iMac4music: Freeware/Shareware

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...with your iMac!...

iMac + music + mp3 + recording + sampling

Free?ware

Introduction

Sampling software and special tips

Where do I find this free stuff

mp3 encoding/decoding

Introduction

Here you will find some basic recommendations where to purchase freeware and cheap audio software - for your iMac. So I will not mention all these non-compatible, not yet compatible products - or whatever their status is. Also I will not bother you with news like "Company X has announced the new product X to be available in late whenever" and "sure compatible to the floppyless G3 blue and white and iMac (we are still waiting for some of these products...)" before I have or you yourself have not seen or tested the products. .
Be aware that nowadays many software manufacture offer "free" test version that sometimes are just a very obvious (but bad) advertising for a fairly expensive "real version" - you may waste tremendous time and money downloading several stuff that you will not need, if you just surve around...
Everything here is tested on a regular iMac (Rev. B, 233 Mhz, 96 MB RAM, for further details check pls. macos & system extensions and other technical stuff part. Also I recommend to use this search engine of the macmusic.org (or a engine like hotbot) to find all the software I (or we) describe here, if the links are not working properly, or hotbot. Also Sherlock may be of help.

Cheap Software Contents

Cheap, for free or shareware...?

Apple has a little bit the image of being "very good but very expensive" - and this is imagewise also true for the MacOs based software. Marketing, Advertising, PR, testing is more and less only available for the famous professional programs. It is really a surprise to find out, what you can do without paying something..
Sometimes even the best software is simply hidden on the CDs and due to the very simple design people do not trust to have a professional tool at hand. Some web recommendations (check this page for the software-synths):

Coaster - freeware recording Software, just to record automatically or not, even in the background. You can download the current version there but the given addresses might change around November 1999.
Sound APP is both a very good sound converter, sound file player (including mp3!), and you can use it with some tricks as a primitive multitrack sample player too create randomized experimental sound combinations. Sound App is very useful to convert the huge number of wav files available on the web or whereever to aiff - but sound app is -unfortunately not a aif-to- mp3 converter!

Finder(S)

Basically the cheapest way to purchase that is from the CDs you already own. Try to search the programs on the CD with Sherlock - you will be surprised. Also CDs of Keyboard Magazines quite often add a huge number of Shareware to their CDs - without or with very little or almost information about this. You will also get messages like "this Demo has expired, pls. purchase a new one etc.
Probably, even after using the internet only for some days, you are tired of all these dead links - so here you will have a better aproach, macmusic´s search machine:

Contents

MP3

MP3 Encoder/Decoder

You may want to use the freeware mp3 encoder 0.12 - the only mp3 encoder freewaree for the Mac left at the moment, I fear!) it works fine for converting aiff to mp3, also these files are accepted by mp3.com and mp3.de (!!!)., this was a certain problem with MPecker. New feature on this homepage: A editor for the mp3 headers and information included with the mp3 - so you may even change a Michael Jackson mp3 to yourname, yoursong, yourcopyright - ...

The famous MPecker drop encoder with a mp3 converting option is not available any more, still some older versions are distributed on CD-Roms but they will tell you "Beta has expired" or so (still many sites will link you to MPecker). New versions of Mpecker (the 2.01) do not have the mp3 option due to the licensing problem.
Commercial mp3-decoding is available as well, e.g. via SoundJam (testing was fine) - but we talk about low-budget... Sound App works fine for creating play lists and working without problems in the background so this is my personal preference.
You may also have to decode mp3 files back to aif. This allows you to catch sounds, grooves or whatever from your mp3-collection or other mp3 downloads from the internet, but also from a lot of useful sampling demo files that may be useful for you. Be aware that the quality of a encoded - decoded sample is somehow not ideal (but this is a nice effect, a little bit like the downsampling of a bitrate!)

If you do not find software there I usuall recommend to use Hotbot. I work with Hotbot now for some years (during my worktime) almost on a daily base and I still trust it is the best search engine even in different languages - Sure, there are others that are more specialized etc. (if you know more about it no problem - this is for the computer novice).
Rather try to learn the advanced search options of one of the machines than trying lots of different search engines that drive you mad with different screen layout, languages, banner advertising etc. ... By the the way - wrong spelling or simple typing mistakes are quite often the reasons for not finding something.... Be creativewith your search definitions.

For the advanced users only...

A very interesting overview about Computer Music, Links to Sound Databases etc. is also available from the Computer Music Journal Web Link File, although even they suffer from old links that are not updated etc. it is possible to find many additional ressources.

...with your iMac!...

iMac + music + mp3 + recording + sampling

iMac + music + mp3 + recording + sampling

iMac + music + mp3 + recording + sampling

iMac + music + mp3 + recording + sampling

iMac + music + mp3 + recording + sampling

iMac + music + mp3 + recording + sampling

© by Thomas Oesterheld last update 03.09.2000
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