14 DAY TRIAL // What and why?
Some people use their PCs to create, whether creating means writing, photo, digital painting, music or other things like these. And when it comes to creation, generally speaking, the creator needs tools, if not even henchmen. If we are to speak about music - whatever kind of music may that be - the first thing one needs is a recording tool.
Whether we think of a professional studio or a home studio wannabe, the recording software is the core of everything and, obviously, without it there's no recording at all. Some go for the pro stuff and spend big bucks while others turn for the less expensive but still very hardworking programs. Especially those who don't want to create state-of-the art mixes will go for the less money spent on audio software. As a matter of fact, it's them who buy the all-in-one audio programs or home-use software bundles.
The Looks
Absolute Sound Recorder looks absolutely simple and seems like this is the right way to blend the professional appearance with the simplicity of a home-destined software. Large panes, simple and intuitive button-sets, highly-visible tabs: all designed for easing the operation of this program.
One does not need anything else but simply basic knowledge on sound and, generally speaking, PC workings to make things work perfectly just in a few moments with Absolute Sound Recorder. Simple commands and very visual style information help the user do the tasks with ease: 4 tabs administer the basic things about Absolute Sound Recorder.
The Record Sound tab is obviously destined to command the recording session. A large FFT visualization field shows the ?professional? data, while LED-type VU-meters in green and red display info on recording levels for both channels and a large digital time-counter sends visual info on recording status. The FFT-visualization field supports no less than 6 types of visuals, window-types and array sizes; in 3 different and easily-readable colors.
The next two panes are very easy to both understand and use since they are looking very much like the Windows' recording/playback mixers. As I guess you have figured out, they control the input and the output sources for Absolute Sound Recorder. Each device and even each channel (in the output pane) has its own volume sliders and panning bar and easy-to-use checkboxes.
The File Info is the last tab and with its fields, the user can control a very complete tagging process by means of easily editable text-zones. This ID3 editing tab saves a lot of time as you just name the results of the recording and you need no further editing: you can even choose between the ID3v1 and ID3v2 tagging-modes!
The icons in Absolute Sound Recorder are really nice, with very clean design and intuitive as well, as I had said before. There aren't any very bright hindering colors but rather eye-comforting ones, with carefully-drawn edges and shades; even more, each icon has its name right below it.
The Options panel opens in another small window with very simple looks and, at the same time, offering the perfect amount of data. Dropdown menus have been used for choosing the specs for output formats since they consume very little space and are also easy to use.
Overall, the Absolute Sound Recorder sports indeed a very easy to use and tidy GUI; these are strong points in the general rating of such a program intended for home-use and therefore, likely to be used by non-professionals.
The Works
Absolute Sound Recorder is definitely a smooth-working piece of software: it runs on low system resources, starts and shuts down in just seconds, has a very fast response to the commands it is given and it also lacks futile graphic or ?functional? elements, if you get the meaning of these quoting-marks.
What's really cool is the fact that the traditional shortcuts are working in this unregistered version I have tested. The lousy thing is the nag screen which appears before the recording actually begins: nevertheless, I'm speaking about how the registered version would look and work and I am glad to see a sound recorder running on Ctrl+R ! Unfortunately, the time limit is 1 minute in this shareware version but, as I put it to work, it was more than sufficient to see what's all about.
The recording can be set up as far as time is concerned: the user can opt for a no time limit recording session or for a timed one. Another simply beautiful thing is that Absolute Sound Recorder can automatically trim the length of the recorded material: you can set up the Auto Split feature so it cuts chunks of a size you decide, so it really saves a lot of time you'd normally have to spend editing.
Whether you decide to save the resulting track(s) in mp3, WAV or even WMA format, you still have a lot of preset quality/size options you can choose from according to your needs. The Auto Split works perfectly, regardless of the output format selected.
All sliders and progress bars are very visible and, at the same time, very easy to control, as it seems that the programmers reached a very comforting balance between mouse gesture and object movement thus allowing a very precise and fine operation.
One intriguing thing was that pressing Delete on the keyboard would not also delete selected items in the File Info pane; to do so, you must right-click and choose whether you want to remove the file from your HDD or just from the viewing list.
Finally, I'll say that the absence of any DSP is really welcome since the Absolute Sound Recorder has been developed for recording and not for further processing; and the simple transport controls make it a truly nice program.
The Good
Absolute Sound Recorder is a very good recording tool at a decent price; especially when offering 3 output formats with numerous quality/size presets, specter view and the so convenient Auto Split option. Add to that the built-in tag-editor?
The Bad
A little more work in the resulting files area as far as the list is concerned would be quite welcome.
The Truth
For those who want a fast, reliable and easy way to produce MP3, WAV or WMA recordings, no matter what the signal source may be, it's a very good program. Though not for a pro?s use, Absolute Sound Recorder is definitely good software, perfectly fit for the medium audio production needs when it comes to recording.
See what Absolute Sound Recorder is about in the snapshots below:
