By Jay Minkin

One of the more important aspects for this writer is keeping a vast library of music stored on the SD card of his cell phone. My original smart phone finally died after more than five years of use. I updated my phone and switched out my SD card from the old phone to the new one so I didn’t have to physically load 1,500 songs.

The first thing I noticed was that the album art did not transfer over. There are several apps that will try to find the correct album art that goes with your music files, and most are free. I downloaded a few of these and let them do their magic. The next step was checking the song list. I tried a few different free apps to see how the library would look on the phone and settled on some possible choices.

The Bluetooth connection with the car audio controls and sound quality lacked what I desired, so I kept searching for something that offered what you would find on a home stereo.

The best rated was one called PowerAMP Music Player, which you can try free for 14 days on their trial app. With the full version only $4.99, I decided it was worth checking out the trial version created by MAX MP. Oh, baby, does this thing rock!

It has control knobs just like your home stereo to set bass, treble, volume, balance, and a stereo X that gives your music a loudness boost. An equalizer will allow you more options to customize the output. The big sonic difference makes the music sound freshly new. You can hear all the instruments in the background, especially each bass note. There are other options you can add and some, like the PowerAMP widget, are free.

So if you really want your very own personal jukebox that’s played through a hyperdrive stereo, take some time to add music into a library and upgrade your smart phone’s music player. Your world will never be the same.

To reach Jay, email blues4bird@aol.com.