I recently had the chance to review an application called “Audials Mobile” for the Symbian platform when the developer contacted me and offered me a free license key to test and review the software. The Audials Mobile homepage is located here. So, what exactly does the software do? The Audials Mobile software, in a nutshell, is an audio recording software. It records MP3 files from social networking websites which offer MP3 audio as part of their service. The Audials Mobile software has a search engine which will search the most common social networking websites for MP3 audio files using keywords that you specify, typically by artiste name. You can also search by genres, and some, if not all, genres have sub-genres below them – see screenshots later for more details.
The software comes in two versions – Audials Mobile Trial and Premium. The trial version allows up to two recordings per day, while the premium paid version allows you unlimited recordings. The software comes with two default search plugins – it will search the Esnips and GarageBand networks for songs. You can download additional plugins, typically developed by their user community, to enhance your search experience – “enhance” meaning adding more sources to search from so that you will a higher/better chance of stumbling upon the songs you want to search for!
Let’s take a look at what the application looks like using screenshots that I made. Here is the main screen of the application when you start it up. Simple, no frills. Straight to the point of what the application is all about. There are three options – “search” to begin searching immediately for songs, “my songs” to show you your Audials Mobile music library (what you have downloaded, and are currently downloading), and “search and record plugins” to show your current search plugins and to add new ones to enhance the search experience.
Tapping on search will bring up a search box for you to type your search string – in this case, I tried to search for “taylor swift”. Notice how the software can begin to search as soon as you begin to type in your search string!
Once I had finished typing the search criteria, the screen will show the following:
Tapping on the first highlighted portion brings me to the following screen:
Once songs are found, you’ll be shown a list as below. You can begin to tap on any song title found and begin downloading; there is no need to wait for the search process to complete.
If you tap on a song, and tap “Options”, then the following screens will show when you tap “Record”:
Once you begin downloading a song, there will be a double downward pointing arrow in green next to the song being downloaded. Here’s a screenshot showing a download of Candy Dulfer’s (a smooth jazz saxophonist) song which I downloaded earlier. The screen will also show you the downloading progress, in terms of the file size already downloaded, as well as the %. If you are downloading more than one song, the % is an average based on the total size of all songs and is displayed at the top, under the artiste’s name, shown below:
At any time, you can stop the downloading, the software calls this process “stopping the recording”. To stop, choose the song, tap on it, and tap “Options” and the following screen will appear:
Next, there are two ways in which you can go to your Audials Mobile songs library – by tapping “Options” at the bottom left in any screen, which will bring up the following screen, or tapping “Back” repeatedly until you go back to the main screen (the first screenshot above), and tapping “My Songs”. Either way will do fine – it just depends on where you are in the software when you are doing this.
The following screenshot shows my Audials Mobile song library. The library shows songs already downloaded, as well as songs currently downloading:
Finally, we come to the second option on the Audials Mobile home screen, shown in the first screenshot above. Tapping on “Genre” will bring up the following screens, where you can tap a main genre to see if there are sub-genres within. In the screenshots below, I chose the “Jazz” main genre, and upon tapping it, the sub-genres within it were shown in the next screenshot.
Tapping on the “Smooth Jazz” sub-genre showed me the following screen with some pre-defined artistes. Tapping on their names will show a list of their songs available for downloading.
Finally, the “Search and record plugins” option. This is where you specify additional search plugins to be configured in the software. Don’t worry, it’s very easy. Download a plugin pack from the link I provided at the top of this post using your PC, transfer it to your phone’s memory card, and tap on the option. You will then see the screen below:
Tapping “Options” then “Add plugin…” as in the screen below will allow you to choose additional search plugins to be loaded into the software. Just remember where you put the plugin file (typically with an extension of “.aplp” and the filename, and you’re all set to go!
“Idiosyncrasies”
- the main screen doesn’t always load up with the four options shown in the first screenshot of this post – it normally shows up with only three options, with the “Genre” option missing, and it takes some “tapping around” to make it appear. Strange. I don’t know whether it’s due to my stupidity (which is very possible!), or the software is “just like that”!
- sometimes, tapping on a song to download will show the following error. I don’t know if this is an software error, or a social network error.
This doesn’t happen often though, so it’s not a big deal.
- by default, the downloaded songs are stored in the memory card’s “sounds\digital” folder. For some reason, in the Nokia 5800’s built in music player, when I tried refreshing the library, the downloaded songs don’t appear. Perhaps the recording path needs to be set somewhere else so that a refresh in the built in music player will show the songs downloaded by the Audials Mobile software.
- double tapping on a downloaded song in the Audials Mobile song library will freeze my entire system. I have a feeling this is due to how my phone behaves, what with the 1,293,890 applications I have installed, rather than a fault of the software!
Verdict
Overall, I liked the software. I found it easy to use, and the quality of songs downloaded was acceptable. In spite of its idiosyncracies, the software performed well, and downloaded almost all of the songs I tried to download. Generally, the speed of searching was fast, and download speeds equally so. The user has to understand that the speed of searching will depend on the quality of his/her connection to the internet, the time of day, as well as the capacity of the server at the other end to handle search requests. The same is true of the download experience as well. If you have a slow connection, your searching will be slow, and so will your downloading.
The software managed to find some songs from artistes whom I wouldn’t consider to be mainstream, such as Mindy Abair, and Candy Dulfer (both are smooth jazz saxophonists), so I’m sure the selection for more mainstream artistes will be even better. It certainly makes searching for, and downloading songs much easier than trawling the entire internet using your web browser for songs you would like to listen to. If you can justify paying its price for this convenience, it’s worth the money. To conclude, to make the user experience even better, Audials should consider packaging more plugins with the software to eliminate or reduce the need for the user to manually download plugin packs.
The software currently retails for £7.90, approximately RM 46.
Note: Most of the MP3s downloaded were encoded at 128kbps, the highest was at 320kbps; generally, the higher the bitrate, the better the sound quality, but the bigger the file size.
Disclosure: I did not receive a payment for writing this review. I was provided a license key from Audials Mobile so that I could review the full premium version of the software, as the functionality of the software is rather limited in trial mode.
Tags: audials mobile, audio recording, record mp3, social networking websites, symbian