Miscellaneous

Audacity

Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.

You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CD's.
• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
• And more! See the complete list of features.

AuCDtect

A free console program for determining the authenticity of musical CD's. By evaluating the character of audio data a CD contains, it can distinguish between original studio-based recordings and those that have been "reconstructed" using a lossy audio source,

 

Audio DiffMaker

Audio DiffMaker is a freeware tool set intended to help determine the absolute difference between two audio recordings, while neglecting differences due to level difference, time synchronization, or simple linear frequency responses.

The difference recording that results is only what has changed between the two recordings. If anything - a change of component, a treatment, mechanical damping, etc. - is having any audible effect on the audio signal in a system, the difference recording will have audible content. The end result is primarily intended to be evaluated by ear.

ASF view

A tool by Microsoft, tells you everything about the contents of an audio file.

DPC Latency Checker

DPC Latency Checker is a Windows tool that analyses the capabilities of a computer system to handle real-time data streams properly. It may help to find the cause for interruptions in real-time audio and video streams, also known as drop-outs.

A lot of tips and tricks

 

HOLMImpulse

HOLMImpulse is a freeware program for frequency- and impulse-response measurement of speaker systems.

 

The goals for the application

• Measure Impulse-response
• Measure Phase-response
• Measure Frequency-response
• Measure Harmonic distortion (THD)
• Make bandwidth limited measurements with no phase-errors
• Compare measurements
• Import Frequency- & Impulse-response
• Export Frequency- & Impulse-response
• Using open format for saved files (zip, wav/flac, txt)

An interesting discussion on DiyAudio.com

MP3Checker

If all your MP3s plays fine but a single one causes problems you might try this tool.

MP3 Checker uses 3 independent methods to detect all kinds of different fake MP3s:
• MPEG Header Frames verification: corrupted MP3s
• Reads audio data using rule based checking: fake MP3s
• Cross reference for repeated mpeg audio frames: repeated or looped mp3s

RightMark Audio Analyzer

RMAA suite is designed for testing quality of analog and digital paths of any audio devices, be it a sound card, an MP3 player, a consumer CD/DVD player or an acoustic set. The results are obtained by playing and recording test signals passed through the tested audio path by means of frequency analysis algorithms.

 

A loop back (sound card out in to sound card in) using my laptop

This is really horrible. Switching to battery power do gives you a clean DC source but at the same time the power saving kicks in causing this horrid spikes.