6 Free Software Every Audiophile Should Download

A

admin

Audioholics Robot
Staff member
How often is it that you can get something for your system for nothing? Almost never. This article covers our six favorite free pieces of software that we think every audio enthusiast should download and try out. From CD ripping to improving your ability to critically listen, this list has something for everyone. This list doesn't cover everything out there, so read through and let us know what your favorite software is.


Discuss "6 Free Software Every Audiophile Should Download" here. Read the article.
 
S

shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
Nice article. Audacity is a internet treasure, seriously that would be a $200+ program if they charged money for it. One of my favs free listening programs is winamp and Nevi's EQ for winamp, a handy-dandy 256 band EQ plugin which is very easy to use. I like to use it to give a nice bass boost to bass in some electronic music, and I have all kinds of saved settings for whatever I feel like listening too.
 
BoredSysAdmin

BoredSysAdmin

Audioholic Slumlord
RIP Winamp....

Start switching to Foobar2000 :) Also free and more powerful
 
Ponzio

Ponzio

Audioholic Samurai
Audacity has been in my tool kit, as a music collector, since 2006 and recently I employed EAC, after a members recommendation. Both programs are at the top of the food chain in their respective fields as far as I'm concerned. I'm looking forward to trying out the other programs admin also recommended. :) Good article.
 
haraldo

haraldo

Audioholic Spartan
My whole music library is ripped with EAC, works fine for me also with Wine/Ubuntu :p
Used Audacity only to make ringtones :D
 
I

Irishman

Audioholic
Agreed! Audacity is pretty incredibly full-featured, when put up against paid or free apps.

Using it on my late 2012 iMac now.
 
Ponzio

Ponzio

Audioholic Samurai
Audacity is also a great tool to capture the "sound out" audio signal for streaming live web broadcasts or any other audio signal.
 
J

jasoncorey

Audiophyte
Another option for technical ear training

Harman's ear training application is great. Here is another free technical ear training app that I wrote - scroll part way down this page for the Mac and Windows download links:

www.technicaleartraining.com

There are practice/test modules for EQ, compression, expansion, distortion, reverb, as well as a mid-side listening module.
 
rojo

rojo

Audioholic Samurai
A few other free utilities:

ImgBurn -- excellent free CD / DVD burning software. Mastering an audio CD isn't exactly intuitive unless you know where to look (Tools --> Create CUE File); but once you know, it works exceptionally well. You can tweak pre-gaps, set CD-TEXT values, and drag and drop any media for which Windows has the appropriate DirectShow filters. If you also install the DirectShow 5.1 Filter Pack, you'll be able to add FLAC, ALAC, OGG, and other types of media files not supported otherwise to your CUE file, and ImgBurn will automatically handle turning them all into CD audio when you're ready to burn a disc.

CueTools is another good CD ripper similar to EAC that'll auto compress to your choice of lossless (wav, flac, alac, etc.) or lossy (mp3, ogg, etc.), download metadata and cover art from freedb.org and elsewhere, and is very easy to use.

dupeGuru Music Edition is a tool to scan your media files for duplicates. It finds them not only based on file name and metadata, but also based on musical content, which is handy if the same song is encoded as a WAV in one location and an MP3 elsewhere, even if they're named differently. It's available for Windows, OS X and Linux.

There are dozens of free uPnP media servers available, each with its strengths and weaknesses. My favorite for the moment is MinimServer, available for many platforms as it's Java-based. Be advised that if you're running a 64-bit operating system, you'll probably have to go to www.java.com to download the x64 Java runtime environment. Anyway, what sets MinimServer apart is its unique way of organizing your media, what the author calls "intelligent browsing". From the site:

"Intelligent Browsing in MinimServer allows you to make any combination of selections in any order. For example, you could search for a violin concerto by artist, then composer, then conductor, then orchestra, then album. Alternatively, you could search first by composer, then select violin concertos, then artist, then orchestra, then conductor (or any other order of selection). At each step you see all the music that matches your previous selections."

But beyond that, for the most part, it behaves the way a uPnP server should. It serves FLAC, ALAC, MP3, WAV, and a few other media types without transcoding if you wish (unlike some servers that indiscriminately transcode everything whether you want it transcoded or not); or it can optionally transcode to 16- or 24-bit PCM should you need it. It serves metadata and artwork correctly. And it's quick to set up. All you really need to do is run it, go into its options, and point the "contentDir" value to your media location. All other config options are, well, optional; but the default behavior works well enough for most people without tweaking.
 
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M

mychaelp

Enthusiast
Thanks for the article. I had forgotten about EAC from many years ago. Installed again now and love it.
 
M

mr sarnoff

Audioholic Intern
Another up vote for 2 essentials >> Audacity and IMG burn :p
 
B

bulesky

Audiophyte
If you want to free download the alternative to Foobar2000 for Mac andindows to play MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, Opus, FLAC, etc and convert between any audio formats.I suggest Avdshare Video Converter
 
afterlife2

afterlife2

Audioholic Warlord
Just DL Foobar. Any plugin for a Rock preset on Foobar? Is Foobar considered the best still for music playback? Musicbee does a good job as well.
 
3db

3db

Audioholic Slumlord
I've been using Audacity for a very long time. Easy to use.
 

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