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Free/cheap software for digital DJing and general music use


Steve

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I only know about the Windows side of things, so if people want to recommend some stuff for OS X (and Windows too) then fire away. Try and follow the template I'm using for each piece of software if you post something up. Free is best, but if there's a great piece of software that costs money and is worth listing then post that up too, but try and avoid high end DAWs and the like as they can cost a lot of money.

 

Windows: -

 

Recording/editing software: -

 

Program: Audacity

Price: Free

Usage: Multitrack recording and editing. Useful for recording/creating mixes and tracks. Allows you to split the mix into tracks and export to various file types.

 

Program: REAPER

Price: $60 (with free, fully featured trial)

Usage: Multitrack recording. Useful for recording/creating mixes and tracks. Has a fully featured trial with a nag screen.

 

File conversion tools: -

 

Program: dBpoweramp

Price: $38

Usage: Awesome tool for encoding files and so simple to use. Supports pretty much any file type you're likely to want to use including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Apple Lossless etc.

 

Program: LAME 3.99.5

Price: Free

Usage: Used in conjunction with other software for converting files to MP3. Arguably the best MP3 encoder available.

 

Program: LameDropXPd

Price: Free

Usage: Converts FLAC, WAV and Ogg Vorbis to MP3 and uses the latest version of the LAME codec.

 

Program: FLAC Frontend

Price: Free

Usage: Convert files losslessly from WAV to FLAC, or back from FLAC to WAV.

 

Program: MP3packer

Price: Free

Usage: Can losslessly convert MP3s from VBR to CBR. Useful if you use CDJs that don't play nicely with VBR files.

 

Disc ripping & burning: -

 

Program: Exact Audio Copy

Price: Free

Usage: Arguably the best free tool out there for ripping CDs. It supports secure ripping, AccurateRip, automatic pulling in of metadata from online services etc.

 

Program: Burrrn

Price: Free

Usage: Create CDs with CD text from various file formats. Supports CUE sheets.

 

Program: CDBurnerXP

Price: Free

Usage: All-purpose burning tool.

 

Program: ImgBurn

Price: Free

Usage: Disc burning application with CUE sheet support.

 

Music players/managers: -

 

Program: MediaMonkey

Price: Free/Various

Usage: Fully featured music player/manager with tagging features, including auto-tagging. Certain features are locked away behind a pay wall.

 

Program: MusicBee

Price: Free

Usage: Fully featured music player/manager with tagging features, including auto-tagging. My manager/player of choice.

 

File tagging: -

 

Program: Mp3Tag

Price: Free

Usage: Tagging files. Supports multiple file formats, custom tagging rules, automatic pulling in of metadata etc.

 

Diagnostic tools: -

 

Program: DPC Latency Checker

Price: Free

Usage: Checks for DPC latency issues. Useful in helping diagnose issues with audio drop-outs, or audio that stutters, clicks or pops.

 

Program: LatencyMon

Price: Free

Usage: Another application that's useful in diagnosing DPC latency issues, and a little more advanced than DPC Latency Checker.

 

Miscellaneous tools: -

 

Program: Medieval CUE Splitter

Price: Free

Usage: Will chop a large audio file up into separate tracks based on the data in a CUE sheet.

 

Program: Mr. Questionman

Price: Free

Usage: Gives you all kinds of info about your music files, including bitrate, version of the codec used to create them etc. Supports multiple file types including all of the popular ones.

 

Program: MixMeister BPM Analyzer

Price: Free (requires mailing list sign-up)

Usage: Analyses music tracks to calculate the BPM and writes the info to the tags. Can produce BPM reports for your music collection.

 

Program: MIDI-OX

Price: Free

Usage: Filtering and mapping of MIDI data streams.

 

Program: Voxengo r8brain

Price: Free

Usage: High quality sample rate conversion of WAV files.

 

 

OS X: -

 

Recording/editing software: -

 

Program: Audacity

Price: Free

Usage: Multitrack recording and editing. Useful for recording/creating mixes. Allows you to split the mix into tracks and export to various file types.

 

Program: REAPER

Price: $60 (with free, fully featured trial)

Usage: Multitrack recording. Useful for recording/creating mixes and tracks. Has a fully featured trial with a nag screen.

 

File conversion tools: -

 

Program: LAME 3.99.5

Price: Free

Usage: Used in conjunction with other software for converting files to MP3. Arguably the best MP3 encoder available.

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out of interest media monkey or music bee dont work with serato like itunes does, do they???

 

i dont use any music management program... but i probably should. but i do hate itunes...

i have a million follow up questions but i'll leave it for now...

 

cheers for the Steve Knowledge Base

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