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New MP3 Goodies Rock the Boat This Week

Are you looking for a no-frills MP3 player that just does what it is supposed to do, no questions asked? If you’re one of those rudimentary types, check out Digital Thoughts Inc’s GrayAMP. Here’s a short description from their web site:

GrayAMP is an MP3 player, plain and simple. It is small and lightweight but includes all the major features you need in a player (such as full playlist support). The interface is Finder-like and MacOS 8 friendly. In the spirit of MP3s, GrayAMP is free.

GrayAMP was meant to sit in the background on your computer and play your MP3s without a lot of fuss or fanfare. There are no visual plug-ins to waste your CPU power on, or skins to redo your interface, but this really is its strong point. You can place GrayAMP on your aging 6100/66 (etc.) and use it as an MP3 player. Or you can just run it in the background on your brand new, top of the line Macintosh and still render 3D graphics without a huge speed hit. GrayAMP, its small, and its fast.

Also rocking the MP3 boat this week is Proteron’s N2MP3, which boasts to be the best MP3 encoder on the Mac:

N2MP3 is the best MP3 encoder currently available for the Macintosh.? N2MP3 contains not only a very high-end algorithm, but it also has the simplest, cleanest interface imaginable.? If you have never encoded an MP3 file before, N2MP3 is for you.? On the other hand, if you are an MP3 veteran and you’ve been looking for a very clean sounding encoder, you can sit back and relax: N2MP3 is as high-end as MP3 gets.

N2MP3 sports the Proteron MPEG encoder for MPEG1 layer III format.? The algorithm is a variation of the psycho acoustic model and supports variable bitrate (VBR) with minimum bitrate specification and full support for joint stereo encoding.

N2MP3 is currently in preview form and can currently be preordered for US$25. If you’re all into the MP3 thing, check out our SoundJam MP and MacAMP reviews from way back when.

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.