Five programs to make the most of your music

There’s no doubt about it – music is a passion that moves millions of people all over the world. And now, thanks to the Internet, it’s possible to get access to an endless amount of music that would otherwise have been impossible to get hold of. For this reason, it’s essential to have a number of different programs that allow you to efficiently manage all of your music, edit it, play it, burn it to CDs, change its format, and even create it.

The applications that we’re going to look at here will let you do all of these things, along with some more things that you probably hadn’t even thought of. They are: Winamp, Mp3 Wma Converter, Nero Burning Rom, Audacity and Virtual DJ.

Winamp

To start with, you’re going to need a multimedia player that will let you listen to all the music that you have on your computer. Winamp is guaranteed to be able to play practically any audio or video file, and can do so whilst using few system resources. It offers support for most file formats and has a user-friendly and very easy-to-use interface.

Among its tools, Winamp has an equalizer, a “Library” into which files can be imported, a web browser, and more applications, all of which help to make this a really great program.

In a nutshell, the most important things about this player are how easy it is to use, its versatility, the fact that it allows the user to adapt it to their personal tastes, and the advantage it has over other players in that it can play a huge range of different formats.

Mp3 Wma Converter

Although Winamp has support for many file formats, the vast number of these that are currently in existence mean that it’s still essential to have a program like Mp3 Wma Converter. This application lets you change the format of your audio files, allowing you to enjoy listening to them on whatever player and device you like.

You can convert your audio files between the four most popular formats around: MP3, WMA, WAV and Ogg, as well as between many, more obscure ones. This application also stands out for its ease of use. With just a couple of clicks you can start the automatic conversion process. Among the various features offered by the application is the CD Ripper application, for ripping any audio CD.

Summing up then, thanks to its versatility, speed and ease of use, this is a very good choice for a file conversion program.

Nero Burning Rom

Another problem that you will surely have come across if you have a large amount of music stored on your computer, is that sooner or later the machine’s performance can start to suffer. For this reason, you need Nero Burning Rom, which allows you to create all sorts of CDs and DVDs to save your music away from the PC. It also comes with various extra utilities such as Nero Covers and Nero Tools.

An important feature of this program is its ability to record CDs even with defective sectors, allowing you to enjoy listening to your old CDs that have become a little bit worse for wear over the years. Another of its many features is the ability to record audio CDs directly from MP3 files. You can also create VCDs and SVCDs, album sleeves, compile statistics, and more.

Yet another characteristic is the ability to create slideshows that combine music with photos. The app can also convert several formats of audio files.

So here we have another example of a highly versatile program, providing you with various options for copying CDs and storing your favourite music.

Audacity

Audacity lets you edit your audio files, using simple Cut, Copy and Paste features. It also allows you to mix tracks and apply effects to recordings. Plus, with Audacity Free you can record sounds, play them back, and import and export WAV, AIFF and MP3 files.

Audacity also provides tools for more advanced users, such as an amplitude envelope editor, an adjustable spectrum mode, and a frequency-analysis window for audio analysis applications. With regards sound quality, it lets you alter it in different ways, including using the Bass Boost, wah wah, and noise remover effects. It also supports VST plug-in effects.

The fact that Audacity can be used by beginner and expert users alike makes it a very tempting option for all music fans, whether they simply want to learn how to edit audio or are looking for a more advanced set of tools.

Virtual DJ

Last but not least is Virtual DJ, which lets you live out your dream of being a real DJ and pull off mixes that are nearly up to scratch with those on your favourite records. It combines a simple interface with a wide range of advanced options, meaning that you’ll no longer need to gaze longingly at expensive professional consoles.

Simply load a song into the program and you can immediately start experimenting, changing the BPM, creating loops, scratching, applying effects, adjusting the sound, and much more.
Thanks to its simplicity, this is a great application for learning to make music at home.

Here we’ve presented a list of programs for doing a variety of things with your favourite music tracks. Now all that’s left to do is download them so that your PC is ready to take advantage of all they have to offer.

The hottest CD and DVD burners

With the possibility of downloading a great amount of music, movies, and any sort of file from the internet, users needed CDs and DVDs to backup their data and free up disk space. In view of this increasing need numerous CD/DVD burners started to pop up. We will now review some of the most popular CD/DVD/Blu-ray burners and pointing out the pros and cons of: Nero Burning Rom, CDBurnerXP Pro, CloneDVD, Alcohol 120%, ConvertXtoDVD.

Nero Burning Rom

When Nero Burning Rom comes to mind, we know that Nero is the most popular CD/DVD burner. It features a series of application such as Nero Covers and Nero Tools that simplify the burning process.
Nero also allows user to burn audio CDs from MP3 files and also burn multimedia slideshows combining music and images, and some other important features.
The interface is user-friendly and very easy-to-use. Burning a CD or DVD can be done in just a few steps, anyone can do it.
The only con is the trial which lasts for 30 days, other than that there is nothing to complain about regarding Nero Burning Rom.

CDBurnerXP Pro

CDBurnerXP Pro is another amazing burning tool. CDBurnerXP Pro supports CDs and DVDs both DVD and DVDRW, as well as the possibility of creating ISO files. It also allows users to rip audio CDs. The interface is very easy-to-use, It´s divided into several modules allowing you to drag and drop files. Another important aspect of this burner is that it consume very little system resources.
You can also create boot disks and includes a bin/nrg to ISO converter.

CloneDVD

Even though this software burn CDs and DVDs, on focuses primarily on DVDs offering three burning possibilities: Copy DVD Titles allows you to back up a part of a DVD; CloneDVD creates a copy of an entire DVD, and Write Existing Data allows you to write a DVD disc image or a VIDEO_TS folder containing a DVD movie. CloneDVD features a burning wizard that guides you through the whole process featuring an extremely easy-to-use interface.
Overall the software is stable. Our test machines did lock up on one instance; however after we re-started the machine we were unable to reproduce the error.

Alcohol 120%

Alcohol 120% -as well as any other burner nowadays- burns CD and DVDs, but most importantly, it´s known for the possibility of creating multiple virtual CD/DVD drives, which can be used to mount CD/DVD images from the hard drive without needing to burn them. It also offers a search box to look for every CD/DVD image on your PC.
The only issue encountered with Alcohol 120% is that it may cause troubleshooting with other emulation tools such as Daemon Tools.

ConvertXtoDVD

ConvertXtoDVD is another outstanding CD/DVD burner featuring a powerful multimedia converter with support for multiple formats, enabling you to convert and burn DVD quickly and easily.
ConvertXtoDVD has a series of tools for recoding DVD movies. You can add and customize subtitles, choose the output format, creation of menus and more.
Of course, conversions are not always as good as you would expect. Sometimes you get improper video playback or sound is out of sync.

Each of these burning applications has their pros and cons. All of them can burn CDs and DVDs without issues, but if you have to choose one of them, you probably want to pick Nero Burning Rom. All features and it´s user-friendly interface is all we need when it comes to burning discs.
On the other hand, if you need a software that burns and converts multimedia files, ConvertXtoDVD is very easy-to-use and will be able to convert and burn your favorites videos in a DVD with just a few clicks.

Having trouble copying files from to PC to another? Do you want to copy a DVD movie and have no idea how to do it? Need to copy a music CD? Nero was developed with this idea in mind, which is way it´s the most popular burning software up to date.

Burn CDs and DVDs wiht Nero

The best solution is to install a program that can guarantee stability and fool-proof use, providing you with a practical, efficient tool rather than a new puzzle game. As such, Nero meets all of the requirements. Let’s take a look at how it works.

Once the program is installed, run the Nero Express module, which you’ll find in Start->Programs->Nero . A series of recording options will then appear, among which you should choose the one that meets your needs. Here, we will choose to record a DVD.

In the second step, add the elements that you want to record to the disk. To do so, click “Add” and a new window willopen within which you can browse to the files or folders that you want to include. You can repeat this step many times until everything you want to record is shown on the screen.

It’s worth mentioning a couple of things at this point. Firstly, by selecting an element and pressing the delete key, you can remove that element from the list of items to be recorded, just in case you add something to the list and then decide not to include it after all. Secondly, there is a coloured bar in the lower part of the screen that will fill up as you add new content. This is your guide to the space taken up by the files and folders you have already added, and how much space there is remaining on the disk.

Once you’ve finished making your selection, go on to the third step, in which all you need to do is click “Burn”. By default, Nero sets all the necessary parameters for a successful operation.

Before the recording process begins, a message may appear asking if you wish to record the disk as multisession or not, also offering you the option to cancel. At this point we recommend that you choose the “Burn without multisession” option, since this will ensure that the disk will also be able to be read on other operating systems different to your own. The only downside to this option is that you won’t be able to add additional data to the disk at a later date.

After that, all that’s left to do is wait whilst the recording process runs. This will take more or less time depending on the speed of the machine and the amount of information that you are copying to the disk.

At the end of the process, a message will appear on screen and the drive will automatically open. At this point your disk should be ready to use. However, remember to pay attention to what it says on screen since if the program was unable to successfully record the disk, you will be told so in this message.

It may be difficult getting used to it the first time, but once we managed to burn a few CDs or DVDs, the whole burning process will repeat itself.

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