Review

A relative newcomer to the media player scene, MediaMonkey has a stylish user interface and it chock full of features. A very generous portion of these features are available in the free version of the software.

While I still use WinAmp as my primary media player, I use MediaMonkey regularly for its powerful MP3 ID3 tag editor. Most impressive is its ability to download large album cover art from Amazon.com and automatically include the image in your MP3 files. Amazon album art is superior most other sources because the images are so large: 300x300 pixels versus the 120x120 pixel album art that Windows Media Player automatically downloads.

In addition to the big album art, it also retrieves the record label (Sony, Atlantic, etc) and the Amazon review. All of this information can be embedded in your MP3 files. If only it would retrieve the song lyrics, it would be a one-stop solution for MP3 tagging!

Another feature for which I depend on MediaMonkey is its file and folder renaming feature. Most media taggers have a file renaming feature, but do not rename folders. Folder-naming is a key part of organizing my MP3 collection. Within each artist's folder, I prefix the album name with the year it was released. By doing so, albums are sorted the way most people would expect: chronologically rather than alphabetically.

MediaMonkey also has an audio CD ripping feature. I do not use it, though, because it doesn't have a volume normalizing feature. If the people at Ventis Media ever incorporate this feature, I would be happy to use it as my CD ripping application as well.

The free version of MediaMonkey can only rip audio CDs to MP3s for 30 days without some manual intervention: you must copy a file to MediaMonkey's program folder. The rest of the MediaMonkey Standard Edition's features will function indefinitely.

Other features that standout from the crowd:

• Volume Leveling
  MediaMonkey uses a unique algorithm for keeping a constant volume level while playing music called "Replay Gain."
   
• Convert Files to Different Formats
  There are at least as many audio file formats as there are letters in the alphabet. MediaMonkey gives you the ability to convert between most of the modern file formats, including OGG, MP3, WMA, WAV, APE, FLAC and MPC.