Audiotools

Unrelated Inventions

90%

Editor Review

Version 2.2 reviewed by Mitch Bechtel - 03/12/99

Audiotools is truly great software. It accomplishes the authors goal of creating a single efficient and easy to use program that directly records and processes audio from any source and turns out a nice sounding wave file.

Installation

The installation is just a matter of running the self-extracting executable you download. It's nice to see an installation that doesn't start by making you wait for InstallSheilds "setup wizard" to load.

Making a Recording

The main window, displayed on start-up, allows you to easily setup the basic input and output settings for recording your new wave file(s). This includes setting a source which can be either a wave file or sound card input and setting a destination filename. It uses the destination filename as a base for generating consecutively numbered files for each track as it records.

After the basics have been setup, you can pull up the properties window from the menu. This window has 7 tabs with settings for noise reduction, parametric EQ (as shown below), stereo/mono conversion, automatic track start/end detection, gain, noise gate and DC Bias. Audio input/file analysis can also be used to automatically determine some of these settings for you.

Once the properties are all setup, you cue up your music (if you aren't using a file as the source) and click the Rec button. The program immediately starts recording, processing and writing the wave file directly to the destination you specified. When track ends, the program automatically detects the silence, advances the track number and starts writing the next wave file. If the automatic track detection doesn't work because songs aren't divided by silence or can't be detected, you can manually click the Track button instead.

When it's all finished, there will be one wave file for each track recorded and processed in the destination folder you specified, ready for listening, burning to CD, or converting to MP3.

Bugs/Stability

I tested the shareware trial version on a Pentium 200 with a Sound Blaster AWE32 and encountered no problems. There are supposevly Windows NT issues that should be fixed in the current beta, but I did not test the beta or use Windows NT.

Final Analysis

A great program for recording and cleaning up audio from a sound cards input or wave file. The interface is straight forward and doesn't waste extra screen space. Without going over-board there is a handful of useful settings that all work transparently during the recording once they have been setup (no watching percent done status bars). It is not the most powerful or feature packed software on the market, but I highly recommend it to the average audio listener that wants to transfer their records or tapes into the digital realm, especially at Autiotools more than reasonable price.