Tag Archives: audio

How To Play Audio Through HDMI And Speakers Simultaneously In Windows 7

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High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is an audio/video interface for transmitting digital data which provides better quality output than analog. Normally, one can only select one device for audio playback in Windows. This causes a common annoyance of having to continually switch between the sound card and HDMI speakers. However, it is also possible to receive output from speakers and an HDMI device simultaneously to play audio from a single application at the same time. If you would like to get audio output from both an HDMI device and your speakers, read on after the break. Read More

MediaTab Adds Advanced Audio/Video Information Tab In File Properties

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MediaTab uses MediaInfo libraries to analyze media files and extract audio/video related information. Unlike MediaInfo, which shows multimedia information in a separate window, it integrates with Windows Explorer file Properties dialog box so you can quickly view detailed information of media file in question. The application doesn’t offer a separate interface to browse media files; once installed, right-click the media file, select Properties, and switch to newly added MediaTab tab to view video and audio codecs information, default aspect ratio for video files, video resolution, bitrate, meta tag information, encoded information and lot more. Read More

Adjust And Schedule Volume Controls With Volume2

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Volume2 is an advanced Windows audio mixer, which can be used as a complete replacement for the standard Windows Volume Control. Volume2 provides easy to configure options to assign keyboard hotkeys and mouse for toggling system volume and allows scheduling the execution of applications or changes in sound configurations. Volume2 comes with a multi-lingual interface and supports English, Russian, Greek, Chinese, Armenian, and Bulgarian languages. What makes Volume2 better than the default Windows mixer is it’s ability to provide mouse wheel, hotkey and scheduling support for changing volume options. Read More

Making Audio Notes Made Easier With Sound Shaper For Windows Phone 7

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When it comes to app development, there are two ways to go about it. You can choose to add lots of glossy-looking, useless features hiding the real functionality of the app, or you can go for simplicity and create a task-dedicated app with an uncluttered interface. Experience has shown that from among the two categories just highlighted, the second one is usually more popular with the users. Sound Shaper is one such simple app which has been developed for Windows Phone 7 users and focuses on just one task, i.e. recording sounds with one touch! Read More

DocsPal Is Online Audio, Video, Image And Document Format Converter

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File format converters aren’t hard to find, whether you want to convert images, documents or media files, you’ll find a long list of free online converters and DocsPal is one such online format converter. So if the internet is already fraught with file converters, what makes DocsPal stand out from all the others? The fact that it isn’t specifically for any one kind of file; it can convert Documents, video, audio, image, ebooks, and archive file formats. On the whole, it can convert 60 different file formats. The interface isn’t something you’ll fall in love with but it gets the job done. Read More

Stream Audio From One Sound Card Or Device To Another With Playthrough

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When editing audio or recording music by taking input sound from musical instruments, it is required to route sound from one sound device to another. To perform these functions, normally a paid software suite is used, however, one can also use a number of free tools in conjunction to overcome this problem. Playthrough is an open source and portable application which routes an incoming audio stream to the output of another soundcard. Usually you can only enable playback on the same soundcard, however, Playthrough can help you route playback sound to another sound card, which can be further used with the help of audio recording software to capture audio streams. Read More

Quickly Set Sound Device In Windows 7 From Desktop Or Commandline

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Due to Digital Rights Management (DRM) issue of preventing users from making digital copies of analogue sources, Windows Vista and Windows 7, unlike Windows XP, do not allow you to select more than one audio output device. In such an instance it can be a bit laborious to constantly switch between default audio devices every now and then. A solution to this problem can be to use SSD – Set Sound Device. It is a portable tool which enables quickly switching the default sound device from the desktop or commandline. This way, one can set default sound device from, e.g. sound card to attached speakers, with minimum effort. Read More

Split Audio Files And Remove Protection With Audio Splitter [Mac]

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If you are looking for a simple tool with minimal set of options to inspect audio files and to split them by different parameters, check out Audio Splitter. It’s an application for Mac to split long audio sessions into multiple chunks while facilitating user to check the audio file attributes. It has been noticed with many audio manipulation software that meta tag information gets removed after splitting the audio file. Audio Splitter can preserve the meta info and remove protection without touching the sound quality of the track. Furthermore, if you’re planning to split multiple files at once, it can split them and create folder for each track, letting you easily search through all audio files. Read More

xAct Is Feature-Rich Audio Toolkit For Mac

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Want a tool which can handle a wide range of audio file formats to perform encoding and decoding operations with all the variations involved? xAct might be the best toolkit you could pick up. It an opensource, multi-purpose tool for Mac which presents a simple GUI for popular Unix-based applications including, Shorten, shntool, monkey’s audio compressor, flac, cdda2wav while using the powers of LAME, AtomicParsley, TagLib and mp4v2. If you’ve been using 3 separate applications on your Mac to encode & decode, merge/split, and to tag audio files, you should try out xAct, since it can fulfill your audio files manipulation needs under one window. Read More

VideoSpec Extracts Media File Info, Checks Compatibility With iDevices

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We all come across situations where we need to check whether the video file will run without any issues on our iDevice or not. In such situations, we, usually, pick a converter to change the video format in order to make it compatible with our iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. We also have a handful of videos lying around which lags on installed media players due to some inexplicable reasons. To deal with these kind of issues, VideoSpec offers a simple solution. It checks a video file compatibility with range of iDevices while telling you which media player(s) should be used to watch the video in question. It is somewhat quite similar to previously covered MediaInfo for Windows in terms of analyzing media file to extract audio and video specific information. Additionally, it has an ability to invoke default media player to watch the video on the fly while letting you evaluate the extracted information. It analyzes the selected media file to give users a detailed insight about encoding profile, resolution, audio channel, audio format, video aspect ratio, pixel aspect ratio, FPS, bitrate, container and so on. Read More

LASTAR – Set Loudness Of Music, Reduce Noise, And Normalize Recorded Audio

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Want to tweak with audio loudness and apply other normalization effects over your music collection? LASTAR is a batch audio processor which can boost and set loudness of audio tracks to required level while applying normalization across all of your music or recorded files. Furthermore, it can split long recorded sessions with a simple click. Along with setting loudness and gaining normalization, it can be used to eradicate noise among all specified music tracks to achieve better sound quality. Noise elimination comes handy for processing those audio files which were recorded through very sensitive microphones. LASTAR supports both widely used audio formats - MP3 and WAV, with all bitrates. It is capable of doing analysis of inserted audio files to set the most appropriate sound quality parameters for processing. Read More

DVDVideoSoft FreeStudio Is Complete All-In-One Multimedia Converter And Burner

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DVDVideoSoft FreeStudio packages more than 40 programs for converting and burning into one eye-candy application. You can convert YouTube videos to MP3, Audio CD to MP3, WAV, APE, and FLAC format, Video to Mp3, Flash, DVD, MKV, AVI, and MP4 format. Despite having a slew of conversion tools, it lets you burn CD/DVD and Blu-Ray discs on the fly. It offers plentiful of disc authoring tools to burn videos, DVD files, audio tracks, and to create Audio CDs from MP3 files. Features list doesn’t end here, image manipulation tools have also been included to convert and resize images, convert video files into pack of JPGs while both 3D photo and video maker are also available. It supports all Apple Devices, allowing you to convert audio and video files into supported formats for Apple TV, iPhone, iPod, and iPad. Apart from supporting all the formats, it has an ability to convert audio and video files into famous portable devices, gaming consoles, and other smart phone formats, including, Andriod, Blackberry, HTC phones, Motorola, Nokia, Xbox, Nintendo, and PSP. Read More

View And Extract Video & Audio Attributes Of Media File With MediaInfo

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MediaInfo is a minuscule application which is written for power users who want to know detailed information about the media file. The application gives an elaborated insight into numerous media file attributes, ranging from media format profile, settings, bit rate, writing application, video profile and settings regarding BVOP, Qpel, GMC, and Matrix, Codec ID, Frame rate, Chroma sub-sampling, Writing library, Bit depth, to Audio codecs used, Mode extension, Audio channels, Compression mode, Interleave duration and so on. The application supports a huge list of media formats including, AVI, OGG, MPG, MP3, WMA, WMV, MOV, VOb, MP4, M4A, M2V, AAC, AC3, Monkey Audio, and many others formats. It integrates with Windows Shell menu, letting user view media information of selected file quickly from right-click context-menu. Read More

Wave Editor Is Free Audio Editor With Great Sound Effects

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Wave Editor is a powerful digital audio editor which is developed to make small audio adjustments, like, a light fade-in/fade-out effect with a blend of sudden silence has to be added in an audio file to make it perfectly match with complementary video, while sometimes amplification and de-amplification are also required at certain points to get the much needed effect. Wave Editor includes all such effects in addition with basic options to reverse, copy/move or delete a defined audio part. Read More

Record Streaming Media With Stream Recorder.NET

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Windows Media Player and VLC is widely used for streaming audio/video from external locations but it is a real nuisance to record that streaming media, as you need to take multiple steps in both WMP & VLC to start recording the media being streamed. Ohad Schneider brings a simple solution to seamlessly record the streaming audio/video through his open source product called StreamRecorder.NET, a GUI based application which offers a simple set of options to let user record the streaming audio or video without requiring any copy & paste operations over source URL. The application offers utterly simple interface while options to set duration for recording audio/video (which is being streamed) are also available. Read More

FreeMake Video Converter v1.3 Brings GPU Hardware Acceleration, Preset Editor, And More

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Back in July, we reviewed FreeMake Video Converter – an aesthetically appealing video converter which at that point of time supported various video formats with an ability to upload converted videos directly to YouTube. Recently, its developer Kate Smith updated me with a whole lot of new & interesting features included in latest iteration - Ver 1.3.0. Amongst the list, the most significant improvements are, a preset editor to let user select video/audio codecs & other video parameters along with an icon, support for SWF, MKV, and MPEG formats, and intrinsic preset list has been improvised with Apple, Sony and Android devices. Additionally, users can now put a limit on output file size and select video quality-speed specific encoding options. Read More

fre:ac – Super Fast Free Audio Converter And Encoder

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fre:ac is a feature-rich portable audio converter & ripper that use multi-core optimized encoders to provide blazing fast conversions. The application offers on the fly encoding while some generic conversion options are available to convert and create playlists. Despite being merely a converter, it lets you play the selected audio file and edit respective ID3 V1 & V2 meta tags information. The application working is based on creating a job list, the jobs can be further handled in numerous ways, you can either import song list from CD/DVD to rip, select files from local drive and start conversion, or simply feed it your playlist to convert all the songs in one go. It supports a long list of audio file formats, such as, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, MP4/M4A, AAC, WAV and Bonk formats. Read More

PUMP – Media Organizer And Converter That Can Sync With Any Device

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PUMP is an all-in-one video manager which comes with many lofty boxed-up features to organize all the videos on your hard drive. Aside from merely being a video manager, it offers a list of services, video-sharing websites and BitTorrent search engines, such as, Dailymotion, Youtube, Mininova, LegalTorrents and Google Torrent, to fetch information on latest videos updates, stream videos, and download them. If you’re an avid movies fan having a huge collection of movies, music videos, and TV shows, it can help you in bookmarking most precious videos, so you can watch them anytime you want without having to search through your collection. The application comes with a list of some pre-mounted video feeds, which you can be customized. Furthermore, it is also capable of syncing your collection with iPod, iPhone, and other portable media players. Read More