Experience nature on your desktop

Martin Brinkmann
May 19, 2008
Updated • Dec 19, 2012
Music and Video
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6

Depending on the task ahead I tend to work best in complete silence, with Internet Radio or ambient sounds. It really depends on my mood and the level of concentration that is required to get the task done.I discovered the free software  Atmosphere Lite today which you can make use of to bring ambient relaxing sounds to your computer desktop.

The application provides different sound sets and graphics that go along well with each other to provide artificial nature right on your desktop. The lite version of the application is completely free to use and comes with ten different settings like Rainy Day, Deep Forest, Thunderstorm and Oceans Edge.

The quality of the sounds is pretty good and does not become boring or repetitive after a while. Each setting makes use of different sound samples that work well together. Samples can be added or removed during playback, like Light Wind and a Campfire to your Ocean sounds? No problem.

The sounds are divided into Background Sounds, like Rain, Night or Ocean and Random Sounds like Thunder Roll (six different !) and animals. Sounds can be recorded, the application makes use of the Windows Sound Recorder. I received an error but was able to record sounds normally with Audacity. Any other program that can record sounds directly from the sound card will do.

Atmosphere Lite is a nice application for those hours where you just want to relax. Could be very nice as a general background sound during night or breaks during the day. The two commercial versions of the product come with additional songs, longer loops and import functions.

One last remark. The Lite version comes with four so called Brainwaves that are supposed to stimulate the brain. Did not work for me though, found the four available ones rather annoying.

Both commercial versions are available as 21 day trial versions that you can download and install on your PC to test them before you make a buying decision.

 

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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on August 1, 2010 at 12:43 pm
    Reply

    Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?

  2. Mike J said on August 1, 2010 at 2:58 pm
    Reply

    Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.

    1. Martin said on August 1, 2010 at 3:39 pm
      Reply

      Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.

      1. Mike J said on August 2, 2010 at 2:30 pm
        Reply

        huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
        Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.

  3. myo said on August 1, 2010 at 5:52 pm
    Reply

    yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.

  4. Kishore said on August 13, 2010 at 2:55 pm
    Reply

    Error:
    Buidling font Cache pop-up

    Solution:

    Open VLC player.

    On Menu Bar:

    Tools
    Preferences

    (at bottom – left side)
    Show settings — ALL

    Open: Video
    Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
    Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”

    Save
    Exit

    Re-open – done.
    Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts

    Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc

    1. Martin said on August 13, 2010 at 3:10 pm
      Reply

      Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.

  5. javier said on August 14, 2010 at 1:50 pm
    Reply

    @Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
    I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.

    Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?

    I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…

    /thanks
    /j

  6. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,

  7. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:39 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.

    No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure

  8. Ted said on October 22, 2010 at 3:57 am
    Reply

    Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me

  9. Evan said on December 8, 2013 at 1:48 am
    Reply

    I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).

  10. Mike Williams said on September 6, 2023 at 1:26 pm
    Reply

    Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?

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