New MediaMonkey doesn't go bananas

The iTunes alternative music jukebox MediaMonkey's latest version jacks the volume, but only a little bit. It's an upgrade worth downloading simply for the improved performance that comes with support for multicore processing, and there are some other worthwhile feature enhancements as well.

MediaMonkey's more robust search tool.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

One long-standing complaint about MediaMonkey has been that its search feature, while adequate, was far from robust. Version 3.1 changes that, and offers a helpful mouse-over tooltip that explains the Boolean-style searching. It's not true Boolean terminology, but typing in queries such as TO* will give you all songs, albums, and artists that start a word with TO.

Audiophiles will also get improvements to multi-attribute tagging, smoother rendering of album art, better podcast catching, and should see fewer hiccups in device synchronization. The full changelog can be read at MediaMonkey's Web site.