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ruby in steel

 

i-Sound WMA MP3 Recorder 6.60 Professional
$29.95
http://www.abyssmedia.com/
review
 

 

Recording sounds on your PC may not be as straightforward as you imagine. The Windows Sound Recorder can, with a bit of effort, record audio from a microphone, some other input device or Internet streaming radio. You can record from CD using RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. You may then need to use yet some other program to convert between audio formats and you may run into a dead-end when trying to record both sides of a Skype conversation.

In fact, with a bit of effort, and luck on your side, you may be able to record a Skype conversation using the good old Windows Sound Recorder. To do this you need to uncheck the option to ‘Let Skype adjust my sound device’ setting (In Skype, select Tools, Options, Sound Devices). Then in the Windows Volume Control, make sure that the Microphone Mute checkbox is unchecked. In the recording control, select ‘Wave Out Mix’ or ‘Stereo Mix’ or similar (the name varies). Now, make that Skype call and see if you can record. We are grateful to the developer of the i-Sound Recorder for providing this useful tip.

Abyssmedia’s i-Sound WMA MP3 Recorder cuts through this mess of applications and formats. It provides the ability to record any audio from your computer, including Skype, and convert to and from the MP3, OGG, WMA, APE and WAV formats. It can also re-record (legally, it says) protected multimedia formats such as M4P, WMA and AAC and save the recordings as MP3.


This simple front end is your interface to a powerful suite of audio recording and conversion tools

The interface of i-Sound is small and neat. To use it, you just load the program, set the recording volume by monitoring the animated sound-level bars and click the Record button. If you need to make adjustments to the recording format or the sound quality (for example, by selecting a sample rate or switching between mono and stereo), this can be done in a popup dialog box. You can also set other options such as the destination file folder for recordings and whether or not the i-Sound application should always stay on top of other windows.

There is a ‘VOX’ (Voice Activation System) feature which can automatically detect silences in tracks or conversations and trim out the pauses. An auto-splitter option lets you create timed tracks, with new audio files being created at pre-set intervals. A scheduler lets you make recordings at specific times or regular intervals - great if you want to record every broadcast of your favourite Internet radio show.


You can set up all kinds of sound and format options using the Recorder's Settings panel

Overall, this is a handy utility. While it does duplicate some features of programs which you already have, it not only simplifies many recording operations but also has useful format conversion capabilities.

Here is a sample recording. This is part of a track by The Jack Hylton Orchestra recorded from an audio stream. You can hear the track (and many others) in its entirely on http://www.jackhylton.com

If Skype recording is your principal requirement, you may also want to consider Pamela - a dedicated Skype recorder which has extra tricks such as auto-detection of Skype conversations and a Skype ‘voicemail’ auto-answer tool. It’s worth also pointing out that Pamela does not require the special audio configuration which I mentioned earlier. But if you have more wide-ranging recording and conversion needs, then the i-Sound recorder is a good all-round solution.

Huw Collingbourne

 

January 2006

 


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