Our Spotlight focuses on the best sound software surprises that are available with excellent offerings from Equinux, JoeSoft, Freeverse and SmartSound. Organize your iTunes, crank up the quality of your MP3's or just record that award winning podcast, it's all here...
SongGenie“Analyze, Identify and Complete” your music collection whether you use iTunes or not with the newest release from equinux software . From going through your tracks with a fine toothed comb finding missing information to listing every album containing a specific track so you can be sure to get the right album art, if you want to make sure your entire music library is in perfect order this is the app for you! Because of the new data your tracks will have, Genius will work better as well; more information makes it easier for Genius to recommend songs or build playlists for you. It costs as much as your new Snow Leopard update but hey—isn’t it worth it to have all those Milli Vanilli tracks completed? Requires OS X 10.5 or higher.
SongGenie | Price: $29.95
CoverScoutThe folks at equinux have been busy bees lately, bringing you lots of options for keeping your music collection in check. If you hate how many covers are missing or just completely wrong when you run “Get Album Art” in iTunes then equinux’s CoverScout is the only way to fly. Not only can it help organize your online collection, but templates “from the leading manufacturers” allow you to print your chosen covers for the CD collection you’ve been accumulating for all these years. A highly specialized program, certainly, but one of the most highly rated and respected, and worth every penny if you need to have the album art for every track. Just like with SongGenie, you have to be running Leopard or higher.
CoverScout | Price: $39.95
Hear
A sound enhancement program specifically for Mac, JoeSoft's Hear does a fantastic job of increasing the quality of your music at a really affordable price. If you want to pump up the bass in your gaming, jack up the fidelity of your iTunes collection or set customized equalizer levels for any sound traveling out of your speakers or headphones Hear has a way for you to do it.
Between the Subwoofer feature that expands bass frequencies without the expensive speaker and the Maximizer, you’ll have all the booming bottom tones you need to fully enjoy your music. The Maximizer also increases the crispness of your treble to contribute to a more “live” sounding experience. An Ambience option helps here as well; you can add different reverb settings to mimic venues from phone booths—ok, some are just for fun—to concert halls.
And for those times when you’re rocking out with the volume maxed and your email alert goes off and ruins the moment, Hear has a solution: its Mixer function allows you to set volume controls by application so you don’t have to worry about anyone interrupting your alone time with Joni Mitchell. You can make Joni sound even better, too, with the most advanced equalizer for Mac. Built in peak limiters assure you won’t get too out of hand, but the amount of control you have means a perfectly customized experience every single time.
Hear requires OS 10.4 or higher, and—just so you know—does not support USB speaker systems. If you’ve got all that and a bunch of music that’s begging to be heard the way it the recording artist intended, check out this software. Its wide range of options mean that whatever your preference in music, you’ll be able to listen in an ideal environment of your creation.
JoeSoft Hear | Price: $49.95
Freeverse Sound Studio 3
The latest edition of Freeverse’s very popular software fixes a few bugs and adds some neat new features, but mostly stays the same recording and editing software we’ve loved for years. You know the saying: “If it ain’t broke…”
Now able to open and save more audio formats, Freeverse has also addressed some issues from the previous version: the Audio Unit plug-in problem (they weren’t being unloaded) has been fixed, as well as the Resample command not stopping playback. A memory leak with closing document windows has also been taken care of. Fresh updates include upping the sample rate converter quality to maximum, adding the Fade Special to the default toolbar, and making sure you can’t add a Graphic EQ or Fade Special point at an invalid position.
With the technical things aside, here’s what Sound Studio 3 is good for: recording professional sounding podcasts, music and other audio formats and editing them with easy to use, intuitive tools at a pro-sumer price point. All the basics of more “professional” software are included, but the tools are easy to figure out, so there’s a lot of power and ease at your disposal. From 32-bit floating point accuracy to sound effects to built-in effects features, this program makes your job as a recorder and editor so much easier. You can even edit iTunes song’s metadata! Sound Studio 3 gives you help where you need it, too: Suggested Recording Hardware sections teach you the finer points of audio recording if you need a little help.
This Freeverse software requires OS X 10.4 or higher, but the buggers are bright—the new release version is already compatible with Snow Leopard. Let the recording begin!
Freeverse Sound Studio 3 | Price: $79.99
SmartSound Sonicfire Pro 5
The newest release from our friends at SmartSound, Sonicfire Pro 5 is an updated version of their music scoring program. Aimed at professional visual creatives like film directors and TV producers, Sonic fire Pro 5 offers a quicker, cheaper way to score movies, slideshows, or any other video that needs music for atmosphere and effect.
You'll get access to an ever expanding, royalty free library of music (which is broken down into categories like "Fear and Uncertainty" or "Environments"), a slew of super intuitive features , and an optional plug in that links directly with your projects in Final Cut Pro. There are plenty of versions to choose from as well; from the basic Express Track to the comprehensive Scoring Edition you can decide how much program you need, and upgrading is easy.
Search features like Sensory Searching make it easy to narrow your search in the massive music library-find something close and then tell Sonicfire to bring you something faster, slower, more or less intense, or just show you more options in the same vein. Tap Tempo is a cool new feature, too...tap a beat out on your mouse and the program finds songs that match the speed of your tapping. The Scoring Edition comes with a lot more goodies like Mood Mapping (which allows you to change instrumentation to cement the ambiance of your video), Timing Control and Spotting Tools which allow you complete control over the length, atmosphere and punctuation of the music in your project.
www.smartsound.com | Price: Program ranges from $49.95 to $249.85 (includes Final Cut Pro plug in); the Mega Bundle includes ten albums of music and will set you back $498.85.
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iPad Costs
iSuppli Corp., which generally waits until it can actually get the new Apple product to estimate its production cost, has decided to forgo hands on examination in the case of the iPad. They have--from just looking at it, it's amazing--decided the base model only costs $219.35 for Apple to produce. According to AppleInsider the base model won't make Apple anywhere near as much profit as the 32 GB model with 3G wireless priced at $729...that one reportedly costs only $287.15 to produce.
That's some profit! No wonder Apple execs have said they'd stay nimble on pricing! With demand for the iPad under scrutiny and this week's news that the "Take Picture" hint was removed from the Address Book app in the iPad simulator even we are starting to wonder if it's not worth waiting for the 2nd generation.
Trust us, it's painful to say.
Google Challenges the Internet
"Think Big" indeed. This time, Google is setting its sights on the very way we transmit information and asking people from around the country to nominate their city or state to be included in an ultra-high speed open internet network of Google's building. Set to include anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 people, this network will boast 1GB per second fiber optic connections that Google reps are hoping will bolster developer creativity, test new ways to build the infrastructure and challenge internet service providers to band together to create a better internet instead of shunning change to maintain their bottom lines.
This is huge news, and we hope our city is on the receiving end of the new interwebs...here's the official Google Blog if you want to read it all in detail or submit your community.
Dogs on Twitter
From the country that's given us karate and karaoke comes the newest iPhone app: that's right, Japan's Index Corp. has announced the release of "Bowlingual," the dog emotion translator. Latest in a long line of technological advances, this app (to be released this summer) analyzes Fido's bark and puts it into one of six categories, like "needy." Or "happy." Then it adds a caption based on the emotion and allows you to snap a photo of your pooch in its current mood; as if that weren't enough it can modify that photo to enlarge your pet's eyes...oh...so cute.
Seriously, the app is set to sell for $5 and will post your pet's barks to Twitter. Silly? Yes. Fun? Probably!!
Will you let your dog speak his mind? Tell us here.
