gHacks technology news » sound http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:22:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Reduce Sound Volume Over Time With Sweet Dreams http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/06/reduce-sound-volume-over-time-with-sweet-dreams/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/06/reduce-sound-volume-over-time-with-sweet-dreams/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:20:45 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/06/reduce-sound-volume-over-time-with-sweet-dreams/ If you are a user who likes to listen to music while slowly drifting of then Sweet Dreams might be the application that you have been waiting for. Most applications of this kind make use of a timer that shuts down the computer system or application. Sweet Dreams on the other hand is more sophisticated as it slowly reduces the sound volume of the computer system over time.

This is beneficial for users who feel irritated by the sound volume after some time of playing and those that want to reduce it to fall faster into sleep. The portable application will control the system volume of the operating system meaning it is compatible with all applications that are running on it.

The user can define the total duration of the process, the time the volume duration should begin and the target volume in the end. The duration can range from 5 minutes to 120 minutes while the sound volume can be set between 0 and 100%.

sweet dreams

The application will display a graph detailing the sound volume progression over the entire time. Sweet Dreams can furthermore perform one of the following actions after reaching the total duration: shutdown, switch off monitor, standby or hibernate.

English users should not be worried by the German homepage of the developer as the application itself has been completely translated into English.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/06/reduce-sound-volume-over-time-with-sweet-dreams/feed/ 15 iWow makes your music sound ‘wow’ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/10/iwow-makes-your-music-sound-wow/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/10/iwow-makes-your-music-sound-wow/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:09:19 +0000 Joe http://www.ghacks.net/?p=11086 iWOW is perhaps my favourite iTunes plug-in. It makes your sound, whether videos, podcasts or music, feel much more vibrant. To dramatically improve sound, the user must simply choose their form of speakers (surround, laptop speakers, headphones etc), the type of sound and if music its genre. This takes no audophile, but advanced options do exist.

iWOW exists for Windows, OS X and iPods. On OS X, only an iTunes plug-in is available. On Windows, either an iTunes plug-in or system-wide software are available. The system-wide software can obviously be used to improve sound in all applications, such as games. On an iPod, a hardware-based adapter is available which plugs into the iPod to improve its sound. I haven’t tested the iTunes version.

The software or iPod adapter are unfortunately not free. The iTunes plug-in costs $40, the system-wide software costs $50 and the adapter costs $80. This sounds expensive but it sometimes included in bundles and discounts, MacUpdate for example offered it in their bundle.

SRS Labs, the makers of iWOW, claims to create ‘an expansive sound stage’ and to ‘restore audio cues that are buried in the original source material’. I personally don’t understand what that means, but have heard the sound quality it produces… even on my laptop speakers!

The software, at least on the Mac, is very easy to install. All one must do is run it. It is then installed in iTunes.

The question is whether or not it is worth $40. 51 reviews on MacUpdate give it 4/5 on average.

A few features like ‘auto-detect’ are missing in version 3, but were present in version 2. SRS Labs promise that this will be offered in an update in a few weeks.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/10/iwow-makes-your-music-sound-wow/feed/ 0 Experience nature on your desktop http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/19/experience-nature-on-your-desktop/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/19/experience-nature-on-your-desktop/#comments Mon, 19 May 2008 15:45:33 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=4190 Depending on the task ahead I 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. Today I discovered the software Atmosphere Lite which more or less brings nature to your 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.

atmoshpere lite

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.

Tags: , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/19/experience-nature-on-your-desktop/feed/ 6 Creative receives some serious community bashing http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/29/creative-receives-some-serious-community-bashing/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/29/creative-receives-some-serious-community-bashing/#comments Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:05:57 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/29/creative-receives-some-serious-community-bashing/ Things are heating up over at the Creative forum where Creative Labs have issued a statement that forbids the user Daniel_K of providing X-FI sound card drivers for Windows Vista that fixed several issues and provided Vista users with the same functionality that Windows XP users were enjoying.

Daniel_K was also told to stop distributing drivers for sound cards that would enable features that were not intended for them. The community outcry is huge. The thread was started yesterday and it reached page 26 with most forum users vowing to never buy a Creative product again siding exclusively with Daniel_K.

I think the main point that is making it extremely frustrating for most users is the fact that one guy was able to fix driver issues while the Creative driver developer team failed. A smart move if you ask me would be to hire that guy right of the forum unless there is a reason why the development took that long.

The drivers are already spreading on various torrent websites and it seems that this is going to be a public relations nightmare for Creative.

Tags: , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/29/creative-receives-some-serious-community-bashing/feed/ 3 Soundsnap share free sound effects and loops http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/17/soundsnap-share-free-sound-effects-and-loops/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/17/soundsnap-share-free-sound-effects-and-loops/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:10:55 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/17/soundsnap-share-free-sound-effects-and-loops/ How does that sound ? A community that shares free sound effects and loops. That’s right, all of the sounds posted on the website by the community are free to use in your projects and websites. You do not have to be signed in to download the mp3 or wav files from Soundsnap so it’s as user friendly as it can get.

Sound loops and effects are listed in categories like Buttons, Comic & Film FX or Music Loops but can also be browsed using the tag cloud on the main page as well. More than 25000 sound loops and effects are available on Soundsnap starting with loops of just a few seconds to loops of several minutes.

The sound effects in each category can be sorted by various criteria such as duration (longest, shortest), most popular and highest rated.

soundsnap

Tags: , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/17/soundsnap-share-free-sound-effects-and-loops/feed/ 5 Set Global Shortcuts for your Music Player http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/10/set-global-shortcuts-for-your-music-player/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/10/set-global-shortcuts-for-your-music-player/#comments Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:43:03 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/10/set-global-shortcuts-for-your-music-player/ I was looking for a way to turn on and off Internet Radio while in applications that were running in fullscreen. I think I mentioned that I’m playing Team Fortress 2 at the moment with a few Buddies of mine. We use Teamspeak to communicate while playing. It happens that I’m the only one in Teamspeak which is why I start Internet Radio and leave it running in the background while playing alone.

When a Buddie of mine enters Teamspeak I have to turn Internet Radio off to be able to communicate with him normally. I have found a way to do just that, turn off Internet Radio or any other music from my music player but leave the sound output levels of Windows as they are.

XMPlay does that. All that needs to be done is to set two global variables in XMPlay which can be done by right-clicking the music player and selecting Options % Stuff from the menu. Click on the shortcuts tab in the left window and add the new shortcuts that you like.

I did add two: Current Track – Stop and Current Track – Play / Pause. I used ALT CTRL M and ALT CTRL N repsectively and set both shortcuts to global. This is done by selecting the shortcut afterwards and checking the “Global’ setting.

It is now possible to start and stop any music played in XMPlay in every other application in Windows. Even in games like Team Fortress 2. Very handy if you ask me.

Read More:

XMPlay
Teamspeak

Tags: , , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/10/set-global-shortcuts-for-your-music-player/feed/ 3 Record Sounds from any source http://www.ghacks.net/2007/02/09/record-sounds-from-any-source/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/02/09/record-sounds-from-any-source/#comments Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:56:46 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/02/09/record-sounds-from-any-source/ While Audacity is a great audio editing utility with the ability to record sounds and edit them afterwards it still felt a little bit overweight for the mere task of recording sounds fast on a computer. I found a freeware utility that can record sounds from any incoming source in various formats including ogg vorbis, monkey audio, mp3 and acm.

The best feature of Harddisk Ogg is that it sits in the tray once configured and you can start the recording with a single mouse click and end it with another one. The quality of the recorded audio can be configured in detail including bitrate, mono or stereo recording and encoding quality.

Harddisk Ogg offers several normalization modes that amplify the input signal to a constant volume. You need to download and move the lame encoder into the folder of Harddisk Ogg to be able to record mp3 files directly.

I would like to explain why a tool like Harddisk Ogg might be useful now or in the near future. Several countries have already laws in place that make it illegal to copy music from Cd’s if the CD is copy protected. They still allow however to record the songs using audio devices and compare this to the recording of radio with audio tapes.

This is also great if you want to rip audio from music videos that you found on the internet or from youtube videos.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/02/09/record-sounds-from-any-source/feed/ 6 Control the volume of your sounds easily http://www.ghacks.net/2006/10/18/control-the-volume-of-your-sounds-easily/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/10/18/control-the-volume-of-your-sounds-easily/#comments Wed, 18 Oct 2006 05:50:58 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/10/18/control-the-volume-of-your-sounds-easily/ Sounds on my computer seem to be different depending on the application that is used to play the sounds. Sometimes I have almost silent video playback and loud intros when playing games. What’s the matter with the differences ? Volumouse gives you immediate control of the volume on your computer making it possible to alter it without leaving the application that you are currently working with.

Once installed you can configure up to five rules that define when and how you are able to control the volume with your mouse wheel. By default two rules are already in place. You can change the volume with the mouse wheel by pressing ALT or by clicking the left mouse button. You might want to change this behavior if you want to use volumouse in games for instance. ALT and left mouse are often used for other actions and this could pose problems.

It is very easy to change the key that is used to change the volume or define other actions (program window must be active..). This is a very good way to use on conjunction with your video player. The rule could be: When my videoplayer is active I want to change the volume with the mouse wheel.

Very easy and simple to use, works with all windows operating systems starting with windows 98.

Tags: , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2006/10/18/control-the-volume-of-your-sounds-easily/feed/ 1