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Showing posts with label audio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label audio. Show all posts

Monday, November 28, 2011

Jet Audio, A Versatile Music Player For Windows

In the world of media players, it often seems the sun doesn’t shine on anything new. Between Windows Media Player, Winamp, RealPlayer, VLC, and iTunes, it seems as though everybody has maximum market penetration and saturation. Enter the not-so-quiet contender, JetAudio. You can get JetAudio at this link: http://www.jetaudio.com/download/

Installation is easy. Click through the dialogue boxes and launch the app. The user has the option of a number of different configurations for initial use, although the default setup will give you a single, integrated interface, not unlike many other media players.

Point the application toward your library of choice, or more than one library. Give it few minutes to scan through your files, and you’re ready to start listening. The basic module only used about 30MB of RAM for just playing music.

jetaudio

You have the choice of different module configurations. Below is an example of two separate equalizer displays; with a compact audio control interface and a file navigator. This is a great application that includes audio editing tools, lyric composer, different visualizations, video components, internet radio options, and yet it remains lightweight and friendly to use. All of this comes with a high degree of potential for customizing each module. And, this is just the basic application. This is the free version with no add-ons or plug-ins installed. If this application hung out at Muscle Beach, it would probably stop dead-lifting its 800-pound barbell just to carry your groceries home for you. It is that good.

For a relative unknown in the universe of media players, JetAudio stands out against the backdrop of form-over-function. This piece of software is all functionality. There’s nothing it can do that isn’t meant to directly enhance your listening experience.

At this site, you can share .pls files to broadcast playlists or access those created by others. While not as convenient as other streaming music services, the ability to integrate this functionality into such a feature-rich and robust music player is a real treat.

jet audio player interface

Even the lyrics component has its own integrated player controls which allow for scrubbing with a slider, incremental fast-forward and rewind controls all included with a text editor. Furthermore, the visualization system can integrate some of the great titles like G-Force or Aeon from Soundspectrum. The JetAudio free version also comes with a backup manager, called JetShell, for archiving your media files.

The paid version of the application includes a number of additional features that extend both the listening possibilities of the free version and its audio editing capabilities. All-in-all, we have only begun to discover the ways in which JetAudio can bring a more inclusive and flexible user listening experience. Yet, it seems as if we have found our new pet software addiction for at least a little while. JetAudio is a music player for music people. It has heart. It is rich in features and configuration options. It does something few applications of any kind manage to do by presenting the option for the user to re-think what is possible in using an application. Rest assured you have not heard the last from this little digital boom box.


© Melanie Gross for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Sunday, November 27, 2011

File Lab Web Applications: Audio Editor

This free software package is completely browser based. Installation is very easy; just download a plugin from the File Labs site. After a small installation you have a seamless editor that enables you to modify audio files. You do not need to upload any files because this is run entirely locally.

The general user interface is very easy to control. Open a browser to www.filelab.com. Select audio editor, select your file and then begin editing.

audio editor file lab

This is the user interface within the browser:

Across the top of the interface are 2 main pages the first page is labeled Audio Effects. The 2nd page is labeled as Generate. We will cover the former in that it will be the most used.

Amplify: Decibels are a exponential scale: 0 dB is the lowest a human ear can hear. 10 dB is 10 times as powerful. 10 times more powerful than that is 20 dB. 1000 times as powerful as near silence is 30 dB. As you see minor variations within a decibel range can be significant. FileLabs Audio Editor allows for steps as low as 1dB up to as high as 6 dB.

Fade In/Fade Out: Audio Editor also allows for linear fade in and fade out. This can be very useful for audio tracks that

Normalize: This will take and find the peak of a waveform and bring all of the other audio to a level somewhere in-between the highest peak and the lowest. This is a good tool to use when you wish to bring the sound floor level up. It will amplify the weaker sounds while attenuating the sounds that are too high.

Mute: Mute is pretty self-explanatory it mutes the selected area of the audio file.
Invert: Invert flip the left and right channels within the audio file. You can select an area to invert or it will invert the whole file at once. It will change the polarity of the file on the horizontal axis.

Limiter: This is an audio compression algorithm that takes the peak and locks it into a set decibel range. It is generally used to remove a distortion to the audio signal. It is not evident in use and also on the site which form of limiting is in use, be it either hard clipping or with a fast release.

Auto Correction: Automatically enhances the sound aural characteristics reducing the dynamic range, normalizing and equalizing the audio.

Echo: Repeats the selected sound with the selected effect.

Reverb: Adds echo and multiple reflections of it. Use it in modeling acoustics in a hall, empty apartment,or some other type of room.

Tempo Change: Increases or decreases the tempo. Music will play faster or slower but the pitch is unaffected.

Equalizer: Boosts or cuts specific frequency bands and provides a visual representation of the resulting EQ curve. Use this to boost bass, midrange or treble of an audio file.

The 2nd page of the software application enables you to either generate silence or a signal. The signal can be a bell, chord or 440 Hz, A signal. This can be useful for testing audio devices.

This software is feature rich, fast and surprisingly elegant for a completely free browser based package.


© Melanie Gross for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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