Sorensoft Power Media

Sorensoft Power Media is a free and attractive media player with support for nearly all your video and audio files, and for all your DVDs, VCDs, and SVCDs.

Wrapped up in a colorful and eye-catching interface with multiple interchangeable skins, it comes with a good range of audio effects that you can apply to your audio tracks, variable playback speed, VU-meters, and two impressive virtual speakers that will even be shaking at the sound of your music in the most realistic way.

There is only one thing that detracts from the beauty of its interface – the lack of menus. Not that menus make an application more attractive, but they certainly make it a lot more usable. The only way of accessing the program’s vast functionality is by moving around the tiny icons that have been distributed all over the player and trying to decipher them. Some of them are pretty easy to fathom (i.e., the standard playback controls), but some others will have you wondering until you hover your mouse over them so that they tell you what they do. I have to admit that it took me quite a while to find the one that would allow me to open an audio file.

Once you become familiar with the layout and the meaning of the different icons, you will find out that Sorensoft’s Power Media has certainly a lot to offer. The main interface (the window that opens every time you start up the program) is actually the program’s audio player. Here you can open and listen to your audio files, create your own playlists, and apply some interesting audio effects. These range from the standard equalizer or the widely used reverb, echo, or chorus effects, to the less known flanger, phaser, Wah, or gargle effects. It is also important to note here the high quality of the program’s variable speed (or Tempo, as it is called in the program), as it is not easy to change the speed of an audio file without creating annoying pitch distortions, which you will not find in this product.

The video player and the DVD player open in different windows. Here you will find new icons referring to video-specific functions, such as angle, subpicture, menu, chapter, etc., together with the necessary controls to change the playback speed.

The program seems to be not fully completed, as some of the icons do not perform any action, while others take you to planned but not developed functions. This is the case (actually, the only case I could find) of the “Tools” icon, which takes you to a window with two tabs (“Crypt Media” and “Convert Media”) whose functionality has not been added yet. Until that happens, there are many other features that make this free media player a very interesting choice.