regnyouth archives

Friday, March 25, 2005

MP3 Freeware Recommendations

Audiograbber
Audiograbber is an excellent program that does as the title says, it literally grabs digital audio from the CD. The program copies the audio digitally, not using a soundcard. This allows the user to make perfect rips; the program includes a test spot to ensure the quality of the rip.

Moreover, Audiograbber automatically normalizes the music and deletes all traces of silence. The program can be set up to send the newly captured data to an external encoder. This program can be used to capture audio from vinyl and cassette tapes. Due to the amazing amount of features included on Audiograbber, I firmly recommend this software above all the rest.

CDex
CDex is a great alternative to Audiograbber. CDex converts CD digital audio and wav files to directly to MP3 upon the request of the user and supports the use of CDDB. This program has an easy user interface and can be used by a novice. Very user friendly interface.dBpowerAMP Music Converter
Convert from one format to another painlessly. dBpowerAMP supports just about every audio type available: mp3, mp4, Windows Media Audio (wma), Ogg Vorbis, AAC, Monkeys Audio, FLAC and has an easy to use interface. Moreover, it converts while preserving ID Tags and normalizing volume on audio files. dBpowerAMP has Windows Explorer Integration - simply right click Convert To & popup useful information on audio files (such as bitrate, length).The Godfather
Rename mp3s, update Tags, restructure files on hard disk, create & merge play lists, & catalog them in a library completely painlessly! This program is extremely easy to use, comes with perfect documentation and produces superior results when editing your mp3 collection.Winamp
Almost everyone should know what this little program is and what it does. Plays music and video files, includes a full featured media library, supports modern and classic skins, and much, much more.. This is one of the oldest players available and definitely still one of the best available.Foo Bar 2000
This is one of the better alternatives to Winamp. A simple music player which supports every codec known to man. Although it doesn't provide much eyecandy, this player is bombproof and has many user enable options. Don't let the simple GUI fool you.Playlist Maker (MP3 Book Helper)
For those tired of using winamp to make playlists and desire a real GUI that does an amazingly efficient job of list making. Another key feature is simple retaging via CDDB. Playlist Maker (MP3 Book Helper) was originally developed for audio books, but works amazingly well with music.MAC
MAC means MPEG Audio Collection. It will help you to organize your audio file collection. There are some nice features, specifically a Tag editor, file renamer utility. Moreover, MAC supports the almost every type of media known.Audacity
More open source freeware, this editor is handy for tweaking files recorded on the line in socket. You can use it to split tracks, clean up the sound, adjust the gain, and much more. It will import WAV or MP3 and export to either format or to OGG. (Mp3 is not included, but you just have to install the LAME DLL.)RetroPlayer (Macintosh Platform Only)
RetroPlayer is a music player with which you can listen to music as if it was played by an analog record player. You can re-enjoy a piece of music that you have listened to for many times.