| AudialsOne 4 |
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AudialsOne 4 from RapidSolution Software AG is a powerful piece of software that allows you to capture audio and video from various sources, such as from social media sites and online radio streams. You can use it to search for any song by artist, title, or genre and it will scan the Internet from its database of media sites for your requested media and it will allow you to record and download it to your computer. It can also be used to remove DRM protection from supported music and audio book formats as well as manage your media on external devices too. On the AudialsOne 4 Web site, the software is described as such: "AudialsOne works around the clock to provide you with tons of music. Just enter in a genre, artist or song title and AudialsOne searches the internet for the best online radio stations to record music and even finds matching videos! AudialsOne finds all the music you want from 80 genres and over 70,000 artists in a matter of minutes. You can even choose from a large selection of podcasts." AudialsOne 4 does just what the say it does, we were able to search for a brand new song from a popular artist and the search system returned many relevant results in a matter of a few seconds, from there we were able to download the song and save it to our computer for future playback. Downloading the latest version, version 4, of the AudialsOne software is about 70MB in total, and installation was rather more intense than we expected. By intense we mean that it installed a lot of drivers and codecs that are required for the full-functionality of this vast and powerful program. It choose to install Microsoft's Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable and then gave us the option to install the LAME MP3 encoder. During setup, we were given the option to import any audio and video files from our computer into the AudialsOne library, which is a nice way to integrate your already existing media into the software. While the program was running through installation (on our Windows 7 Ultimate PC), we were prompted with several Windows Security dialogs asking us to confirm device driver installations. We later discovered the installation installed a new virtual device under the Sound Controllers section of the Device Manager titled "Tunebite High-Speed Dubbing". If you encounter these dialogs (as shown below), don't be alarmed and just accept them.
After installation was complete, I was prompted to enter an activation code, but this is optional because they allow you to use their software completely free without limitations if you choose to, but they do ask that you pay $59 for the software if you plan on using it.
The interface for AudialsOne 4 at first glance is quite daunting and required some use before we really got accustomed to it and learned how it was organized. This is mostly due to the large amount of features and options that come associated with the program. Along the top left, there are six "tabs" which lead you to the six major features of the program. Along the bottom right, four buttons let you access some other functionality of the program, like converting content from Windows Media Player, burning media to disc, making a ring tone (more on that later), and managing media on an MP3 player. The first tab on the left, Radio, allows you to search for an Internet radio stream and play it right from the program. We choose to search for WKQI 95.5FM in Detroit, and the program was able to quickly find the stream and being playing it. From there, we could record the stream and save it to the computer.
AudialsOne 4 allowed us to save the recorded audio stream in many different formats. The formats are listed based upon their best use, such as Burning to DVD, Playback on Xbox/iTunes/PS3, iPhone/iPod Touch, etc. This is particularly useful for saving media in an appropriate format for its intended use. The next tab, titled Search, lets users enter a query to search by title or artist and AudialsOne will return results from many different online media sources. In the search below, we choose to search for "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga, which is a fairly new song that is quite popular on the Top 40 charts. As you can see in the screen shot below, quite a few results were returned, mostly for YouTube hits for the music video, but also some audio files too. To download any of these, you just select it and choose the "record" button and it will save it to the specified output folder. When you also search for music, the program will automatically search for the lyrics for that particular song and display it in the right column. We need to mention here that users must be conscious of the copyright laws and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to be sure they do not download any content illegally and to not reproduce any content downloaded without the appropriate permissions. The ideal use of this would be for personal use and for the downloading of music from bands that give the OK to download their content freely without payment (mostly "garage bands" and home-based bands).
The Web tab can be used to capture music and video that is played through your Web browser on any Internet site that you visit. Again, be sure you do this legally and by consulting your local copyright laws. Podcasting is integrated into AudialsOne 4 too, which allows users to search for podcasts that are available through various podcasting databases on the Internet. You can choose to download and subscribed to podcasts that you choose. The search functionality here is quite nice as it allows you to search by category of content, as well as by title and artist. Subscribing is also allows via the podcast's RSS URL too.
The last tab, Converter, is really the most powerful feature of this program we believe because it allows you to convert any supported music or video file to another supported format. Some of the formats supported include WMA, MP3, M4P, WMV, M4B, AVI, FLV, RAM, OGG, MOV, AAC, MPEG, MPG, DVIX, 3GP, and many more. You can convert music and video to many different formats and each format has options in terms of bit rate and quality that it can be converted into. AudialsOne 4's converting tool is extremely powerful and well-worth the $59 cost if you frequently deal with audio and video that needs to be converted quickly and easily.
The converter tab can also be used to strip DRM copy-protection from supported audio and video files too. Audio books can also have their DRM removed too. Make sure that you don't violate any copyright laws here either and be sure to only use this feature to make personal backups of your media that is not used for illegal distribution. Any song on your computer can be used to create a ring tone for a cell phone using AudialsOne 4, which is another really useful feature that we liked to see. It's pretty easy to use as it just analyzes the song and gives you a time line display of the song and allows you to select the part of the song you want to use. There are a few options here like adding fade in/out and export options that can export the ring tone in a few different formats depending on what device it is intended for.
If you want to learn more about AudialsOne 4, or to download a free copy, visit their Web site. Use coupon code "AudialsOne4" to get 20% off your purchase! CONTEST: We have three free licenses for AudialsOne 4 to give away to three lucky people who comment on this review. To win one, just leave a comment on this article and we will choose three at random on Thursday, November 19 at 12:00PM EST. When you comment, be sure to leave us your e-mail to contact you, so make sure you comment as a "Guest" and write your correct e-mail in the field. Good luck!
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