Audio Companion for Windows

Audio Companion promises a suite of features for ripping, recording, and converting audio files, and at first glance, we thought it would be a useful application. Unfortunately, the program doesn't deliver everything it's supposed to.

The program's interface is quite plain, but is easy enough to figure out. Its major features, the CD Ripper, Audio Splitter, and Batch Processor are separated into tabs. The program rips audio files from CDs and saves them as WAV files; although the publisher's description promises that files can be converted to the MP3 format as they're being ripped, we didn't find any way to do this. Otherwise, that feature worked well enough, although the program does not have any way of securing album or track information. Next we tried the audio splitter, which also worked well; we were able to record sounds both from within our computer (a YouTube video playing) and with our computer's built-in microphone. The program's batch processor audio converter, however, did not work as advertised. Every time we tried to convert our ripped WAV files to MP3s, we got an error message. A visit to the program's built-in Help file revealed that it doesn't actually come with an MP3 encoder, and that users must seek out and download one on their own. Why bother, when there are so many other audio programs that easily convert between MP3 and other audio formats? Although Audio Companion isn't awful, overall, we felt it was more trouble than it was worth.

Audio Companion is free to try, but some features are disabled in the trial version. The program installs politely but leaves a folder behind on upon removal. We do not recommend this program.