14 Great Programs You Didn't Even Know You Needed
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Multimedia Fun
Wavosaur
So, after a heavy session of AC/DC MP3s, you return to work until ... Jeez! What was that? That was an ordinary beep indicating an error--only it played at a volume so high that at first you thought you were being shot at.
MP3 music and Windows event sounds simply can't get along on the same PC, unless you have Wavosaur, a free sound editor that includes a batch operation to lower the volume of all the .wav files in a folder by 6dB. Doesn't sound like much at first; you may have to run your event .wav files through it a couple of times. (Be sure to make backups in case you overdo it.) Wavosaur is so simple to use and works so quickly that in minutes you'll have a respectably decorous set of sounds that you could take to a Zamfir concert.
And did I mention that Wavosaur edits, processes, and records sounds, .wav files, and MP3 files? Wavosaur has all you need to edit audio, produce music loops, analyze, record, and batch-convert.
J. River Media Center
J. River Media Center is the ultimate in not just playing music but also creating music and audio libraries, editing MP3 tags, editing file names, and even editing the music itself.
You won't find a lot of difference in how PC-based music players make your tracks sound; speakers are a lot more important. The things that really differentiate software are the tools a program has for organizing a music collection, plus the player's versatility.
J. River Media Center wins on both counts. The "Media" in its name is significant: It applies the same organization to photo collections, movie collections, and even your TiVo content. It's the only sane way I've found to manage an iPod. I'm not sure why Media Center takes a backseat to Winamp and Microsoft's Windows Media Player; perhaps that's because its name sounds too much like "Media Player." Whatever the reason, give your ears and your sense of organization a treat with this jukebox hero.
This is a $40 shareware program.
Download J. River Media Center
Azureus
Azureus is a BitTorrent client, which means that it's your window to the growing world of peer-to-peer file sharing, an ingenious system that sows thousands of little bits of files throughout the Internet so that people can use programs like Azureus to download them and piece them back into songs, movies, or applications.
Azureus is different from most torrent clients in that it's open source, it's intelligently and artfully designed, and it offers gobs of help. Plus, click a button, and out pops Vuzes--not "vu-zes," but "views." It's a sort of slick version of YouTube with videos that have high production values. Some are free, and some, such as reruns of Fat Actress, aren't.
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