Description: Pepsky Free Audio Converter is a free program that can convert audio files across a wide range of formats, burn audio CDs playable with any CD player, burn audio-file CDs in many formats, and rip CD’s into MP3 or other formats.

What’s notable about this software is (a) the wide range of supported audio file formats that it can read and write (b) the nice collection of functions that it brings together at the same place, and (c) a very nice overall look and feel. Here are more notes on this program:

• Supported audio formats: will convert from and to any of the following formats; MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, AIF, VOC, FLAC, M4A, OGG, AU, FLV, and APE.
• The user experience: is very nice. The interface looks good and the dialogs very intuitive.
• Conversion Performance: provides excellent conversion speed. This is merely my subjective assessment, but I will note that the program is optimized for dual core (Intel/AMD) processors.
• Audio CD creation: it can burn any of the above format audio files into a normal music CD that can be played on any CD player. It can also create a “disk image” file in BIN, APE, SVD formats.
• MP3 CD creation: actually not just MP3s; you can burn audio files of any supported format into CD’s that can be played on some CD players that support these formats.
• CD Ripping: will rip CD tracks into any of the supported audio file formats; surprisingly, however, it does not pull track data from CDDB or an online database, requiring manual data entry of this information (or a later online lookup using another app).
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Description: ToneShop is a small, free program that can create ringtones out of your audio files for any phone that supports a true audio ringtone, including the Apple IPhone. It provides the ability to quickly and easily select a snippet of sound from within your audio files to be used as a ringtone.

I’ve had my eye out for a simple program that can quickly create ringtones out of MP3s for my IPhone when I found this program, which in fact can do this for a very wide range of phones and devices. ToneShip is in fact a frontend GUI for FFMPEG, the encoding engine which the majority of freeware video and audio conversion programs are based. Here are more notes on this one.

• How it works: simply load an audio file, then use the (0.1 second precision) trackbar to identify beginning and end points for your ringtone (note that different phones vary on length of ringtone they will accept, so take that into consideration). You can also enter in the start and finish positions as values manually, and preview the ringtone snippet by pressing the "show" button. Finally, select the desired ringtone file format from the dropdown and press the "convert" button to create your ringtone.
• Phones supported: all phones that use true audio ringtones. Go here for a (non-exhaustive) list.
• Audio file types supported: can input MP3, WAV, WMA, and M4A formats, and produce ringtones in MP3, WAV (uncompressed PCM), AAC (Advanced Audio Codec, .m4a), Nokia TrueTones (AMR-WB, .amr), AMR-NB (.amr)
  Yamaha SMAF (.mmf),ADPCM (4-bit compressed PCM. way), and Apple IPhone (AAC, .m4r).
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Description: FLV Extract is a free program that can save video and audio files from FLV files in their original formats without decompressing or re-compressing.

If you weren’t aware of it, FLV files are containers that house audio and video files which may be encoded in any number of formats. FLV Extract gives you the ability to unpack the video and audio files without needing to re-encode or re-process.

This little program will be very useful if you (a) are downloading music from music-sharing sites in the FLV format, or (b) need to demux the audio or video from FLV files.

Converting FLVs to MP3s is possible using a number of programs such as Super or Any Audio Converter; however, these will perform re-encoding operations which take time and in most cases require that the user make a number of quality and format decisions. With FLV Extract, however, the extraction happens in a flash and is almost instantaneous, and the files retain the format and quality with which they were encoded. Here are more notes on this program:

• Nothing to install: just unzip and run.
• The UI: a simple dialog with 3 options: extract video, timecodes, and audio. All you need to do is to drop files onto the app for processing.
• Performance: you can drag multiple FLVs onto FLV Extract and they will be processed immediately within the space of a second (or a few seconds at most).
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Description: JRiver Media Jukebox is an advanced music manager that has recently turned 100% freeware. It provides most of the tools that you will ever need to play and manage your audio library, including audio format conversion, CD burning and ripping with online tag and album art support, full smartlists support, a tag editor, Ipod and device management, podcast support, sound recording, ad-hoc album art downloading, visualizations, skins, and extendibility through a wide range of freely downloadable plugins (including a pre-installed Last.FM audioscrobbler plugin). It supports most audio file formats.

Yes you might have heard of this program and yes, it is now released as 100% no-strings attached freeware. This program is a perfect replacement of ITunes and if you were looking for a single program that can do it all (or at least do more than 90% of what you might want to do with your audio library), Media Jukebox is it. It also looks and feels pretty darn good to boot. Here are some notes on this program:

More info on this program:

• The User Interface: is one of the nicest aspects of this program. Your audio tracks or albums can be displayed in list view or a very pleasing tiled thumbnail view. One of the more useful features is filtering pane split into 3 sections (genre/artist/ablum) which allows you to check boxes to filter your music, and is very useful when you are trying to fix or manage your library’s ID3 tags.
• The context menu: most operations can be done by selecting multiple tracks (using CTRL or Shift-clicking) then right-clicking to access the function you want (e.g. converting tracks to other formats, managing album art, group tag-editing, sending to a device, etc.) Generally speaking this makes for a very intuitive way of working with your audio library.
• Tag editing: has everything you would expect from a tagging program, including file to properties and vice vera, and various cleanup functions (e.g. underscore to space, etc.) One thing I like is that you can set it such that it automatically updates the database to reflect changes to the tags that are done externally with other programs.
• Normalization: optionally built in on playback. Make sure to perform an audio track analysis on your library which will help this process (right click to library tools/analyze audio, or use advanced tools from the tools menu).
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.0.1

Description: Any Audio Converter is a freeware program that can convert a wide range of audio files into MP3, WMA, ACC, or OGG audio format. It can also demux (extract) audio tracks from most video files, including FLV and DVD video VOB files, and provides a preview screen where you can set beginning and end points for audio extraction from a video.

While you can perform audio format conversions another using a number of applications (e.g. a CD ripper such as BonkEnc, an audio player such as Mediamonkey, or even the context-menu based DMSI), there are a number of reasons why you should download and use Any Audio Converter, as follows:

• Converts audio files and demuxes video files as well.
• Broad range of supported input formats (although some audio formats are conspicuously absent): MP3, WMA, WAV, WMV, ASF, VOB, MPG, DV, M1V, M2V, MOV, MPEG-4, 3GP, RM, RMVB and FLV. Supported output formats: MP3, WMA, AAC and OGG. Not supported: FLAC, OGG input, APE, M4A/M4B, (Itunes formats).
• Supports FLV; (for all of you downloading tracks from music sharing sites in FLV format and not knowing what to do with them, Any Audio Converter is what you need).
• Converts files in batches (including videos).
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 0.14

Description: MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter will combine a number of MP3 files into a single .M4B audiobook file. Ipod M4B audiobooks support a number of features including remembering last listening position and the ability to adjust reading speed.

Having recently transferred an audiobook consisting of some 56 MP3 files into my new IPhone, I realized that it wasn’t possible to use ’song shuffle’ without getting these files played as well, interrupting the music, and requiring a human intervention. I had tagged these MP3s as "audiobook" genre but being as there is no "shuffle songs from all genres except" function I started searching for an MP3 to Audiobook converter and found this program. (Why use an app like this instead of an audio converter or transcoder? because it will both convert and combine in one action, as well as provide an interface for sorting chapters correctly and editing the tag info of the resulting audiobook).

Fitst, here’s a list of reasons why Apple’s audiobook M4B format is a good thing:
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 1.26

[Note: this review was written by reader Sinkhan, a connoisseur of freeware and open source programs- The Freewaregenius]

Description: Audacity is a free full-featured digital audio editing program. It offers a broad spectrum of audio editing tools and capabilities and a simple, easy to use user interface.

Audacity is an open source program developed by a large and dedicated community of programmers. It has an immense array of capabilities, functions, and tools. I’ve personally used this program for tons of things, from recording and piecing together audio projects, to just random fiddling around. Some features of this application are:

• Supports many audio formats (from the common .wav and .mp3, to others such as .aiff, and .ogg).
• An easy to understand interface with large play, stop, pause, and skip buttons to control the playing of the file as you are editing it.
• A main display showing the frequencies or sound waves of the audio files. The scale can be adjusted from blocks of 24 hours to increments of 1/1,000,000 of a second.
• Various effects can be applied, such as echo, invert, and fade in and out. You can easily apply volume, normalization and gain changes to entire tracks. There is also a “noise removal” plugin, but in all honesty I have found that other (commercial) programs produce better noise removal results.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 2.0

Description: MP3myMP3 is a program that can record any sound coming into or out of your PC straight into MP3 format. If it can be played on your machine MP3myMP3 can record it.

This is a very straightforward yet useful program that has a variety of uses, as follows:

• Allows you to record any input through the mic jack directly into mp3. This can be useful for, say, creating podcasts using a microphone or creating audio files from non-digital sources (such as cassettes).
• Can be used to record streaming radio. (Alternately, you can try to determine the URLs for streaming radio using URL Snooper and download these directly).
• Can circumvent any digital rights or protection that may exist your audio files. Simply play these and record using MP3myMP3.
• Can play audio files in the following formats: mp3, wav, aif, swa, or sun au. No need to use an external player, unless you want to.
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 2006-12-15

Description: CCCP (short for Combined Community Codec Pack) is a filter pack designed to enable your applications to play as many media file formats as possible while being as light and un-intrusive as possible. It includes tools such as Media Player classic, Zoom Player, and Haali Media Splitter.

Origins: CCCP was apparently conceived in order to enable the playback of all the different formats that were proliferating quickly on the Anime scene; with all the different Anime ’groups’ promising to support it. (A codec pack is a collection of Directshow filters that enable media players and media editing applications to decode/read/play and sometimes encode/write various media file formats).

I want my computer to play and/or edit most any media file formats that is out there: in this case, CCCP is for you. These are the reasons I highly recommend it:

• It works: It is not merely a mish-mash of a things that may or may not work (like some other codec packs are).
• It’s compact: CCCP is designed to be lightweight: while some codec packs contain overlapping filters that do the same thing, CCCP does not contain unnecessary extras.
• It’s safe: CCCP is built so it will not ruin your system and/or send it into a tailspin. The CCCP site actually states that installing CCCP might resolve previously existing conflicts. Read more »

Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.0.305

Description: Free Easy Burner is a CD/DVD burning and authoring program that supports burning data and audio CD’s and DVD’s, copying CD’s and DVD’s (by ripping and burning ISO’s), and Ripping audio CD’s into MP3’s.

If you want a small CD/DVD burning program that performs all standard functions without many frills, then Free Easy Burner will cater for all of your burning needs (pun intended heheh).

Important Note [8/13/2007]: since first reviewing this program on 2/3/2007 it has become adware, despite still being billed as freeware on the author’s site. This means that as of version 1.2.43 the program, while fully functional, nonetheless displays ads (albeit harmless ones) within its interface. However you can still download version 1.2.21 of this program, which is fully functional and ad-free, from the link at the bottom of this page.

The following is a list of what this program can do:

• Supports dual-layer DVD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW.
• Burns Data CD’s and DVD’s: allows dragging and dropping of files and folders, will verify and/or finalize your CD/DVD.
• Will copy CD’s and (unencrypted) DVD’s by ripping an ISO image on hard drive and burning it back. Read more »

Rating: 4

Version tested: beta

Description: Zamzar is an online file format conversion service for documents and media files. It will allow you to upload a file up to 100 megs in size and will convert it remotely according to your requirements. It will then email you a link to download the converted file from.

This service is very similar to Media-Convert. Just like Media-Convert, Zamzar can handle an impressive array of file types; it doesn’t quite match Media-Convert’s support for obscure formats, but should cover most of the file formats you would encounter. One notable absence is flash SWF support. For a list of all file formats supported click here.

Max file upload size is 100megs compared to Media-Convert’s 50megs. This means that Zamzar is a much more practical resource for converting video files (albeit still limited by the max upload ceiling).

Here are some observations: Read more »

Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 2.5.4.978

Description: MediaMonkey is an advanced music manager comprising a music player, cd ripper, audio converter, ID3 Tag editor, and playlist generator. It also supports external MP3 players, including the Ipod.

If you’ve been looking for a free program that can be a kind of one-stop-shop of audio, doing everything that you might possibly want to do with your library of audio files (and doing it well) - MediaMonkey just might be that program.

Here are some of the reasons why this program is so cool:

• Audio format conversions. Supported formats are MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, and FLAC.
• Rips and burns music CD’s.
• Powerful Tag editing functionality: as good as it gets, with support for importing ID3 tags and album art from external resources like Amazon and Freedb. Auto tagging tracks and saving album art from Amazon is just beautiful!
• Organization: allows you to automatically change your music library’s folder structure based on your audio files’ tag information. Read more »

Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 1.0 beta 4

Description: This curiously named app is a competent, 100% free audio cd ripper and converter that offers compression into MP3, MP4/M4A, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, Bonk and FLAC formats, as well as others through plugins. It also supports automatic tagging through the CDDB/freedb online CD database and CDText. It can even support ID3 tagging in unicode characters (i.e. non-latin song names).

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