|
Audacious new Audacity
 New versions of favourite programs seem to be coming out of
the woodwork at the moment and one of the latest updates concerns our old
friend Audacity, just about the best audio recorder and editing program money
can’t buy. The beta version of Audacity
1.3.6 has just been released and in amongst the many new features we have
the long awaited FFmpeg support (available as a separate download) which allows
it to import and export a much broader range of file formats, like WMA, M4A and
AC3 audio from video files. There’s something called on-demand loading, which
basically means files can be played and edited whilst they are still loading
and Linked Audio and Label Tracks ensures that label data will be carried across
when cutting and pasting segments of audio, or changing track speed and tempo.
There’s much more, including some bug fixes, so if you’re already a fan you’ll
need no further bidding, and if you haven’t yet used Audacity to record and
edit audio, you are in for a treat!
03/11/08
Switch Formats
 I came across this little freeware utility when trying to
figure out a way of converting an obscure audio recording format into an MP3
track. It’s called Switch Audio Converter and it seems that it can convert just
about anything, though you might need to install a codec if it’s a file it
doesn’t recognise. But even that’s easy and usually there’s a link to the site where
the codec can be downloaded.
The list of formats is a long one, so deep breath, and here
goes: wav (PCM, ADPCM+, aLaw+, uLaw+, and others), mp2+ (MPEG Layer 2), mpga+
(MPEG Audio), au, aif/aiff, gsm, dct, vox, raw, ogg, flac, amr, wma, wmv, aac, (but
not aacPlus), m4a, mid+, act/rcd/rec+ (newer version of format not supported), rm
/ ra / ram+, dvf+ (Not all dvf recorders are supported), msv+ (Not all msv
recorders are supported), dss+ (SP Mode only), sri+, shn+, cda+, mov, avi+, mpg/mpeg+,
m3u+, .pls+. And there’s more but I can see your eye’s glazing over, just take
it as read that if it its out there, Switch can probably convert it.
15/05/08
Kwik Kool Kantaris
 It’s been a while since we featured a media
player but it’s been worth the wait. Hot out of the box is Kataris a free Open Source player based on
a past favourite, VLC, but all you really need to know is that it can play
just about any type of multimedia file, Here’s the highlights: AAC, AC3, AVI,
FLAC, MID, MIDI, MP2, MP3, MPEG, MGEG-AVC, WMV, MOV, MKV, OGG, QuickTime,
Matroska, DIVX, XVID, H264, MP3, WAV WMA and many, many more. There’s also
integration with Apple Movie Trailers and Last FM, plus some really freaky
visualisations.
08/05/08
The Right Mixxx
 I have to say straight away that the last time I did any
DJ-ing, record players still had a 78rpm speed setting. I freely admit to being
a bit out of touch with current trends, but I’m reliably informed that this
free Open Source program, called Mixxx is
just the job for all of you hep cats out there who enjoy mixing your tunes and
generally fiddling around with musical tracks. Key features, so I’m told,
include the ability to read new fangled music formats, like MP3, Ogg Vorbis and
Wave (something to do with turntable speed, I suppose…), it can import M3U and
PLS playlists, whatever they are, and it has Beat Estimation and Pitch Independent
Time Stretch features, which is probably a good thing. It’s compatible with MIDI
devices and the Hercules DJ Console Mk2, there’s a waveform display so you can
see the dynamics of the tacks you’re working with oh yes, and it’s available in
Windows, Mac and Linux versions.
01/05/08
Wild Sounds
 Here’s a brilliant freeware audio recording and mixing program,
called WildVoice
Studio. Ostensibly it’s designed for making podcasts, but it’s far too good
for such a narrow application. Of course you can use it to record your voice,
through a microphone, but it will also record anything you can hear on your PC’s
speakers, but here’s the really good bit. It comes with a library of almost 30 sound
effects, everything from a fart to sawing wood, and you can mix in your own
background sounds or music. Even if you’re not into podcasts this is still a
great way to produce audio recordings, alert sounds for your computer,
answering machine tapes, or just a easy way to make some silly noises…
06/03/08
Quick Free Audio Snipper
 Editing audio files is usually a fairly complicated business but
here’s a really simple little utility that will snip out chunks of sounds with
just a couple of clicks and if you like, convert from one audio format to
another just as easily.
As the name suggests Free Audio
Dub won’t cost you a bean and it won’t tax the old grey cells either, as it
is so simple to use. Just open the track -- it supports most popular formats
including MP3, WAV, AAC, AC3, M4A, MP2,
OGG, WMA -- click the Play button until you reach the start of where you want
to make the cut, click the first scissors icon, resume play until you reach the
end of the section then click the second scissors icon. Click the Delete icon
and it’s done and you can save the modified file with a new name, so the
original remains intact. There, I said it was easy….
20/12/07
Free DVD to MP3 Ripper
 Over the past few months I’ve had a lot of people asking me
how they can extract the soundtrack form a DVD so they can listen to it on a
MP3 player or iPod and my usual response has been to play the disc back on a PC
and use the most excellent Audacity freeware editor/recorder to capture the
audio, then export it as an MP3 file. It works well, bout now there’s an even
easier way a freeware utility called Free
DVD MP3 Ripper. It couldn’t be simpler, just pop in a DVD, select the part
of the recording you want to extract, click the RIP button and away it goes.
It’s quick, simple and free and ripping movie soundtracks probably breaks all
sorts of copyright laws, but if it’s your DVD and it’s for your personal use
only, we won’t tell anyone…
19/11/07
 iPod Tune Grabber
If you own an iPod you’ll know that you are tied to iTunes
to get tunes in and out of your player. There are alternatives, but generally
speaking it’s a bit of a restriction. Here’s a program that will allow you to
download music from your iPod to any PC, and no need to get involved with any
new software, the program is stored on the iPod itself. It’s called Babya
iGrab and all you have to do is download the program (it’s freeware) and
copy two small files to the root directory of the iPod. To get at the tunes
just plug the iPod into any XP or Vista PC, open the iPod, click on the iGrab
icon and it will display all of the
tracks stored on the player. Select the ones you want, click the Grab button and
send them to a nominated folder on your PC. It makes no changes to the iPod so
it’s safe to use.
01/11/07
Free Audio Editor
 Regulars will need no reminding that Audacity has long been
my audio recording and editing program of choice but I have to admit to being
quite smitten with EXPStudio,
which is also free, and has a similar line up of facilities. These include
being able to edit audio files using like a chunk of text, using cut and paste
techniques. It will record anything passing through your PC’s speakers, save
audio files in a wide range of formats (Compressed WAV GSM, ADPCM, DSP, U-Law, A-Law and others, MP2, MP3,
WMA, Ogg Vorbis, AIFF, AU, MPC, VOX, RAW, PCM, U-Law, A-Law,G.726, G.723, G.721, to name
just a few). There’s a good assortment of effects, like Voice Changers (male-female/female/male,
chipmunk, Zeus…) plus the old stalwarts, fade, flange, phase, reverse, reverb,
expand, compress, tempo and many, many more. Audacity still has a slight edge
with its multi-channel facilities, but for quick and simple edits it’s just the
job.
18/10/07
Morph Your MP3s
 There are a zillion MP3 player programs and most of them do
a pretty good job, but here’s something a bit different. AV MP3 Player
Morpher lets you fiddle around with your tunes, you can adjust the tempo,
change voice frequency – a must for Chipmunks fans – there’s even a ‘Cher’
mode, for the classic vocoder effect. There’s also a Robot sound, you can
change instrument sounds remix voices and on the paid-for version you can rip
and burn CDs, cut and paste chunks of music, play up to 12 songs at the same
time and extract vocals. Even so the free version has more than enough features
to keep you amused and although you have to send off for a registration key,
there are no catches.
12/09/07
Windows Media Player
Mini Mode
 If you use Windows
Media Player (WMP) to listen to your MP3 tracks then here’s a neat little
feature that you might have overlooked. Right-click on the Windows taskbar select
Toolbars then Windows Media Player. That’s all there is to it and the next time
you open WMP just click the Minimize button and a small control panel, also
known as ‘Mini Mode’ appears docked onto the taskbar.
Here’s a bonus tip
for WMP 11 users, available for download now and included with Windows Vista.
This sets WMP to always open in Mini Player mode when you click on an mp3 file.
Go to Now Playing > More Options and select the Player tab. Check the item
‘Start the mini player for file names…’
and in the box below replace the default text (voiceatt.wav – for
automatically opening voicemail attachments) with ‘.mp3 (without the quotes).
You can also set it to open when you click on files in a particular folder. For
example, if all of your MP3s are stored in a folder called Music on the C: drive,
just put ‘C:\music’ in the box.
09/07/07
Join the Jet Set
 I know, there are more free multimedia players on the market
than you can shake a stick at and some of them excellent, and here’s another
one to add to the list, though JetAudio Basic
is a bit special. To begin with it has built-in CD burning and audio recording utilities, and it’s
also a dab hand at converting audio files from one format to another. It’s
compatible with a wide range of audio and video file formats (AVI, Audio CD,
MP3, MP3Pro, OGG, MPEG, MIDI, RM, WMA, WMV, and WAV, to name just a few).
There’s a whole bunch of special effects (reverb, wide, speed, x-bass,
cross-fade etc.) to play with, synchronised lyric display, it’s Vista
compatible and there’s an MP3 tag edit, but don’t just take my word for it,
give it a test drive!
25/06/07
Lightweight MP3
Recorder
 As regular visitors
will know I’m a big fan of Audacity, just about the best audio editor and
recorder there is, and I’m not about to change my view, but there is a new kid
on the block that’s worth keeping an eye on. It’s rather clumsily called MP3 My MP3 Recorder, and like Audacity it’s
free and will record just about anything that you can hear through your PC’s
speakers, be it the noises Windows makes, to DVDs, CDs and streamed Internet
Radio. Once the recording has finished you can export the file to MP3 or wav
format. You can also change the colour and appearance with downloadable skins.
It doesn’t have the advanced editing capabilities of Audacity, so it’s not
really fair to compare the two, but if you just want a quick and simple MP3 recorder
it’s definitely worth a look.
06/06/07
IPod to PC Transfer
 As iPod owners know
only too well getting your tunes off the player and on to your PC can be a bit
of a pain. Of course you can sync your library using iTunes but physically
copying tracks is another matter. There are a number of laborious manual methods,
but here’s a little freeware program that does it all for you. It’s called iPod to Computer Transfer, and it does
exactly what it says. It supports playlists, there’s an auto update feature,
you can search for tunes and it is compatible with all recent iPod, Shuffle and
Nano models. The only limitation is that the free version will only let you
copy a single track at the time, if you upgrade to the Pro Version (it costs
£8.00) you can copy as many tracks as you like.
16/05/07
Take Care of Your MP3s with the Godfather
 It’s okay, the mob isn’t about to make you any offers you
can’t refuse for your bootleg MP3s, but you might want to let The GodFather look after
your collections. It’s a freeware program, designed to manage all types of
music files, and if you are anything like the rest of us, your hard drive is
probably stuffed full of them, but why do they need managing, I hear you ask?
Simple, your collection is probably in a bit of a mess, with mis-named or
mis-spelled albums and tracks, some of the info files or ‘Tags’ are probably
wrong. Of course you can do all this manually, one at a time, but The Godfather
makes it much easier, and lets you do it in batches. It can also help you
catalogue your library and there’s a powerful search facility and a built-in
player. Overall, not a bad deal for free!
27/04/07
Song Lyrics, The Evil Way
 How many times have you tried to lamely sing along with a
tune playing on your PC without really knowing the words? Yes, I know it’s easy
enough to look them up on the web, and some music files have the lyrics
embedded, but for all those other occasions when you just want to know the
words try Evil Lyrics.
It can be set to open automatically with all popular media players. As soon as the track starts playing Evil checks the
name of the song then in a flash, downloads and display the lyrics on your
screen.
27/09/06
PC Playback on your
Radio
 How would you like to
playback tunesstored on your PC on your home hi-fi? If the PC and hi-fi
are in the same room, or you have a laptop, then it’s not too difficult to hook
up the PC’s audio out to the hi-fi’s audio input using a stereo connecting
cable, but there’s an easier way.
Last week at my
local computer fair I picked up a wireless ‘sender’ designed for portable MP3
players, iPods and the like, for the princely sum of £7.50. Judging by the
number of different models on sale I’m guessing we’re about to be flooded with
the things.
It’s basically a low
power FM stereo transmitter, for sending sounds from an MP3 player to a nearby
radio -- they’re a handy way to play your digital tunes through a car radio,
for example. Well, they work just as well with the tuners in hi-fi systems, and
the audio outputs on PCs, and the quality is not half bad.
Technically they’re
still illegal but plans are afoot to amend the law (or at least turn a blind
eye to them). The range on my cheapie sender is around 10 metres, enough to
hear the PC in an upstairs bedroom on the living room sound system. The widget
is battery powered, and they last for ages, but you can cut running costs to next
to nothing with an adaptor or by using rechargeables. Now how about a USB FM sender for PCs Mr cheap n' cheerful gadget maker?
15/09/06
|
