GettingReal Posted May 11, 2007 Share Posted May 11, 2007 Everyone must have experienced it ? what I call ?Shuffle Mode Whiplash?, when you start playing a nice tune by say ?Sufjan Steven?s? only for it to be followed by a MegaDeath tune. Sometimes, I swear I spend more time hitting skip than listening to music. So, it?s obvious that many people with large and eclectic libraries could benefit from a ?thematic shuffle? which is exactly what The Filter is. To create a playlist, all you need to do is select a seed track and tell The Filter to go and create you a 15 song mix. Here?s one that I made from Sufjan Stevens? Chicago track (note no MegaDeath) ? Chicago ? Sufjan Stevens ? Elevator Love Letter ? Stars ? 7/4 (Shoreline) ? Broken Social Scene ? So and So... ? Built To Spill ? Our Spring... ? Of Montreal ? The Minor Tough ? Spoon ? Broken Beads ? The New Pornographers ? Concerning The UFO ? Sufjan Stevens ? Wake Up ? The Arcade Fire ? The King of Carrot Flowers ? Neutral Milk Hotel ? The Engine Driver ? The Decemberists ? Keep on Runnin? ? Cat Power ? Fool ? Neutral Milk Hotel ? Swimmers ? Broken Social Scene In my opinion that?s a pretty good playlist, and is actually a good example of the new music that I?ve managed to get into because of The Filter. In the past, I?ve gone on huge downloading sprees ? ripping music off friends HD?s and off the Internet. The problem with this has been that I?ve had too much music to listen to, The Filter puts all this music into context ? I would have never had known about the gorgeous Broken Social Scene songs had they not appeared in playlists of songs that I really loved already. Put simply, The Filter is like a personalised Pandora station for your own iTunes/Windows Media Player library ? but instead of discovering new music, you rediscover your old music! Fascinatingly that?s not the best bit about The Filter at all. The absolute game-winner is the iPod filling aspect of the software. While this forum may be full of people completely capable of creating lots of smart playlists I bet everyone knows someone who has difficult updating their iPod with fresh music. The Filter absolutely sorts out this problem. Again, it?s really easy to create these ?refreshing? playlists ? all you need to do is select a song to base your playlist around and send it to your iPod. Then, whenever you reconnect your iPod to iTunes, The Filter will automatically update the playlist on the iPod with new songs. I?ve found this is useful for my train journey to work ? but especially useful for updating my girlfriend?s iPod! Another major feature of The Filter is music recommendation, which is by far the weakest area of the software. When you listen to a song The Filter pops up a rather large window displaying three songs, three albums and three artists that you might like as well as the appropriate artist biography from the AllMusicGuide. However, because of the off-putting size of this form ? I usually close this straight away. I?m also not too sure about the recommended music and because there is no preview feature I can?t really tell. Also, the music never seems to be that modern or cutting edge, which is what you expect from a piece of recommendation software. Overall, I would recommend this software to absolutely anyone that has a large music collection and who uses Windows Media Player or iTunes. It?s extra useful if you need to update your (or someone else?s) iPod or MP3 player every day. System Requirements: ? Mac 10.4 or Windows XP/Vista ? 500 songs ? iTunes or Windows Media Player ? 512 MB Ram ? Supports iPod + any MP3 player/phone. ? Free download from http://www.thefilter.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanManIt Posted May 12, 2007 Share Posted May 12, 2007 I've used this before and it truly is great software. I haven't updated it in a long time and this version definitely has some features that the one I was using didn't have. I'm gonna have to update it. Thanks for the review! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrisCr0ss Posted May 12, 2007 Share Posted May 12, 2007 wow seems great, will it support mediamonkey? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rabidrabbit Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 Unfortunately am unable to comment on mediamonkey - anyone else know? what i do like about the filter is that it's now finally compatible with macs and some nokia phones. But what i did like about it was the animation that went alongside it. i had looked at this a while back but was pc only. then i saw that it was now mac friendly. yes! This link here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts