Overview

It’s been only a few days since Ashampoo Music Studio 4 has been released, and just like any product being published by Ashampoo it is of very high quality. This new version of Music Studio is faster, with an enhanced visual interface that is more convenient and user friendly, as well as incorporates new features such as audio extraction of videos and mix tape support, for remixing your favorite songs.

Installation

Ashampoo’s Setup Wizard will guide you through the installation process. If you want to take a look at the system requirements, launch the installer and click on the button located at the bottom left corner of the first screen. You will be redirected to the corresponding page in Ashampoo’s website that shows the system requirements for this product. A few steps afterwards you will be asked if you want to perform Express or Custom Installation. In Expert installation all settings are set to default and MyAshampoo Toolbar will be installed, setting MyAshampoo web search as your homepage and default search. In Custom installation you can opt-out if you wish and change the default settings. Main installation will begin right after that step and will finish in a few minutes.

This program can run under Windows XP, Vista and 7 OS and is compatible with both 32 and 64-bit systems.

Interface

As soon as you launch the program the main screen will appear, which is quite intuitive and easy to navigate. The logo of the software with an animated background appears at the center, and at the bottom there are buttons for different actions. There are 8 of them: Extract, Burn, Organize, Modify, Record, Edit Cover, Mix Tape and Video-2-Music. Each one changes the screen accordingly and brings up the appropriate options, settings, tools and features.

Good use of visuals is implemented, since effects like blur, fade-in and fade-out make their appearance all the time.

Pros

You can use Music Studio for various purposes. First of all, you can extract audio files from Audio CDs to your computer or audio device. This is a nice feature that can be handy sometimes. Then, you can burn your music into discs as well. You can choose between creating an Audio CD, an MP3 or WMA disc.

If you have a messy music collection in your computer, the Organizer feature will automatically rename and move your music easily and quickly. First you have to pick the files you want to manage and then you will be provided with the available name formatting options. Choose how you want to name your files, and the select an output folder to copy them to. Click the on the right arrow to start the process.

Modifying audio files is applicable too. You can convert files to MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV or FLAC and you are able to change quality settings. You can also mix tracks, insert tracks with crossfading and mix crossfading. Two other features that belong in this category are the file tag editor and the normalization feature.

Other functions of Music Studio 4 include sound recording with your microphone, editing covers of audio files, mixtape creation with automatic crossfading and audio extraction of music in video files.

The developers of Music Studio are continuously keeping an eye for any existing bugs that could cause problems. In fact, they rushed to help us out and fix a bug that we encountered while testing the product and we really appreciate it.

Cons

While the graphics are a great addition to the program’s interface, it forces it to consume a lot of memory and CPU. Also, it would crash sometimes and then recover by itself but that’s expected since it’s still in an early version.

Alternatives

Ashampoo Music Studio has so many different features that it’s hard to find an application similar to it. You can manage your music library with by organizing them in categories and editing their tags but you can’t edit them or convert a video to an audio file with it. Combined with Wondershare Music Converter to convert your audio files to different formats you can get close to Music Studio’s abilities.

Conclusion

This is a music manager that you can’t ignore. It’s an excellent piece of software intended for use by anyone, regardless of computer experience. Don’t hesitate, give it a try now.