Review: Magix Mufin Musicfinder audio tool

A playlist generator that doesnít need tags or even track names

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Price: £15

Manufacturer: Magix

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Verdict

Pros: No problem with incomplete tags; works well; supports variety of formats
Cons: Poor keyboard controls; no mini player mode
Overall: A great way to make use of your digital music collection

Tim Smith, Personal Computer World 07 Dec 2007

Playlist generators are a great way to make use of your music collection but are normally reliant on the tags given to music tracks.

Magix Mufin Musicfinder analyses each track individually, avoiding the problems caused by missing or inaccurate tags.

Playlists are generated by finding tracks that are similar to a starting track, whether or not the tag genres match. This requires quite a lot of work as every track must be run through the software, so don't expect to be generating playlists as soon as the software is installed. A test collection of around 10GB took several hours to analyse.

Thankfully the process can be paused and resumed, and it was graceful enough not to disrupt other running programs. However, the analysis is kept locally so the process must be repeated if several computers access music from a network share.

The interface is based around columns, with the left-most column for selecting tracks by album, artist genre or existing playlist. Tracks appear in the central column; one click on the Find Similar Tracks button and a playlist is automatically generated.

We were genuinely impressed that Mufin managed to find complimentary tracks, including some we would not have thought to have included in the playlist.

There is a normalise option to even out any radical changes in volume and playlists can be exported to mobile players.

One gripe, common to Magix MP3 Maker too, is that keyboard media control keys are not recognised by Mufin. Coupled with the lack of a mini player mode, this makes Mufin a little unwieldy. The good news is that Mufin will be built into future versions of Magix MP3 Maker, which is a more capable music player, and the playlists can be exported.

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