AD Stream Recorder

Just how many times were you listening to a radio online and heard things you desperately wanted to record? Or you just needed to do some recording for God knows what purposes? If you didn't know, several thousands of programs are waiting for you to use them in exactly this kind of situations; and, should they be able to think, I guess they'd ask themselves what's taking you so long...

It's really a pleasure to see a nice software, running on little memory, being very small, and - at the same - looking very good, doing a fien job and helping you write down in digital format the things that you like. Even though there are so many recording softwares, few get to include a bit of all these good things to create a decent product, that's worth buying. Ad Stream Recorder seems to be one of those little programs which has been carefully developed and thus, is really worth - at least - a short description.

The Looks

The nicest thing I have noticed as I first saw the Ad Stream Recorder was the nice XP-themed GUI and the orderly manner in which things have been arranged in it. The general appearance of Ad Stream Recorder is shiny and almost eye-candy: shady light, purple colors, also shady metallic matching buttons with super-readable graphics make this program quite a sight for sore eyes.

Maybe the classic symbols on the control buttons are a bit too dark for my taste: in my opinion, things could look a lot better if those elements were brighter. There are 3 sectors in the main window: the first one - split in 2 - will display the sine-views of the source and the recorded signal; the second one is an area dedicated to control and settings buttons, as well as seekbar and volume bar, while the third one is showing the list of recorded tracks, with detailed info on format, rate, mode, size and date.

One thing I have never seen in recording softwares is that the recording sine-view has a constantly moving cursor; exactly the kind of cursor behind which the waveform is being written in major recording programs. Well, this cursor is moving all the time, sweeping the screen from left to right and as you actually start recording it will begin to leave "traces" behind. Very weird this constant monitoring-movement...nevertheless, it's not a bad thing.

The menus are very easy to understand and read so here (regarding the GUI) the Ad Stream Recorder gets a good mark: neat and sleek design, eye-comforting and functional.

The Works

Technically, the Ad Stream Recorder does just one single job: recording from any audio source on your PC in two very popular formats: WAV and its compressed version, MP3. The fact that the in and out settings are the Windows native settings will significantly ease the general operation, as almost anyone who is a bit familiarized with the Win OS' sound settings will be able to tweak the Ad Stream Recorder in just seconds.

The info on the recording details is very well displayed and contains all the needed elements: format, bitrate, samplerate stereo mode and time counter. Another very handy visual feature is that both the source and the recorded waveforms increase amplitude as you increase volume from the (obviously, volume) bar. Thus, you can have some visual control of what is happening with the recording session and do the necessary adjustments when needed.

Each time you do a recording, the Ad Stream Recorder will add the specific track in the list, so you can administer the results of your work more efficiently. As for setting up the output files, the tweaking is really easy and it demands absolutely no effort: you have 2 tabs, one for either of the two formats, with simple settings for bitrate, samplerate and stereo mode. No problem whatsoever.

The Good

It's really good that a software like Ad Stream Recorder can blend both looks and functionality on one hand, and on the other, features and easy use. A very reliable and awesomely simple tool for small recording needs.

The Bad

Add some shortcut keys and things will truly rock!

The Truth

Ad Stream Recorder is a small, good-looking and convenient sound recording tool, perfect for those who don't need fancy softwares.

Check out the snapshots I've prepared for you: