Other neat software you should try
There are several other software programs we think are worth a look. These include the basic media players, some very useful utilities to help with different file formats, to some very clever products to let you create content or even grab talk radio and news programs to record for later portable listening.
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Basic Media Players
Grab these if you don't have them, primarily for listening to audio on the PC
CD Burners
These let you use your CD-R Drive to make Audio CDs from MP3 or .wav files.
StreamBox Ripper
Streambox ripper is the best format conversion software out there. With portable audio players only supporting 1 or 2 formats, this type of utility is vital to make sure you can listen to any type of audio you get your hands on. Streambox Ripper supports conversion from and to WAVE, Windows Media, and MP3 Files, includes great control over equalization, bitrates, and even a batch conversion feature.
Voquette Media Manager
This one is a hard one to figure out, but it at least claims to do some really cool things, if you can figure out how. Their goal is to let you build a list of pre-recorded internet radio programs that you would like to have downloaded daily and automatically placed on your portable device so it
will be loaded and ready to go when you are. Voquette appears to have a lot of content partners, but while the promise of this software is good, the actually usability leaves a lot to desire. It's drag-and-drop interface never quite seems to work the way you'd expect. They only support RIO's, MiniDisc Players, and 1 type of cassette player. Audio isn't loaded down as .wav or mp3, but a proprietory file, so unless you do all your audio in Voquette, that seems to be an issue. I've still not figured out how to get audio from the program to my Rio.
Total Recorder
This poorly marketed, sometimes clunky little shareware program does one clever thing, but does it pretty well. It lets you record any audio that is coming out of your soundcards output. Doesn't sound too useful until you realize that means you can record any internet radio content you'd like, such as news updates, talkshows, etc. The program is ugly and doesn't have many features I'd love to see, but it does something that is really hard to do otherwise.
Do you have a favorite piece of software our visitors would love? Let us know.
