Every day we offer FREE licensed software you’d have to buy otherwise.
HD Audio Recorder was available as a giveaway on December 24, 2009!
With the use of HD Audio Recorder you can record, convert, save and send by the Internet your audio recordings easily!
Audio is recorded using hardware acceleration and features available in High Definition Audio Sound cards and drivers. Lacking features are emulated by internal audio engine to record sound on legacy hardware as well.
This product has got various awards and positive user comments in sound recording sphere. HD Audio Recorder was created to improve and make recording process simple and help share your recordings with anybody in the Internet.
Record "What You Hear" feature records any sound that is currently playing on your computer.
Windows XP, Vista, 7 (x32/x64)
3.35 MB
$29.95
when I click on more I get sent to an iobit advanced system care site and not the usual pros and cons and evaluation.
why?
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Merry Jesus-mas Aschraf, you Muslim heathen terrorist you. Hope you have a great holiday season dude. Here's to a good 2010.
Jimmy
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Mike (#30) already mentioned Wavosaur - they also make Streamosaur http://www.wavosaur.com/streamosaur/ a very basic (and limited) stream recorder that can save to wav or mp3 (providing you already have the lame dll in you system folder or download it and put it in the same folder as Streamosaur). Both Wavosaur and Streamrecorder are tiny applications (portable too). I totally forgot about Wavosaur earlier when I was getting stupid with downloading and testing inferior recorders! Wavosaur is very powerful if you check out all the plugins available for it.
Oh, and Mike - Happy Holidays and thanks for your comments over the years.
Regards, Damian
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personally, i think this is a great program. been looking for a viable alternative to replay music for ages and now i've found it. thanks to all the geezers who operate GOTD.
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This program is limited in its functionality and there are free alternatives to this, such as Audacity. Audacity offers more file formats to save to, more editing options, and more recording options. What I don't like about HD Audio Recorder is that it forces you to use a certain mp3 bitrate and doesn't even offer to save to a different file format (m4a, ogg...)
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very good can record the speakers
Well isn't that something! Thanks for the info.
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@Fubar, #35:
It's all right. I let myself go, not a wise thing to do, but like you got irritated, it happened to me too. After submitting and taking a breath I found myself amazed by my premature reaction. I guess it's just a human thing that can happen to all of us.
I always valued your comments and I'm glad to be back on earth.
It is X-mas-eve here in Europe, I wish you all a merry X-mas and Fubar do stay coming back.
Familytime now, have a good one....
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A typical monitor is now much larger than ever before and some of us run at 120 dpi. On some programs, such as this one, this causes information in windows to be malformatted and for controls to be off-screen. The developer who doesn't bother to test with higher screen resolutions should as a matter of rule, include scrollbars. This is an example of careless programming.
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After rebooting, more output options did appear, so HD Audio Recorder will do more than WAV and MP3. And as others have noted, there are annoying little bugs in the UI.
#26, ALF, clearly, many people found your comments useful. I was irritated with the numerous completely wrong comments which I mentioned in my first post. As for the update question, you're braver than I with your data to test that. As you stated, GOTD terms preclude updates, and I don't let unheard-of companies which hide their identities, among other red flags, send data out from my computer. A number of GOTD offerings have performed update checks without your permission or the ability to turn it off. As I've stated previously, it would be possible to design a very secure OS, but I don't see a practical way to build up the code base required to compete against Microsoft and Linux.
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I ran a test on an unactivated version and twice it stopped my recording at 0:01:26:15. Just shy of 1 1/2 minutes and 33:45 seconds shy of the advertised 2 minutes! Still can't send by internet unless of course I save it and attach it to an e-mail.
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FWIW, there were some earlier comments re: run as admin in Vista/7...
In a perfect world you shouldn't have to bother, & yes, in a perfect world Windows would be more secure than it is, though in many cases that added security would mean more hoops for the user to jump though when they wanted to install any software. It is what it is, & with that in mind...
The guy behind Sysinternals has a number of articles posted on Microsoft's site for anyone really interested in the details of what & why there's UAC & the occasional need to run as admin.
I prefer to treat it as a fact of life. I've got some new, fairly high dollar apps that won't run in 7 64 otherwise. Running them as admin is no less secure AFAIK than running them in XP Pro. I'm not about to 1) do without them, or 2) throw the money I spent away. It's not because of a lack of developer resources or skill [they're Sony apps], so I have to assume some of the difficulty is because of Microsoft & Windows itself.
In a nutshell, since I have to "run as admin" software costing well over $1k [if purchased retail new], I'm certainly not going to quibble about GOTD's Activate.exe, or any app from a company I'm pretty sure is a bit smaller than Sony. ;?P
It is what it is...
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I love other software options (like Audacity) but, sorry, freakin' Lenovo (with MS) disabled "What You Hear" recording feature on their latest laptops (T6x, T400...).
This software is, sadly, one of few which allows you to record a mixer, not only a mic. And this and only this makes this software UNIQUE and I'm more than grateful for that.
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I put this program on 2 different XP machines. Both installed OK and can convert to some formats but not others. One thing I could not get to work is the Send By Internet function. When I click, I get message "Source or destination format is not supported for this conversion". Also, I'd like to know where these audio files named "Today at whatever time" are stored.
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After backing up my registry & setting a restore point in XP Pro SP3 32, I ran GOTD's Activate.exe, then fired up InstallWatch Pro & ran HD Audio Recorder's setup file. The result: HD Audio Recorder is pretty much harmless. Inside the setup.exe file is a Windows Installer [.msi] file -- most all changes to the registry were caused by Windows Installer, which also adds a folder & files to your Windows Installer folder. The app itself is a single .exe file, & the only thing it adds is a folder under All Users\Application Data. As far as any potential for mal-ware, it's always possible but I trust GOTD to weed out that sort of thing.
Now being harmless in this case has a downside -- since it doesn't install it's own driver, some folks [mostly those with laptops] still won't be able to record the audio they hear, despite claims on the app's web site... if you can't record speaker output [i.e. playing files] now, this app won't change that.
I didn't see anything special that HD Audio Recorder brings to the party. The HD part IMHO could be confusing. HD Audio is a hardware spec [like SATA, IDE, USB etc], not adding anything really in the way of quality -- HD video is at a minimum bigger (higher resolution, more data etc), but for audio quality the *HD* is meaningless. HD Audio Recorder does allow you to record at higher sampling rates & bit depth, But, if your hardware can, chances are you've already got better apps to record with.
[Please note: To get any benefit from recording at higher sampling rates (24 bit 96kHz for example), hardware & software need to maintain that rate from start to finish (though as a last step downsampling to 44.1 for CD, 48 for DVD etc is common and acceptable). That means no internal up or down sampling along the way. Many souncards/chips & unfortunately some apps work internally at 48/16, and some may still be stuck at 44.1/16, so you actually lose quality trying to record at 96/24 because of all the back & forth conversions.]
Mentioning hardware acceleration can also IMHO be misleading. All sound cards/chips take some audio processing load off the CPU -- some cards (&/or audio chips/circuitry on the m/board) do more work than others in this respect. In most cases what audio hardware doesn't do, software & the CPU make up for. When it comes to HD Audio Recorder, I think claiming to take advantage of hardware acceleration is like saying Notepad takes advantage of your video card's hardware acceleration -- technically it does because you do see the program window on-screen... personally I just think it's misleading.
That all said, just recording audio is relatively easy when it comes to software coding & design -- pay big money & you'll get more features, but essentially nothing when it comes to quality... that's up to your hardware. HD Audio Recorder is one of the simplest to use audio recording apps that I've ever seen. If you don't need added features & like the way it works, I can't see any reason not to keep it.
Alternatives: If you want/need multi-track, check out the free Traverso. If you want/need access to a lot of FX, look at the free app, Wavosaur. If you're mainly after conversion [i.e. encoding to mp3 etc] LameXP might well fit the bill. [all avail. at videohelp.com] If you want to try Audacity, but are confused/worried about the pros & cons debated every time it's mentioned, check out the portable version at portableapps.com [you don't need the portable app package to run it], or download the .zip file version -- either way no big install or un-install issues, as you can just delete the folder if you don't like it.
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Tried 3 times to install on win 7 with no luck.Yes I tried as administrator.
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Very few alternatives properly record streams on Win 7. Audacity and My MP3 fail and I've only found a few paid programs (like Wondershare) that will. This will, so it's a keeper. And, nope, it's not "just a front end" for built-in programs
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@Fubar, #15 (my former comment I should have written #16):
I Quote "Wow, what a bunch of useless, useless comments (9 that have cleared moderation) at the time I post this."
I had comments there: #4 and #6. Though you didn't name anyone specific, I am tempted to take this personal, just because I was among those nine comments and you were not too specific.
I do appreciate your insights, though you're not knon for very polite comments to put it mildly, but I do think that I did address something of importance.
So tell me Fubar, what part was causing the pain? Or afterall did you not mean all 9 comments?
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@Alexander, #19:
I do appreciate your actions very much (this is the first thing that I want to stress), but how can you be sure "there will be a check box to disable notifications in Update notification window"?
I dare doubting that very much. This was not even in the answer you got.
Basically , I don't like when controls are taken away (#15), but even when I was going to update, I have to update always to the latest version, over and over again, as soon a new version is there, in order to get rid of the nagging. So much about my choise to update or not.
About activation staying valid after updating, well I want to believe the answer of HDaudiorecorder, but what still is bothering me is in my comment #6. The trial-version does not get activated (it needs something else) and the GAotD-version does get activated, over and over and over again. This is a fact! Try it. I used Returnil.
Activate.exe writes some data in the registry. These data are checked when the application starts-up. If the correct reg.data exists in registry the application goes in full-registered mode but if not, it starts in the crippled trial-mode.
When I go updating I will only have the reg.data from GAotD (through activate.exe) in my registry. Already at this moment these data do not evaluate as valid by the trial-version. Why should that be in the future?
I find this rather alarming. It is not that I don't want to believe you or even HDaudiorecorder, but the facts are suggesting the opposite.
Put together the way it connects to the internet whithout consulting me, the way it manipulates my choise of freedom to update or not, the answer given while the facts are suggesting against that now, I just don't want it.
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"USEFUL BUT QUIRKY"
My bottom line is this is a useful program for me, since I don't have a really finely tuned ear, but do want to record off Vista "Playback" devices sometimes.
But ... a bug!
In the "review" screen. It does not play the recording I select! (I have recordings made at 8:30, 8:35 and 8:37. The default is the first one, 8:30. I want the latest, the 8:37 recording, so I select it, Then I click Play. The bubble in the time bar starts moving, everything looks good, THEN the selection jumps back to the 8:30 recording and that one starts playing.) Well, a workaround is to save the recording somewhere, and it asks "Play the saved file?" which works, but I go ahead and access the file with WMP or Audacity and that works too.
Call that "hack number two".
Because "hack number one" had been necessary!
Yes, there had been ANOTHER BUG ...
When it starts up, it says "Start your work by selecting recording device below." Okay, I do that. Then it sits there. Huh? There is no "Next", no "Click to record", no little red circle ...
How to get to "record mode"? I had to go to Playback mode ("to review your recent recordings") before I could see a "Go to Recording Mode" command.
So you need a "hack" to get the thing to work in the first place.
I am glad for all the comments. I understand that this is attempting to access the internet when I record. I had to wonder ... if I am not connected to the net, when I press "record" will it sit there and access-access-access, and then timeout, and THEN record? Thankfully, no. I tried a recording while disconnected, to see if that incurs a "network timeout". It starts recording immediately, so they were smart enough to not let it slow me down while trying to access some web site.
Bottom line, again -- Useful program, but I am overlooking (1) problems in the interface, (2) the reported internet accesses this may be making, and (3) the reported possibility that its "automatic update" might change this to a trial version sometime. I am not sure I will keep this -- for recording off the net, I have a Firefox plugin. For recording locally, well, I obviously start with a local copy or am using a vista Recording device.
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OOPS, I misspoke (and misunderstood what Fubar, #21) was saying. Now I understand his message and, no, the developer does not advise to right-click as I do. Sorry about that, Fubar and others.
Anyway, it's always valuable to learn new things, for sure.
Best,
Happy Person
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#20(Fubar) - I appreciate your words of wisdom - but (as you know) my advice to people is simply based on what the developer recommends (in the zip file instructions - and it would seem to me the developer would know best as to how its own program should be installed on Vista computers, given their expert knowledge of their underlying software structure and architecture. It's the developer's guidance, not mine, and I clearly indicate this in my comments.
Anyway, I know you mean well......
By the way, happy, healthy holidays and new year to all.
May the new year bring serenity and peace to everyone (and, hopefully, no more wars in the world). One can dream & hope.
Best wishes,
Happy Person
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#16, HappyPerson, advising people to right-click everything and Run as an Administrator is a terrible idea. Lately, the GOTD offerings have been unclear what to do. Installing from an administrator account and running as an administrator are not the same thing. Running as an administrator not only gives the program more permission to do damage, but generally prevents per-user virtualization, which is the mechanism Vista uses to protect itself and users from bad coding (actually, it's due to Windows having never been designed and allowing applications to do whatever they wanted). Similarly, the safe-mode administrator account should be used with caution because it has more permissions than ordinary administrators. I'm also not fond of the idea of dumping things onto the desktop. As I've always said, the GOTD offerings should be unzipped (extracted) prior to execution. If you execute from within the zip archive, the file is extracted to a temporary file, which is then executed. That breaks Vista's ability to automatically re-install with a compatibility mode, because the temporary file will no longer exist, and Windows-generated temporary files have unique names.
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@ALF, #10:
As for me, it is clear, that the program will stay activated after update.
And I Am shure, there will be a check box to disable notifications in Update notification window.
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Here are 5 (well 4 really) more recorder alternatives. All use the lame mp3 encoder.
Free MP3 Sound Recorder uses Lame 3.93 but you can swap that out if you want.
http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/435d2539390d066ad34b49146dc8bf5e765dcc7023c5fdc8e29808652d00109a-1258852113
Sonarca Sound Recorder Free uses Lame 3.98 (can only go to 192)
http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/27c0f3e280e50bc81b128ca746765c40e910b3c29f8765bdabadcf04b6e34172-1261493193
This last one is cool but be very careful if you try this one you need to make sure you Decline the Relevant Knowledge Adware/Crapware during the installation do NOT click Accept!!!
MP3myMP3 uses Lame 3.96 (also has a ripper and scheduler)
http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/ac0614b285fc3c9c3bb10b8d195051c73cd6e4d2447b15a245a0c3c4bb7fc725-1260948389
And my favourite(s) out of these free ones I just checked out are...
Donar MP3 Recorder
and
Kat MP3 Recorder
Both are the same with a different skin (they use Lame 3.96 and WAV, WMA, OGG, VOX, AU, AIFF settings too).
Drawbacks with these two:
1). Upon installation you need to make sure you uncheck the Special Offer toolbar (unless you're into that kind of thing!).
2). They throw the lame codec (lame_enc.dll) into the system32 folder (should you want to replace it).
3). The record volume is way too high and results in clipping (like they put minimum and maximum backwards so put it to 1 notch above minimum - watch out!).
4). Be sure to hit the set default button unless you want to adjust your options every time (including the record volume).
Otherwise I like these two the best.
http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/244428b083b7edba3231649d52e43e535508db6950d9a298f5b20e10971f7c31-1261655900
http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/c411bef5f0f55898cac6a294c7daa952aeb82799a8ecca5ac614035926c66387-1261655903
Hope these help someone - Happy Holidays! - Regards - Damian
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Audacity and Krystal is a great free ware software to record with. Audacity is great for overdubbing and I am still playing wit krystal. I hope this help some of you home recording friends
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Vista Users - Developer's Readme.txt advises running "setup.exe" and "activate.exe" files as Administrator. To do so, you should copy/paste these files onto your desktop, then right-click them to "Run As Administrator." This process worked well for me.
PROS:
* Downloaded, installed, activated smoothly on Vista x64 OS.
* Recognized all of my PC's audio/sound devices accurately.
* Supports Auto-Record function, based on voice detection.
* Supports MP-3, GSM, ADPCM audio-conversion formats.
* Allows recorded sound file to be saved to PC, or sent via email.
* Recorded/emailed a 10-second MP-3 sound clip successfully.
* Quality of audio recording was good.
CONS:
* Program is very limited in features compared with freeware options.
* No Local Help File within program. Only Help Link to website.
SUMMARY: - Pros outweigh cons. Program produces good-quality sound clips, and its email feature is very useful. Thumbs up. Thanks, GOTD & Wavelet Labs.
Freeware Options:
MP3-My-MP3-Recorder - CNET User Rating 3/5.
Free Sound Recorder - CNET User Rating 3/5.
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To make more clear what I meant in #9:
I demand to be the boss over my own pc. I do want to have control about when an application is going to connect to the internet. This means I want to be able to shut autoupdate-notification off.
I could enforce this with my firewall-settings (or get behind dial-up again; no way), but here I am like Fubar: i should not need another programm to fix the flaws in the first one.
This programm enables me to choose updating or not (by cancel or ignore I guess) but is does takewaway my control about checking for updates (and connecting the internet) at all.
It's just that I don't like that and I know it in advance now, so I won't bother my firewall with it.
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Wow, what a bunch of useless, useless comments (9 that have cleared moderation) at the time I post this. Before I get to the software itself, the website is anonymous with more marketing hype than facts. The installer wants to access the Internet, I don't know why, I blocked it. As I've always said, and some people finally noticed the other day, any network-enabled application can send anything that it has access to, which on Windows is just about everything, out over the Internet. The install appeared to be clean, but it launches the application without your permission, and the app also wants Internet access, which again I blocked. Now, that may be an update check, but this is unknown software from an anonymous vendor. It may be necessary to right-click Activate and Run as an Administrator, but I can't check things conveniently because the program doesn't indicate whether it's registered.
As for the program itself, no, it's not like Windows Sound Recorder, it doesn't boost bass and treble, it gives you the ability to record Playback devices, not just Recording devices, and it doesn't screw up the recorded audio. The things that work, I like. It can record my Realtek HD Audio output, which I have configured for 5.1 (6 channels, to match my 5.1 headphones). It can do so up to 32-bit floating-point. Since Vista doesn't indicate audio level on all channels, it can be hard to tell how many channels the source has and whether they're all being decoded. So just for indicating levels on all channels, this is worth it to me, while free. Now for the problems. The front left and right channels indicate relative decibel level, but all the other channels show zero, so I'd have to do some testing to determine whether the sliders for the other channels do anything. Sometimes, some of the graphs didn't display. I wasn't able to get it to list anything other than MP3 as an output option, so I currently only have WAV and MP3 as output/conversion options. That may be a restriction of the GOTD version. So the GOTD version lets you record as many channels as your playback device is configured for in WAV format, or you can record to stereo MP3. It does have the ability to skip silence.
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Crashes ALSO under XP, and even more sadly! The system reboots without any prompt! And it is almost impossible to uninstall the program, as the install information has not been stored in the registry due to the crash.
I can't recomment that junk!
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@ Petersum #2
Is the noise being picked up by your microphone? It may be worth checking whether it's causing the problem.
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Crashes sadly on my fresh Win7 install, when I go to playback mode! (Might be because I have two sound cards.)
The uninstaller leaves junk on your disc and in the registry.
Pity!
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@Alexander, #8:
Thanks for contacting HD Audio Recorder’s Support and sharing the answer with us.
The problem was: either you cannot prevent updating and you will be stuck with a crippled Trial-version or in case you do not update you will be "notified" (nagged) forever about a new version.
From your answer I read that I do have a choice updating or not so I can prevent having a trial-version. In that case I keep the GAotD-version that will stay activated forever, but -and this is not in their answer- I will be notified (nagged) forever when a new update comes available.
No Thanks.
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I have contacted HD Audio Recorder's Support and asked ALF's question.
They told me, that you can cancel update, OR you can install offered update and the program will continue BEEN ACTIVATED, updates are free for giveaway installs.
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Notice number 5 and you will see what this program does to music. Yes I deliberately messed it up but this program does this automaticaly.
Most of you use MP3 for music and seem to be happy with that. MP3 is very lacking in quality but most never hear the difference.
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I just tested the trial-version from their home-site.
It can not be activated by activate.exe.
This means, adding on #3 that the GAotD-version is a tailored-version.
You can be sure when you do upgrade to the next version, you will have a trial-version.
But also, because this is a tailored version, you might be lucky that either the autocheck or the naggings are removed. This is: "you MIGHT be lucky !".
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Tested on XP SP2 w/Hotfixes - this is basically a frontend GUI for Windows own built in Sound Recorder ans as such uses the limited mp3 selections that Sound Recorder offers if you want to save to that format.
The only difference is that you can upload your file as a link for others to listen to/download. I guess that that part could be useful.
So, for a decent capture (sound quality wise), you'd have to record as wav and then use another tool to convert to mp3 (unless you like your mp3's no higher than 56 kBit/s at 24,000 Hz).
Freeware alternative: Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
There are others out there - Just Google free audio recorder
Thanks GOTD - Regards - Damian
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GAotD's are not allowed for any updates.
That is why I always uncheck automatic updates.
When you forget this, you can be lucky sometimes, but usually you will end up with een updated TRIAL-version.
The trial-version is crippled, it only supports 2 minutes of recording time; from their online help/faq:
Also in the same faq (I wonder why they could not make a proper local helpfile; you have to be online to get any help; connections/websites are not up sometimes ):
I checked and there is no way to uncheck automatic updates.
Will this render into a crippled trail-version in due time? Or will I be nagged forever when there is a new version around?
Ofcourse this version can be tailored, but it would be nice if hdaudiorecorder could say anything about this. I don't like waiting weeks to discover that I eventually don't like it (trial-version or nagging would make me not like this GAotD ofcourse).
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I am terribly disappointed with this. I keep looking for extra buttons because it should do something extra that Windows' Sound Recorder doesn't do! But it doesn't.
Then the sound quality isn't that good either, it's too low and there's a warble introduced somewhere. Worst thing is that it cannot remove the fan noise that gets into every recording I make. In fact it can't do anything to the sound!
The Help just isn't!
Don't waste your time with this.
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Most of you use MP3 fpr ,isoc amd tjere os absp;ite;u mp wau tp jave JD in MP3 format. Some formats but few will benefit from having a very high quality recorder but this is not it.
Remember if the quality is not there you can't get it by recording what is there.
No this tests out as just a recorder that will boost the base and treble and you can do that yourself on any player.
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very good can record the speakers
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clicking Playback gives error and program exits.
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