Probably one of the more interesting debates of our time would be which category of software application has the most competitors doing the same thing. I probably wouldn’t want to be the one to place a bet on that debate, but I’m pretty sure that the category of “iTunes Controller” must rank near the top of the list. I’ve tried many different iTunes controllers for Mac OS X for the past few years, and during this month of reviews, I’ll be reviewing two (the other review will be next Thursday). However, today’s review focuses on my personal favorite iTunes controller, Sophiestication’s CoverSutra.

What CoverSutra offers that I haven’t seen from most other iTunes controllers is a floating palette that includes iTunes player controls. When you assign a hotkey to it (I’ve set F8), then the palette fades in, and shows off album artwork, song information, a place to quickly set your rating, and all of the iTunes controls including the playhead and volume. You’ll never be clicking the Maximize button in iTunes again to take it down to it’s “mini-player” size; CoverSutra offers the same thing in a much more elegant display.

One thing that’s unique about CoverSutra is that it displays album artwork the way it was intended to be displayed: a CD jewel case. Whenever CoverSutra displays album artwork, it puts it inside of this little CD jewel case graphic, and even emulates the slight light reflection of the top of the jewel case. If you want, CoverSutra can put the album jewel case on your desktop along with the song name so you can always see what you’re playing by looking on your desktop. The desktop jewel case is even Expose-resistant so you can do the “Show Desktop” Expose and be able to see the jewel case, if you want. CoverSutra can also popup a notification of what song you’re playing, or if you have Growl, then CoverSutra supports Growl notifications as well.

In CoverSutra’s preferences, you can record your own global keyboard shortcuts for a number of iTunes and CoverSutra controls, including Show/Hide the CoverSutra Player Controls, Show/Hide iTunes, Play/Pause, Next/Previous Song, Rating, Volume, and more. CoverSutra also includes Apple Remote support, so you can easily use the Apple Remote to control iTunes even if iTunes isn’t the frontmost application.

On Monday I reviewed the Last.fm music scrobbling service, also mentioning the Last.fm client application. However, CoverSutra also includes support for Last.fm. Just enter your Last.fm username and password in CoverSutra preferences, and CoverSutra will take care of scrobbling all of your songs to Last.fm. The one difference between CoverSutra and the Last.fm client app is that CoverSutra waits until the song is finished before it scrobbles to Last.fm, whereas Last.fm’s client app scrobbles around the middle of the song. Still, it seems to work pretty well, and allows me to have one less app running in the background.

CoverSutra is a pretty well packed iTunes controller application, and has a very well thought-out design and interface that makes it much easier to interact with my iTunes library without having to switch to iTunes to control it. If you’re a heavy iTunes user and hate switching back to iTunes and all that, give CoverSutra a try.

Final Rating:

Tags: album artwork, audio, controller, iTunes, review, Software