic Mixer will not replace your standard music library software, as it lacks key features like music playback, ripping, and CD burning. There is a ‘play’ button in MMM, but it only opens the selected file(s) in your default media player.

Conclusion:

Predixis’ MusicMagic Mixer is clearly aimed at music fans that spend lots of time creating and editing playlists in programs like iTunes and Winamp. For those folks, MMM may be worth the cost. It's simply, efficient, and unlike smart playlisting, its analysis method doesn't requite perfect ID3 tags to be effective. For the rest though, it just doesn’t offer enough else to choose it over something like iTunes, J.River Media Center, or WMP10. If you’re already satisfied with the software you’re using for music/playlist management, you probably won’t find enough here to justify the cost ($ 30 for the full version).

Pros:
+Simple, clear interface, very stable program
+Cool, innovative fingerprint analysis
+Exports playlists in popular .m3u format
+Supports analyzing/fingerprinting of Mp3,WMA,Ogg and FLAC files

Cons:
-Lacks common features like playback/ripping
-Not enough features to justify cost