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My favorite part of the software section! Why? Because I get to tell you about all the little apps I use for anything and everything. If somebody made software to do it, I'll try it. And chances are I HAVE tried it. This list will probably get long and it's not in any order, including alphabetical.
Jim Hickey Music - Jim has painstakingly put together PDF books for guitarists, Bassists, and more. I have his book called "Jimmy's Got A 4 String" which is an instructional book for bassists. Great info for those of you who want to excel past the whole "3 chord" thing that seems to plague rock music.
RaimaRadio - Looking to record internet radio? There are a lot of apps out there for sale like ripcast, audioxtract, etc. But if you want a freebie that works better than any paid one I have used, grab this one before the author discovers he should be charging for it! You can choose from many presets, or add your favorite streaming radio station via the stream URL. The application automatically splits the songs into separate mp3 files placed in folder named after the artist, and it even retains the tags!
Dtask Manager - This is the coolest replacement for Windows task manager I have found to date. It gives so many more options than the preinstalled version. For one, have you ever hit "end task" on something and it still insists on running? Wel say goodbye to that problem, this task manager has a function called Kill Task Override, it kills whatever I tell it to kill, and it does it immediately. other cool features include the ability to right click any process and choose "find target file", it opens windows explorer and highlights the file in question. This is great for fighting stubborn spyware and virus's. It will also allow you to use it as the default task manager, so when you do a CTL+ALT+DEL or right click your task bar, you get Dtask Manager and not the windows task manager. Too cool!
Free Rhyming Dictionary - This is a 'must have' for any musician, writer or lyricist! No doubt, there will be statesmen and government copywriters using this program for speech writing (if they aren’t already!). This software is a 'no-brainer' for inclusion into school programs and as an adjunct tool within the curriculums; it is simple enough to be used at the grade school and high school levels and provides such advanced features that university students will benefit greatly by using it as well! This very well may be the 'killer app.' of the lyrical world and it’s FREE.
Audio Wizard Pro Ear Trainer - is an intense interactive software ear training course for any musician, producer, engineer, or recording hobbyist. Audio Wizard Pro Ear Trainer has hours & hours of ear training lessons and exercises!
Avant Browser - This has been my default browser now for over 2 years. It runs on Internet explorers engine, but has so much more to offer. The absolute coolest thing is that it has online storage. You log in and tell it to remember you and always log in, it saves all your auto-fills, settings, preferences and favorites online. So when you install it on another computer, everything shows up exactly as you left it from the first computer! Add a favorite from work, see it appear at home, is that not the coolest thing since pizza????
Avast Antivirus - Why do I have this here at an audio site? Well we are talking digital recording on the pc right? We don't want our pc hosed up by virus's or spyware right? You are browsing the net on the pc you record with right? What makes you so sure I have not placed some sort of tracking cookie or other tasty treat on your hard drive? Well rest assured nothing malicious will come from this website, but others are not so nice. Avast antivirus is free and is better (in mine and many others opinion) than the big guys. It has yet to miss anything on any of the 7 computers that make up my home network, including spyware.
Acoustica Spin It Again - A very cool and unique application for recording your records and tapes to the pc and making cd out of them. It will split the songs automatically so you don't end up with a 90 minute mp3. Also, it will add ID Tags for you. This software is still being developed so it's not available yet. But when it is, you best grab a copy!
AP Tuner - After searching far and wide for a decent tuner, I came up with this one as a favorite. Works great and is simple to use.
Acoustica Beatcraft - Needless to say, this is one of my favorite applications of all time. The best drum machine ever created...software or hardware. Beatcraft is so versitile and easy to use that I had to give a shout out to the company the first ten minutes after installing it. Using my own drum sounds recorded from my drummers kit is awesome, along with every other reason everyone on the planet should buy this app. This $40.00 software beat the crap out my $400.00 Roland R5 hardware machine, which is now an elaborate paper holder downer. Beatcraft, I can't say enough and probably never will.
Atmosphere - This is another very unique software application. It creates those relaxing nature sounds that people buy CDs of to play in a loop when they sleep. The cool thing here is that you can customize every single cricket, bird and raindrop. Then let it run and you never hear the same thing twice. Or let it make you some CDs for playing on a regular CD player.
Mp3gain - Got a bunch of mp3 files? some loud as hell and some too quiet? Normalize all your mp3 files in one batch. Works great and is free.
Ashampoo Magic Defrag - This low cost little thing defrags your hard drive when your pc is idle, The result is a perfectly defragmented hard drive---always.
PopTray - This is an app that runs in your system tray checking all your POP3 email accounts every X minutes, I have mine set to check every 3 minutes. You can then preview, delete or reply right from it. Since I have more than 10 email accounts that need to be checked regularly, I use it on every computer I have, including at work. It also provides an extra measure agains virus's and spam since you can delete suspicious or obvious junk before it ever reaches your pc.
Startup Control Panel - Like MSCONFIG but shows where the software is starting from, and does not require a reboot when shutting things off. You can also add a startup item easily. After installing it, look in your control panel for an icon called "Startup".
Mp3 SoundStream - This is one cool little tool, convert any mp3 file into flash, complete with player buttons and a ready made html page, just port it to your web site. I have a bunch on one of my sites for my band Bottom Feeders, look for the red player controls. there are quite a few options to customize the controls and look of the page, but it only converts to 56k stream, but it sounds pretty good compared to a 56k mp3 stream.
Spyware Terminator - This is the best all around spyware solution I have come across to date. Although a little heavy on the resources, it has a real time protection module, several levels of protection from novice to expert. It scans very completely and has yet to miss a thing on any pc I have used it on. Free real time protection? Team this one up with Avast anti virus and you have to TRY to get infected before it will happen.
Sygate Personal Firewall - Now bought out by Symantec, is the absolute cadilac of software firewall's! If you can find a non-symantec version of this, for God sake, keep the installer! Amazingly, it is still available in it's original form at Tucows here http://www.tucows.com/preview/213160 The symantec version? My company bought it just to check it out (I am in IT), we all had a good laugh. Then a moment of silence to honor the death of the great Sygate.
Virtual Clone Drive - This is a freeware product from one of the best, most well know software companies out there. This app creates virtual cd-rom drives. Yeah, I know, there are other that do this, but not like this one! It works so well with it's sister products that I could not imagine not having them all (which I do). An great example: If you have a game disk that is protected, yet you want to make a copy in case you break or lose it. Just use Clone CD along with Any DVD (which breaks past the protection on the disk) to create a .ccd file, then put your disk back in it's case and safely on a shelf. Now use Virtual Clone Drive to "mount" the .ccd file of the game you just copied. Install and play as if it were the actual cd! Must have products.
More to come!
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