Foobar 2000 isn’t what it sounds like

Lifehacker has instructions on how to customize the freeware media player Foobar 2000 to suit your own tastes.  This might be the answer you’ve been seeking instead of iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Foobar 2000 is an advanced freeware audio player:

Features

• Audio formats supported natively: MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC / Ogg FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, AU, SND, CDDA, WMA.
• More audio formats supported through optional components, official or third-party.
• Full unicode support.
• Customizable user interface layout (new in version 0.9.5). View screenshots…
• Advanced tagging capabilities.
• Support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component. Read more…
• ReplayGain support - both playback and calculation.
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
• Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.

The Lifehacker instructions include some favorite add-ons for the program to customize it and add functions.

Bluetooth headphones?

I noticed some Bluetooth headphones while shopping… hmmm…. maybe I need to get Bluetooth capability so I can go wireless on my headphones, I thought.

But wait — Bluetooth converts files to a “lossy” codec, meaning data is lost, when sending wirelessly.  Since most codecs such as MP3 are already “lossy” formats, you are losing a lot more data.  So, the sound may be well below the quality you want to accept.

Wired headphones still deliver the best sound, in most cases.

Recommended by PC Magazine, June 2008.

Skreemer hunts for MP3s

MakeUseOf has a post on Skreemer, the search engine for MP3s.

• Search and stream MP3s for free.
• Advanced Search: Filter MP3s by length, bitrate, title, album, artist or genre.
• Option to download any listed MP3 using ‘right-click’ -> ‘Save Link As’ option.
• Share and embed MP3s on your Blog or social networking profile (Facebook, Myspace, …).
• Add SkreemR search to Firefox Search bar (incl. auto suggestion).
• For each song view related YouTube videos, Flickr images, and Wikipedia entries.
• Songbird users: search SkreemR right from the Songbird media player.

This is for “DRM-free music, podcasts, speeches and much more”.

Songza - find and listen to music

Songza is “the music search engine & internet jukebox”

“Unlike KaZaa or Bit Torrent, Songza users can only listen to songs, not download them. And unlike Last.fm or Rhapsody, Songza permits users to choose exactly the song or artist they want to hear, and does not require them to subscribe or pay for its services.”  “Songza pays for licenses from all the major performing-rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC), who then pay the publishers and writers in proportion to the number of plays they get on Songza.”

There’s also a Firefox add-on here to allow you to search Songza.

HandBrake for converting DVDs

Need to convert a DVD to a computer format?

HandBrake can convert video from a number of sources, including a DVD and a DVD image, and audio too, including MPEG audio tracks. It can convert to a digital file in a variety of formats, including MPEG-4, AVI, OGM for video, or AAC, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis for audio.

You can select individual DVD chapters, get subtitles, and have plenty of control over your recording, including selecting the bit rate, maximum file size for video, and bit rate and sample rate for audio.

Mashable list of essential music and audio links

Mashable.com has a list of 90+ essential music and audio websites.

These cover music discovery tools like LastFM and Pandora, social networks, and more.

Pick a station, any station….

TUN3R.com has an interesting method of connecting you to web radio stations….

You slide the orange needle around, or click on one of the innumberable graphics, and find all sorts of broadcasts.

Who knew there was a station called “Secret Agent: The soundtrack for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life. For Spys and P.I.’s too!” or “Radio Zs - The Hungarian Jewish Radio” or all these others?

If you can’t find something here to listen to, you’re not trying!

iTunes hacks

Okay, so you use iTunes… because you have an iPod.  But what about those of us that don’t want to be locked into that?

Komando.com has hacks to modify iTunes for those little improvements you’ve been wanting in it, such as the ability to use iTunes to sync with non-iPod players.  Backup your playlists.  Access your music library from across the web.

All freeware.

Comparing media players

Wikipedia has an entry with a big comparison of media players for audio and video files.

If you want to know what’s free and what’s not, what operating system it runs on, what features are in which players, and what formats each player covers, this looks like a pretty comprehensive list. It even gives the versions of the players evaluated. An impressive effort!

Songerize for trying out music

MakeUseOf has a review of Songerize.

The founders refer to Songerize “as SeeqPod’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. And that’s exactly what it is, you just enter the name of your artist and let Songerize choose and play one of his/her tracks. Apart from that, Songerize also allows you to search for by title and (if found) listen to them. You can’t do much here, there are no playlists or add to favorites options.

MeeMix internet radio

MeeMix is a new Internet radio site, similar to Pandora.

• Create dynamic play lists (Mee stations) using only artist name or favorite song title.
• Customize stations further by using ‘mood’ (relax < — > party) and ’surprise me’ sliders.
• Broadcast and share your stations with friends.
• Rate playing tunes (from -6 to +6 ) to improve music recommendations.
• Create and save as many music stations as you want.
• Browse stations created by other users: by genre (Rock/Pop, Alternative, HpHop/ R&B, Metal and Country/Folk), by popularity, Top 100, etc.
• Do you have a Twitter account? Twitt currently playing songs to your profile.
• Totally free and legal.

Recommended by Clif Notes Newsletter.

Wavosaur for music editing

Wavosaur is an open source, freeware sound editor, audio editor, wav editor software for editing, processing and recording sounds, wav and mp3 files. Wavosaur has all the features to edit audio (cut, copy, paste, etc.) produce music loops, analyze, record, batch convert.

Recommended by Clif Notes Newsletter.

RockBox is open source for several brands of MP3 players

RockBox is open source software that runs on an increasing number of MP3 player brands and models.

“Rockbox aims to be considerably more functional and efficient than your device’s stock firmware while remaining easy to use and customizable. “

Create music tracks and mixes yourself

TrakAx “TrakAx empowers you to create professional music and video mixes in an easy-to-use and fun environment. Whether you are creating a music track for your MySpace page or a video for YouTube, TrakAxPC is the most powerful FREE application on the web.” Has trakPacks by sound types and instruments.

[Note: this was not tried by the recommending eletter; use at your own risk.]

Real Alternative to Real Player

Real Media files are normally intended to be played by Real Player, and might not be playable on Windows Media Player or other players.   However, you don’t always have to get Real Player installed.

Real Alternative is another way to play Real Media/Real Player files.

Recommended by Smart Computing, January 2007.

Pandora lets you try out music

Pandora is a great way to try out new music, based on what you’ve liked in the past. The Music Genome Project classifies music by a variety of parameters, and then compares what you tell it you like to other music that has similar parameters. You “train” Pandora by accepting or rejecting what it finds. Rather like “computer dating” for music, the system can find new music along with your favorites, and open you up to new groups and artists. You can also divide your likes into certain types of music (”Stations”), so if you want to listen to vocals, or instrumentals, or jazz, or classical, you can set up what you like in your custom “station” group, and choose your preference for the moment (for example, you might not want to listen to rap while trying to type a research paper!).

OpenPandora Open Pandora is a Windows desktop front end for the Pandora music scheme. Features include: hide to tray; popup tray notification balloon; full control from tray icon; control with multimedia keyboard; global shortcuts; mini Player; integration with Last.fm; integration with Microsoft Messenger; integration with Xfire; lyrics, and more. (recommended infopackets newsletter)

Lifehacker has 15 Ways to Get More Out of Pandora, with add-ons, tips, and links to software.

Zamzar goes for the conversion

Zamzar will convert a number of formats to other formats, for free, and email you a link to the new format’s file.

Zamzar does documents, images (graphics), music (audio/sound), video, and compressed formats — far too many to list. Check the list for all the current files.

While you do have to wait for the email to get the link to your converted file, it’s free and will convert things like Real Player files to mp3, and Windows .wma to mp3, and so on.

It will also convert YouTube videos to formats that work in PowerPoint.

Recommended by Tech Support Alert newsletter.

MP3, WMA, other music file players - some are compatible with certain devices, services, files, while others are not. Find what you can use with which software and hardware at PlaysForSure.com and avoid buying or using the wrong ones together.

Super converts media files

Super is a freeware program whose name is an acronym for “Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer.” It’s recommended by a number of sources, and looks like a handy tool for converting files for use in one application to another.

The site warns: “Do NOT purchase a copy of SUPER © from anyone, whether they are providing it on a CD/DVD, by email, by indicating a download link or by any other means. SUPER © is 100% FREE to download and to use. Any attempt to sell SUPER © such as on eBay, is THEFT. Violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. SUPER © is a FREEWARE that cannot be sold under any circumstances.”

What it can do:
* SUPER © IS UNIVERSAL as it supports a wide variety of input/source file format to play
or encode (to & from) without any additional third party software. Supported input source file formats are:

Video formats

• 3gp/3g2 (Nokia,Siemens,Sony,Ericsson)
• asf
• avi (DivX,H263,H263+,H264,XviD,MPEG4,MSmpeg4 etc..)
• dat
• fli, flc, flv (used in Flash)
• mkv, mpg (Mpeg I,Mpeg II), mov (H263,H263+,H264,MPEG4 etc..), mp4 (H263,H263+,H264,MPEG4)
• ogg, qt
• rm, ram, rmvb
• str (Play Station), swf (Flash)
• ts (HDTV)
• viv, vob
• wmv

Audio formats

• aac, ac3, amr
• mmf, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpc
• ogg
• ra
• wav, wma

* AviSynth Script Files: avs. Let you specify advanced encoding commands using AviSynth scripts!

* SUPER © supports the conversion (encoding both ways, to & from ) of ALL the listed formats.

It allows you to extract the audio portion of a video file and convert it to a ring tone for your cell phone, convert your video for use on YouTube or convert YouTube for viewing elsewhere, convert computer game files, convert any video to an animated .gif file, convert RealMedia files (.RM .RAM .RMVB .RA) to other formats, and plays any of these files.

MP3 file searching with Clickster

Clickster is a search engine for legally available MP3 files.  Recommended and reviewed in  Clif’s Notes Newsletter.

• Search and Download MP3’s from the Internet (NOT Peer-2-Peer)
• Rip Tacks from thousands of Internet Radio Stations
• Rip Tracks from MySpace Music
• Compile Playlists and embed them, with player, into own pages
• Download Tracks Directly onto iPod or MP3-Player
• Clickster can be run from a USB Data-Stick