Free Sound Recorder

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on January 13, 2013

The Sound Recorder that comes with Windows will capture the audio stream and save it as a WAV you can edit or convert later on. But there's room for improvement, and there are more than a few choices, when it comes to recording digital audio with your PC. It's possible to spend staggering amounts of money on pro audio suites that really don't handle most users' needs any better than Free Sound Recorder by CoolRecordEdit. Like the Windows tool, it records whatever your sound card is processing, but Free Sound Recorder adds scheduling, more output formats, hot keys, and some unique extras. Several premium upgrade levels are available if you need still more.

Free Sound Recorder's interface resembles a media player, and in fact it is one, at least in part. A set of media player controls beneath the Files List addresses one of the most serious shortcomings of many versions of the Windows tool: the inability to play back recordings. The recording controls, two-channel level display, and counter also give Free Sound Recorder that "music" look. Clicking Options opened a tabbed dialog box that let us choose to save files as MP3s, WMAs, WAVs, or Ogg files. There's a useful option to create file names based on the date and time; it's selected by default. Hot key and Schedule settings are fairly standard, but the Automatic Gain Control certainly isn't. This feature can limit the High Level, Low Level, and Attack Time of recordings when the source is too loud, too soft, or too dynamic, producing a more even sound. The Voice Active System let us set the threshold for reading sound levels as silence to accommodate clean high-quality audio or noisy recordings. It's not as complicated as it sounds, as we found when we clicked links labeled "What Is This?" that open the program's clear, comprehensive Help file on the appropriate pages. The Files List and Mixer panels can be minimized.

We've made digital recordings of many LPs as well as live audio and other sources, and Free Sound Recorder is a definite upgrade in quality, capability, and convenience over the built-in Windows tool.

Publisher's Description

From CoolRecordEdit:

Free Sound Recorder does exactly as it sounds - it is an easy-to-use software program that lets you record any sounds from your sound card and save the recording directly into MP3, WMA or WAV files. It supports the record input/source from a microphone, streaming audio from the Internet, external input devices (CDs, LP, music cassettes, phone line) as well as other applications like WinAmp, Media Player. With built-in advanced audio record engine, the recorder produces high quality recordings. In 3 steps you can get any sound recorded directly to audio files, without being bothered by unnecessary numeric adjustment.

Free Sound Recorder enables you to record any sound passing through any line of your sound card. For example, you can record sound from a microphone, an external LP, cassette, CD/DVD player, AM/FM/Satellite radio. It also has the ability to record Internet broadcasts, streaming audio or local audio files reproduced by other programs like RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, WinAmp, iTunes and so on. What's more, you can even record VoIP (Voice over IP) calls or Internet-telephony conversations when using programs like Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo voice, MSN.

Free Sound Recorder is a very neat audio recorder that allows you to record music from any online music sites like Grooveshark, one of the best. You need to pay nothing for tons of new released songs and classic albums. Now, enjoy the recorded online music on your music player.

If you like to listen to Internet Radio, Free Sound Recorder helps you listen to online radio stations worldwide and live. You can easily search and play your favorite radio programs about religion, sports, music. It enables you to search the stations via different categories and add them to your list.

Want to schedule the recording of a file? You can use Free Sound Recorder's powerful built-in scheduler to schedule a recording to record from the selected source at a predefined time and stop after a desired duration. It is convenient for time triggered recording to record either for a website or anything that runs on your desktop automatically at a specified time in any given day. The recording can happen Once, Daily or Weekly. From now on, you will never miss your beloved radio programs.

What's new in this version: Version 9.6.1 may include unspecified updates, enhancements or bug fixes.