Audio Formats

MIDI - Musical Instrument Digital Interface

  • MIDI.com
    MIDI information, sites, files, community, books.

MP3 - MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3

MP3 stands for MPEG-1 layer 3, a format to store music files on a computer disk in such a way that the file size is relatively small, but the song sounds near perfect.

MP3 Encode/Decode Software

MP3 Player Software

MP3 Search Engines

CD Digital Audio (CD-DA)


CD Databases

  • CDDB
    By Gracenote. CDDB² & CDDB¹ database servers services and SDKs.
  • freedb.org

Ripping - CDDA Digital Audio Extraction (DAE)

  • EAC - Exact Audio Copy
    By Andre Wiethoff. Postcardware.
    Precise CD audio extractor with error recovering. It can generate WAV, MP3 (using LAME or other external program, not included), or an entire CUE image from the CD. It is also able to write (burn) or copy a CD to CD-R/RW.
    Features: Hidden sector synchronization (jitter correction), Copy of ranges of music data, not only tracks, Automatic Speed reduction on errors and fallback afterwards, Normalization of extracted audio, Wave sound editor included, freedb support.
    Also as exactaudiocopy.de.
  • CDex CD Ripper
    By Albert L Faber
    CDex is a freeware application, which is able to extract audio tracks from a CD-ROM digitally, and save those files to disk as either MP3 encoded files or WAV regular files, as well as convert files between WAV and MP3.
    CDex Sourceforge Mirror - SourceForge Project: CDex.
  • Audiograbber
    Grabs digital audio from CD's with a simple and nice interface. Freeware.
  • LameFE
    Lame Front-End. LameFE is a powerfull frontend for LAME: CDRipper (with batch processing), Extendable through plugins, Winamp plugin support, Ogg/Vorbis, Monkeys Audio, Wave, Cuesheet, FreeDB and much more.
    Open Source, Windows. SourceForge Project: lamefe.
  • CD DAE
    CD DAE is a CD ripper with an option to verify extracted files. Freeware Windows software for download, by Nero / CD Speed 2000.
  • WinDAC - Digital Audio Copy
    DAC for Win32 / DAC for DOS. By Christoph Schmelnik. Shareware.
  • CDDA Paranoia (Linux)
    Cdparanoia is a Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA) extraction tool, commonly known as a 'ripper'. The application is built on top of the Paranoia library project. Paranoia III is Linux only. Paranoia IV (cdparanoia alpha 10 and later) is a port to other UNIX flavors and uses a substantially revised infrastructure.

Audio Software

Digital Audio Editors

  • Audacity
    Audacity is an audio editor open-source (GPL), free, for Windows, Linux/Unix and MacOs. You can record and play sounds, import and export WAV, AIFF, and MP3 files, and more. It is able to edit sounds using simple and fast features like Cut, Copy and Paste, with unlimited Undo, mix tracks together, and apply special effects. It also has advanced features, built-in and VST plug-in effects.
    SourceForge Project: Audacity.
  • dBpowerAMP Music Converter (dMC)
    dBpowerAMP Music Converter (dMC) is one of those must have utilities, indispensable for converting audio files from one format to another. From the standard installation dMC can convert to and from Wave, Mp3 and from CD Audio (CDA) files. Windows Media Audio (WMA), Ogg Vorbis and many more types available as add-ons. All 100% free. Volume Normalization, ID Tag preservation & Editing, Windows Explorer integration (Info pop-up tips, Convert To right-click menu), Fully compatible with Windows 95/98/ME NT4/2000/XP.
    Codec Central: add-ons for dBpowerAMP Music Converter (dMC) or Audio Player (dAP), providing additional formats for audio reading (Decoding) and writing (Encoding).
  • BeSweet
    An awesome 'all-in-one' tool for audio transcoding. By DSPguru.
    BeSweet lets you convert audio files from one format to another. Supported formats: MPEG (MP3, MP2, MPA), AC3 (Dolby Digital), WAV (Multichannel 5.1, Stereo, Mono), AIFF, Ogg Vorbis; also VOB (DVD) and AVI containing the above audio formats.
    Mirror: besweet.notrace.dk.
    • BeLight - Kurtnoise13's Light GUI for BeSweet
  • Shibatch Audio Tools
    High quality free audio tools.
    SSRC - Shibatch Sampling Rate Converter, made by Naoki Shibata, who is one of the big gurus in the LAME MP3 encoder developement team.
  • Sonic Foundry
    Vegas Audio, Sound Forge.
  • GoldWave
    GoldWave Digital Audio Editor.
  • Adobe Audition
    Software for sound editing. Former Cool Edit Pro, acquired from Syntrillium Software in May 2003.
  • SurCode
    Dolby Digital, DTS & MLP lossless encoding.

Audio APIs & Programming Libraries

  • WaveMix
    WaveMix - DLL created by Microsoft to mix two WAVE files in realtime. This is a slightly updated version of the DLL that Microsoft distributed, maintained by CompuPhase.
    Download: WaveMix toolkit v1.80.
  • libsndfile
    Libsndfile is a C library for reading and writing files containing sampled sound (such as MS Windows WAV and the Apple/SGI AIFF format) through one standard library interface. It is released in source code format under the GNU Lesser General Public License. The library was written to compile and run on a Linux system but should compile and run on just about any Unix, as well as Win32 (MS Visual C++) and MacOS (Metrowerks CodeWarrior).

Speech Software

Audio Libraries & Original Compositions

  • Sonhos & Sons Studio
    By Marcus Viana, Brazil.
    Creation and production of jingles and soundtracks for multimedia, VTs and radio spots, films and documentaries.
  • AA Media Music
    Contact:
    AA Media Music is a service that offers high-quality, downloadable music loops and specializes in creating original royalty free music and sound design for all media formats.
  • Media Tracks
    Contact: Brandon Holbrook
    Royalty free production/commercial music for all types of media. Royalty free means only a one time fee. Tracks are available in RealAudio preview and for online buy and download in compressed MP3 format. Complete software/instructions for decode your tracks into WAV/AIFF format are included for both Mac and PC.
  • Vari-Media: Sound Design
    "Original music to push your presentations to the limit"
    Contact:
    Royalty free original music for use in all types of multimedia. Samples are presented in Real Audio and Cd-Quality MP3 downloadable sound fines.