Why You Should Ditch Your MP3 Player’s Firmware In Favour Of Rockbox. I have an iRiver H-140, and several years ago I waved goodbye to the quite frankly awful proprietary firmware on the device. With a bit of fiddling I installed a third-party unofficial “warranty voiding” firmware called Rockbox. It was like owning a brand new MP3 player whilst retaining everything I loved about my ageing jukebox, and I urge you to do the same. If you’re the kind of guy (or gal, let’s not be hasty) who often feels let down by manufacturers who make solid hardware with ropey software, then Rockbox might be for you. This open source gem is a complete rewrite of digital audio player firmware, adding some mind-blowing features and improvements along the way.
The list of compatible devices has grown incredibly over the years, and it is now possible to load Rockbox onto a variety of players including those from Archos, iRiver, Apple, Sandisk and Toshiba. If you’re interested, you can check out compatible players on the releases page on the official website. 10 Alternatives to WinAmp Desktop Music Player (Freeware) October 25, 2007 – 11:38 pm WinAmp is one of the earliest and most popular desktop music (MP3, WAV, Ogg Vorbis etc.) player that you might still have installed on your desktop.
However, there are also other good alternatives if you are looking for one. I’ve scoured some of the most popular download sites on the World Wide Web and found some nice desktop audio players that will definitely satisfy your musical needs. Here is my list on 10 alternative to WinAmp desktop MP3 player: 1- Quintessential Player (QCD) Notable Features: Lightweight design, low memory consumption, CD ripper, save skin layout, remote skin (save desktop space), better sound quality than WinAmp Download QCD Player – Homepage – Complete Features 2- MediaMonkey Auto-search music files, music organizer, iPod / mp3 player sync, CD ripper, audio format converter, tag support, cd burner, auto DJ, automatic volume corrector (Replay Gain technology).
Download MediaMonkey – Homepage – Complete Features 3- musikCube 4- Billy 5- XMPlay. Backing Band Software. ChordPulse | Lite | Player The fastest way from chords to music ChordPulse is a handy backing band software for music practice, inspiration, improvisation, and pure fun with music. Play and sing along with ChordPulse. Use it as a full accompaniment, a drum machine with bass, a metronome with chords, and more.
ChordPulse Videos A software for practicingImprove as an instrument player or singer while having fun. A software for songwritingExperiment with musical ideas quickly and easily. ImprovisationsTest your fantasy by playing along with different music styles and chord progressions. FunPlay or sing along for your own enjoyment. Backing tracks in a few minutes Click on the images for a full sized view: Benefits - Enjoy your music practice. . - Get new music styles for free! Features Questions or comments? Create Music on the Web with Soundation Studio. Gallery: Audiotool lets you make music using your browser.
I can't exactly make up my mind whether Audiotool is a toy or a serious tool but one thing is for sure -- it is not lacking in ambition. It is a Flash-based music creation tool which uses real-world devices as metaphors. In simpler terms, it's a huge canvas you can throw gizmos on and interconnect them. A "gizmo" (that's not how they call it) can be a drum machine, a synth, an effect, or any of a number of other musical instruments or effects boxes. If that sounds complex, it's because it really is. Once you create a track, you can decide how to license it ("regular" copyright or Creative Commons). When a track is loading, you can see a zoomed-out view of what the instruments look like and how they're laid out. Here's a close-up of what the board looks like: A drum machine: There's a track view at the bottom: And this is the tool-strip along the right side of the window, from which you drag tools onto your canvas: A cool looking synth pad.
Master audio output. And yes, it crashed on me. CodeOrgan plays your website's tune, and it sounds better than you'd expect. Create Digital Music. Album Art Search: Search & Find Free Album Cover Art. Tapes have given way to CDs and now CDs have given way (some if not all) to MP3 files. Then there are a huge lot of MP3 songs we download from the web or rip from music CDs. The first rule of organization says that we should neatly put them in the right folders and then tag them. There are tools for the job and some good ones at that. Going back to the job of making our music collection look neat, we come to the “˜face’ of our songs and music albums ““ the album cover or specifically, album cover art. Just like film posters, album covers deck up a song or the album it belongs to. Tools such as MP3Tag (recommended as one of the better ones in the free download category) ping online databases like Amazon, Discogs, or freedb to gather all the metadata for a music file.
So, enter the album cover art engines. AllCDCovers If you put in a search for album art cover or CD cover, it’s very likely you will get this website in the search results. Albumart Albumart Exchange Album Cover Art SlothRadio. 6 Free White Noise Sites To Relax Or Set Yourself To Sleep. Sleep is one of the most mysterious bodily states. It is speculated to be important for recovery, the immune system, and learning. While the functions of sleep remain not well understood, one thing is clear: sleep is essential for survival. Many people suffer from poor sleep. They may have trouble falling asleep or they wake up in the middle of the night and are not able to go back to sleep.
Sleep hygiene i.e. controlling behavioral and environmental practices that affect sleep, may provide relief. Sometimes relaxing is the key. One thing that naturally aids falling asleep is calming white noise. Here is a collection of six pages that provide different types of free white noise and music for better sleep and relaxation. RainyMood RainyMood features a 15-minute high-quality loop of various types of free white noise including gentle rain sound, accompanied by thunder and chirping birds. White Noise 24/7 WhiteNoisePlayer SoundSleeping SoundSleeping lets you create your own relaxing sound mix.
Rainy Mood helps you relax with the sound of RAIN! One of my favorite hacks involves using audio to set a mood. I've created an "anger playlist" to calm myself down when I'm angry, and I often listen to binaural beat tracks to help wake myself up without the use of caffeine, or to help me focus on what I'm working on. The sound of rain has always created a certain calmness for me. Apparently the same is true for others, to the extent that someone went to the trouble to create Rainy Mood, a single-purpose website that plays a high-quality 30 minute loop of rainy weather sounds. The audio is superb, and if you close your eyes it can transport you to a totally different place. But what I particularly enjoy about Rainy Mood is that the sound is very much like white noise, and I can use it to cover up the distracting noises going on around me, but it's far more pleasant to listen to than noise tracks.
Control Windows volume with keyboard shortcuts with 3RVX. 3RVX is a utility that lets you control your computer's volume using global hotkeys including keyboard or mouse shortcuts. If you don't have a keyboard with volume controls on it, this can come in handy and save you the valuable fraction of a second it takes to click on the over the Windows volume icon and adjust the volume the old fashioned way.
As an added bonus, 3RVX also has a rather attractive volume indicator that shows up when you adjust the volume. The default view looks a lot like the OS X volume indicator. But you can choose from a number of skins or create your own. You can also change the global hotkeys, choose whether to show a system tray icon, and tweak a number of other settings. You can check out some of the settings in the image after the break. 3RVX is available as a free download. [via Freeware Genius] Tags: 3rvx, freeware, volume.
10 Places To Get Cool Media Clips For PowerPoint Presentations. Remember Al Gore’s PowerPoint show? Well, it went and won the Oscars. Okay, “˜The Inconvenient Truth’ was more about alarming statistics than the Microsoft Office application. But it did show that data is one part of the story. How you weave media clips for PowerPoint into powerful presentation is another. There is a formulaic method behind creating a really great presentation, but it is an art too. Slideshare is a good place to see some really cool works of PowerPoint “˜art’. Whether you are on your first presentation or on your umpteenth, it’s always better to be prepared with the right resources to back up your ideas for the PowerPoint slides.
Sound Clips Wave Central I wanted to end one of my presentations with a “˜Beam me Up, Scotty’ sound clip from Star Trek. CCMixter This is a community music site featuring remixes and samples licensed under Creative Commons licenses. Sound Bible The Open Directory Project The DMOZ page on music and audio loops is worth a look. Movie Clips YouTube Atom. Six Best MP3 Tagging Tools - ID3 Tag Editors - Lifehacker. MetatOgger: audio tagger with “acoustic fingerprinting” and other powerful options. MetatOgger is a free, powerful program for tagging and renaming MP3s and other audio files. It offers the functions you would expect from a tag editor (e.g. mass renaming, tags from filenames or path, scripts to perform editing functions) as well as a few that are not so common, such as “acoustic fingerprinting” of unknown songs using the MusicBrainz database, built in album art search, importing lyrics from lyricwiki.org into your audio tags, and the ability to download a massive audio tag database that it can use as a tagging resource.
Applying the correct tags and cover art to your audio library may feel like a never ending quest or even an impossible one; fortunately, however, there are sophisticated tools such as MetatOgger to help with the task. This software has a lot of potential, but also needs to iron out some significant kinks. Here’s a list of some of the features that MetatOgger has that I like the most, as well as a list of those I do NOT like so much. Version Tested: 3.9.1.0. Beat Your MP3 Tags Into Shape with These MediaMonkey Scripts - ID3 - Lifehacker. Audio File Formats Explained in Simple Terms.
Almost everyone is familiar with the most commonly used file formats – for music, mp3 and wmv, for video, avi and mpeg, and for images, jpeg and gif. Unfortunately, these common formats are not the only ones we run into on a daily basis. On any given day, we are likely to also see .flv on Youtube or .pdf while opening documents. It seems as though there is an unending list of file formats that accomplish the same task – saving a bunch of data. What is the purpose of the existence of these seperate formats, and why do they extend the list of available formats to “Save As…“?
Is there any real difference between which extension a particular file is saved as, as long as it’s appropriate for the media being saved? Why, why, why do they plague me with their endless resistance to conversion? The list of questions could go on, pretty much for the length of this article, but I believe I should provide some answers, since the questions are probably what led you here in the first place. .aiff /.wav. Normalize MP3 Volume Levels with MP3Gain.
Most of us have a huge collection of digital music that we call our own. Usually, albums and songs have been added irregularly over the year from many, many different sources. You may have digitized your existing record, MC and CD collections, while most of us exchange music with friends and family. I’m sure you’ll agree that the one annoying thing when enjoying a random mix of your favorite tunes is the change in quality, especially in the volume. Since our music originates from so many different sources, quality is never the same, but variations in the volume are most unpleasant. While it’s difficult to fix the overall quality, it’s rather easy to normalize MP3 volume levels with the right tool. MP3Gain, does statistical analysis to determine how loud a file sounds to the human ear. The program was primarily written for Windows. So how does it work? When you have added all files you wish to normalize, click the Analysis button. What else would you like to know?
Image credits: fangol. Xrecode: Simple utility for converting audio formats. This weekend I noted that WinLAME, a free utility for converting audio files from one format to another, had received an update. But Download Squad reader dinoel86 wasn't impressed. He suggested we check out Xrecode, a utility that serves the same function, but which offers support for far more audio formats and which offers a few advanced features. So I did check it out. And Xrecode is pretty impressive. The free Windows utility supports MP3, WMA, OGG, APE, FLAC, WavPACK, AAC, ALAC, and WAV audio. You can convert files one by one or perform batch conversion jobs. Thanks dinoel86! Tags: audio-conversion, freeware, winlame, xrecode. LMMS Turns Your Desktop into a Music Sequencing Monster - Audio Editing. How To Convert Audio Cassettes & LPs to MP3 in 5 Easy Steps | MakeUseOf.com. Do you want to listen to your old music cassettes or vinyl records on your iPod or PC?
Well, there’s a easy way to convert all of your precious LPs to MP3 using the free Audacity software! We have covered Audacity before, to record audio files or create your own MP3 ringtones. Now let’s see how you can use it to convert your audio cassettes and LPs to MP3 files. This article assumes you’re using Audacity on Windows, but you can also do this on Mac/Linux. What You Need Equipment 1. 2. Clean the audio head and pinch roller of your tape deck with a clean cloth dabbed in alcohol. 3. Software 1. 2. Steps 1. Connect the deck’s LINE OUT or PHONES jack to the LINE IN jack on your computer using your audio cable. 2. Start Audacity, select Edit-Preferences. Start playback from your audio source and adjust the volume level in Audacity. 3.
Create a new project by selecting File-Save Project As. 4. Select Effect-Noise Removal, and click Get Noise Profile. 5. That’s it, you’re done! ID3 tag editor - AudioShell [freeware] AudioShell 2 is a freeware Windows Explorer shell extension which allows you to view and edit ID3 meta-data tags directly in Windows Vista/7/8 Explorer. It supports all files and tags standards supported by Tag&Rename - music tag editor. AudioShell adds ID3 tag editor and files rename tools into Windows system music files pop-up menu. AudioShell property shell handler add detailed music tags information into Windows Explorer columns and Preview pane, thumbnail handler add thumbnails with album art into Explorer.
Full Unicode and 64 bit support. System requirements: AudioShell is designed for Windows Vista/7/8/8.1 both 32 and 64 bit systems. Old AudioShell version for Windows XP 32 bit can be found here. Supported files and tags formats: >> Download Now New in this version: added writing support to AudioShell properties handler - now tag fields can be edited directly in Windows Explorer minor improvements Major new features in version 2.0: AudioShell 2 tag editor: AudioShell 2 renaming files: Audio Tagging Tools. Blog Archive » FLV Player updated. GOM software - Free, Simple, Light, It just plays! - GOM Media Player, GOM encoder. TPlayer The Site. Foobar2000.
MediaMonkey » Free Media Jukebox, Music Manager, CD Ripper & Converter. MusikCube. Don't be square. Winamp Media Player - MP3, Multimedia, and Music Player. Skale Tracker. Renoise - About Renoise. Home Page. MAZ Sound Tools - Symphonic Shades, C64 Orchestra, VSampler, Sounds, MindCandy, Demos for PC, Amiga, Immortal, C64, Freax. About MadTracker. FL Studio Homepage. Fasttracker2.com - Det bästa sättet att hitta information om MP3. Denna sida är till salu! Buzzmachines.com - Jeskola Buzz free modular software music studio.
BeRoTracker. -psycledelics- - Home. RM Converter,rm to MP3, Repair avi file, repair mpeg, repair wmv, repair dvd, repair jpg, Mpeg fixer, Avi fixer, Rm fixer, MP3 fixer, Wmv fixer, Jpg Fixer. Newlive All to MP3 Converter. Convert aavi(Divx, Xvid, Mpeg4), mpeg1/2, vcd, dvd, wmv, wma, asf, real, mov, MP3, wma and wav to MP3. REAPER | About. Hydrogen - advanced drum machine for GNU/Linux. REAPER | About. How to normalize your MP3 volume levels (the right way) - Download Squad.