Tech Toys: overcoming Audacity's basic problems

Ok, maybe not ideal - Freecorder runs on Windows but will run on a Mac with a converter. No full port to Linux, though.

It's a plug-in for your browser. Firefox and IE are supported.

It's a tiny download, and installs in seconds (restart browser but no reboot of machine) and - to quote the TV ad - it does what it says on the tin - records what you are listening too and makes it into an MP3 file.

This little marvel is from Applian.Com and it's a recorder and it's free. But that doesn't mean it's short on features: with sampling rates running at too high for normal use, it delivers sound quality that is truly of the digital age: only your equipment will limit how good it sounds.

And it's clever: it knows when to pause between tracks - and then creates a separate file for each track.

Of course, the product is in effect a sample of the work of its designers who hope you will buy other programs. And, in truth, if this is an example of the quality of their work, they deserve success.

We tried it out on the website of the excellent Ocean Colour Scene at www.oceancolourscene.com - and it recorded and reproduced faultlessly - indeed at a quality indistiguishable from the band's CDs played on the same PC.

There is (they certify it and we couldn't disprove it) no adware, spyware or other dodgy stuff in the free toolbar that installs in the browser and providers one-click recording once you have set up your default settings. There are a few things you might want to disable if you are paranoid but nothing harmful.

Freecorder is available free to download and use from http://applian.com/ where there are also details of other recording, editing and playback software.

Audacity comes with an easy to use Windows installer - but to make MP3 files, you have to locate an (out of date and increasingly difficult to find) plug in and install it. And on Linux, it requires a series of dependencies - and that means additional work to install it. Why it is not available as an installer with the necessary dependencies (they are open source and free) is incomprehensible - it is, after all, possibly the most popular sound recorder / editor anywhere.

We might just have to rethink our Audacity policy. Shame Applian products don't run on Linux :(

http://applian.com/