Odds are your PC has a 16-bit sound card, but you're not taking advantage of its CD-quality sound--and that's a real shame. It's like hiring a 20-piece orchestra and having only one instrument play at a time. The hardware is there; you just need to know how to tap into its power. And we're talking about a considerable amount of sonic horsepower. A typical desktop computer has the kind of audio capabilities for which a studio musician might have spent thousands of dollars just 10 years ago.
Even if you don't have high-quality speakers attached to your PC, you can still maximize the sound you have. If your computer-based audio is limited to the built-in Windows system sounds, easy-to-use audio-editing programs can make those sounds seem more lifelike. If you want to try more sophisticated sound manipulation, check out software that can do for audio files what 3-D rendering programs can do for graphics files. And if your needs are more practical than creative, you'll even find programs that can simply enhance the convenience of playing audio CDs in your CD-ROM drive.
We have selected five shareware programs that can enrich your computer-audio experience. CDmax 1.5.4 from Clark Tisdale is a free replacement for the Windows CD Player. It downloads title, artist, and track listings and recalls the relevant data whenever you play a CD. Cool Edit 96 from Syntrillium Software Corp. is the best of the shareware audio-editing programs, offering a broad range of features, including file-format conversions and pitch adjustment. ItsTime 2.5a from RKS Software can personalize even the most sedate corporate PC by letting you set audio reminders for upcoming appointments and events. Jet-Audio 3.12 from COWON System functions as a multimedia-file control center, supporting practically every known audio and video file format. Finally, Parametric Equalizer Pro 2.5 from Anwida Soft functions like a professional-quality audio equalizer, letting you customize a sound file's frequencies to suit a particular audio environment.
You can download these programs from Computer Shopper's Web site (www.computershopper.com); from the magazine's forum on ZDNet/CompuServe (Go ZNT:COMPSHOP) in Library 11, Shareware Shop; or directly from ZDNet's Software Library (www.hotfiles.com). For filenames and other details, refer to the product list box.
CDmax 1.5.4
If your idea of computer audio is playing audio CDs on your CD-ROM drive, you're not alone. Many find working at a computer and listening to music a deeply satisfying combination. The Windows CD Player is perfectly adequate for playing and controlling your CDs from the desktop, but CDmax 1.5.4 is better. And it's free.
Like the Windows CD Player, CDmax lets you enter the title, artist, and tracks for each of your CDs and save the information for automatic retrieval when a CD is placed into your CD-ROM drive. CDmax takes this one step further by letting you automatically download this information from the Internet.
The CD Database (CDDB) is a public-domain list of more than 20,000 CDs. When CDmax finds a CD it doesn't recognize, it checks one of the CDDB Web sites for the CD's info and saves the data to your hard drive. To save time later, you can have CDmax reference all your CDs in a single session--figure about a minute for each CD. Almost all my CDs were in the database, including older titles such as Miles Davis' Kind of Blue and obscure titles such as La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano. If a title isn't in the database, you can type in the data yourself, just as you would with the Windows CD Player.
Other worthwhile features are support for mixed-mode CDs, including the CD Extra and Enhanced CD formats; customized play lists; a scroll bar that indicates track progress; and a built-in CD volume control.
Cool Edit 96
With the right software, a modern-day PC can emulate a digital-audio recording studio. If you would like to try this for yourself, there's no better shareware program than Cool Edit 96. It can modify, splice, and mix audio files, just as you might edit sentences in a word processor. It can convert audio files from one format to another, among 18 different file formats and a variety of different sample rates. It can enhance audio files with effects that range from the subtle to the fantastic, including reverb, compression, 3-D delay, 3-D echo chamber, flange, and distortion. It can adjust the tempo of an audio file without affecting the pitch and vice versa. And it can create sounds from scratch, much like a music synthesizer.
Because the editing is nondestructive, you can easily apply an effect to an audio file or a portion of a file, and hear the results without altering the original content. You can customize the program's toolbar to include your favorite program commands, edit controls, and audio effects. With the undo feature, you can step back through three previous actions, and the program will warn you any time there isn't enough hard drive space to undo an action. You can customize effects and save them for later use as presets. And you can apply effects and program actions to more than one file at a time using scripts and batch processing.
The shareware version of Cool Edit 96 uses an unusual technique to restrict its features. Each time the program loads, you choose two of the eight sets of features. The other six sets will be disabled during the session. For example, if you were to select the two sets of "Save, External Clipboard Functionality, and Sample Conversion" and "Filter and Noise Reduction," you wouldn't be able to use "Flanger, Delay, and Compressor" or "Echo, Echo Chamber, and Reverb." You can try out all the features in the shareware version--just not all at the same time. A registration fee of $50 unlocks all the features and allows their use anytime. If you don't need all the fancy effects, you can pay a $25 fee and receive the registered version of Cool Edit Lite.
ItsTime 2.5a
This narrowly focused program does only one thing: It manages audio reminders. If you spend most of your day at your computer, you could use ItsTime 2.5a to remind you of business meetings, medical appointments, or scheduled phone calls. If you're a confirmed workaholic, it could remind you to take a break, get some lunch, or go home to your family.
Even though ItsTime is a single-purpose application, it offers a variety of options. You can choose from 27 different WAV files, including alarms, buzzers, animal sounds, chimes, and car horns. Alternatively, you can use your own WAV files. Each reminder can have a different audio file associated with it.
Using the built-in calendar, you can set your reminders just a few minutes ahead or many years into the future. You can have a reminder occur once or have it repeat after a set number of minutes. You can repeat a reminder on a specific day of the week, a specific day of each month, a specific day of a specific month, a specific day of the year, or every day. A clone tool lets you copy an existing reminder. An adjust-time tool lets you increment a reminder's alarm time forward or backward. And a snooze control lets you re-remind yourself at a later time.
If you're the forgetful type, ItsTime 2.5a could become an essential part of your daily routine. Only don't forget to send in the program's $19.95 registration fee so ItsTime won't time out on you.
Jet-Audio 3.12
Most all-in-one audio players are confusing and hard to use. Jet-Audio 3.12 is the exception; it features a sleek and uncluttered interface that's easy to learn. Like similar programs, it emulates a component stereo system. You'll find the Digital Audio Player for AIF, MP3, RA, WAV, and other digital-audio files; the MIDI Player for KAR, MID, RMI, and other music files; the Digital Video Player for AVI, MOV, MPG, and other video files; the CD Player for playing audio CDs; the Mixer for controlling the volume and the frequency levels of various audio sources; and the Sound Effector for adding real-time reverb and 3-D effects to your audio. The program supports 23 different audio, music, and video file formats.
Each component has an icon on the main program window that lets you show or hide the component, so you can quickly mix and match the devices you want to use. You can also display onscreen a handy remote control, which provides the essential controls for multimedia-file playback, and the Frequency Spectrum Analyzer, which uses colored dots to show the various frequencies of the digital audio or MIDI audio during playback. The Frequency Spectrum Analyzer can also display MIDI-channel information.
Advanced features include a quality setting for MPEG files to accommodate slower processors, the option to use Microsoft DirectShow for playback of audio and video files, automatic connection to Internet-based CD information servers, and global display options for the components' panels.
If you're looking for a single solution for all your audio and video playback needs, it would be hard to beat the breadth and capabilities of Jet-Audio 3.12. The shareware version has a trial period of 30 days and a registration fee of $29.
Parametric Equalizer Pro 2.5
No two computer-based audio systems sound exactly alike. Yet we tend to expect audio files to sound the same on every computer. To address this issue, you could, of course, buy an expensive stand-alone parametric equalizer to change your audio files' frequencies. Or instead, you could get the same result with Parametric Equalizer Pro 2.5.
Equalizers break an audio signal into separate banks of frequencies so you can beef up certain frequencies and cut back others. For example, you might bring out the bass and the flute in a song by boosting the low and high frequencies. Parametric Equalizer Pro provides five customizable filter banks: one low-frequency, three medium-frequency, and one high-frequency. You hear the results in real time, so you can tinker with the filter banks until you have the sound you want.
The high- and low-frequency filter banks include gain and frequency-cut controls; the three medium-frequency filter banks include gain, frequency, and bandwidth controls. These controls let you pinpoint which and how much of the frequencies will be affected. For example, if you don't have a subwoofer with your computer, you could bring up the low frequencies in your audio files to help compensate. Or if you have an audio file with a singer who is hard to hear, you could bring up the medium frequencies where the voice is most prominent.
A selection of presets, such as Bass Boost and Light Noise Filter, cover many of the more common uses for an equalizer. You can also save your own settings as presets. An auto-normalization setting saves your audio files at the optimum volume.
Although stand-alone parametric equalizers can be expensive, Parametric Equalizer Pro 2.5 gives you the chance to experiment with the technology without having to pay a lot of money. The registration fee is only $20.
Better than the Windows CD Player, CDmax downloads title, artist, and track information for your CDs.
Edit and add effects to your audio files with the industrial-strength audio-editing program Cool Edit 96.
Forget an important appointment? Use ItsTime 2.5a to set audio reminders for upcoming meetings.
Jet-Audio 3.12 may look like a component stereo system, but it's actually a multimedia-file control center.
Parametric Equalizer Pro 2.5 lets you customize your audio files by adjusting groups of frequencies.
Product Listing
CDmax 1.5.4
Clark Tisdale
www.mindspring.com/~clark_tisdale/CDmax
Filename: CDMAX.ZIP
Registration: Free
Cool Edit 96
Syntrillium Software Corp.
www.syntrillium.com
Filename: COOL32.ZIP
Registration: $50
ItsTime 2.5a
RKS Software
www.rks-software.com
Filename: ITST32.ZIP
Registration: $19.95
Jet-Audio 3.12
COWON System
www.cowon.com
Filename: JETAUD.ZIP
Registration: $29
Parametric Equalizer Pro 2.5
Anwida Soft
www.anwida.com
Filename: PARAPRO.ZIP
Registration: $20
