Born to be free

There's no such thing as a free lunch, but you don't have to be the one who pays for it. Thankfully such cynicism has no place in the world of audio, as the abundance of freeware applications floating around on the internet means you can pretty much have your cake and eat it.

Even the most high-profile companies dealing in audio software are really just serving a niche market, so there isn't really a commercial market for audio software that's a touch obscure in its functionality.

This has led to a burgeoning amateur software community that writes applications for specific tasks, but which may not be commercially viable. These freeware applications are generally written for enthusiasts by enthusiasts and, although they can sometimes be a little rough and ready, they're generally good enough to get the job done.

In fact there's an enormous number of freeware applications floating around on the web, ranging from the useless to the truly inspired. We've decided to take a look at the best free audio applications around. These aren't shareware where you have to pay for the software after a trial period - they're completely free with no strings attached.

Playback time
Our first choice may seem a bit obvious to anyone who's been into MP3s for any period of time, but we feel it's essential for newbies to know it's out there. We'd hate to think people were relying on the monstrosity that is Windows Media Player for playing back their MP3 collections. If you are, then you really need to get yourself over to www.winamp.com as soon as possible and grab yourself a copy of this superb little media player.

Winamp is small, nippy and stable. It doesn't take half an hour to load and the interface can be scaled back to its bare essentials so doesn't get in the way of your work. It's also open ended in architecture, meaning there are hundreds of plugins available if you feel you need to add new features. You owe it to yourself to have this audio player installed on your machine.

Of course an MP3 player is no good without an MP3 encoder. The problem with many free encoders is that the codec they use - the piece of code that actually compresses the audio into MP3 format - doesn't produce sound quality as good as commercial codecs.

But that's not the case with Musicmatch as it employs the Fraunhofer codec, which is the best in the business. It's a hefty 9MB download from www.musicmatch.com, but it's well worth it. There is a paid-for version of Musicmatch available, but to be honest there isn't much reason to buy it, since the free version includes pretty much everything you could need.

There's a heap of options available for how you want your MP3 files encoded, and the software can hook up to the CDDB database on the internet to automatically add the proper names of tracks and artist to the ID3 tags on your MP3 files so you won't end up with a list of encoded tacks with file names such as 'unknown artist - track 01'.

When it comes to putting your music on the web, it's best to use a streaming format so visitors to your site don't have to download a whole song before they can listen to the audio. Real audio is probably the most popular format for streaming on the net and, thankfully, the company offers a free encoding tool, bringing streaming within reach of those who don't own a multinational media corporation.

The software allows you to encode audio for two different connection speeds and will even automatically generate a web page containing the links to your files. Realsystem Producer Basic can also create streaming video, so you could put a video of your band playing at the local village hall up on the web.

Being the free version of the software, it lacks batch conversion tools and there are no optimisers for the type of audio you're encoding, but for most tasks it's more than up to the job and certainly a lot more digestible than the $199.95 (£133.30) asking price for the full product. You can grab a copy from here.

For some reason Real has made the download page as confusing as possible by putting the link for the free product on the same page as the documentation for the full-priced Realsystem Producer Plus. You can still find the download link for the Basic version right at the very bottom of the page.

Making music
Of course if you're going to mess around with audio you need an audio editor to top and tail your sound snippets. Syntrillium's Cooledit is a fantastic piece of software, but it's shareware rather than freeware and has so many bells and whistles that it's likely to confuse first-time users.

Instead a good bet, which is also totally free, is a relative newcomer called Audacity. It's a cross-platform audio editor available for Mac, Linux and, of course, Windows 98 and upwards. Although it is very new it still has bags of functionality. Perhaps its best feature is support for VST plugins. This means that there's an almost unlimited number of effects available, as there's a healthy freeware VST plugin scene on the internet.

Audacity has a clear and simple interface and should be easy for even novices to get to grips with. It can load and save MP3 files but only with the addition of an external codec such as the free Lame codec available from here.

There's little doubt that Fruityloops from www.fruityloops.com is the best all-round drum machine for Windows. It's got a wealth of features and has grown into much more than a drum machine with the addition of synths and effects. However, it's not free and we're concentrating on free applications here, so we'll plump for Hammerhead.

It's not what you'd call a new program. In fact it's been around for years and hasn't been updated since its original release, but nevertheless it is simple to use and bags of fun. Hammerhead isn't exactly feature-laden but there are enough built-in drum sounds and effects to make it capable of producing some killer rhythms.

And because its interface is based on that of the classic Roland 909 hardware drum machine, it's extremely easy to use. You can even load in your own samples, although this can be tricky since they have to be converted to the correct format using a supplied conversion tool. You can grab Hammerhead from here.

This site also has lots of extra sample banks, so you can stock up on new sounds without having to mess about trying to get your own samples into the correct format.

Of course, when you've put some drum loops together you'll want to arrange them into patterns and overlay them with other samples and snippets of audio. For this task you can't really get much better than Acidxpress. It's a truly enormous download at nearly 25MB, so you'll need flat-rate access to the net or better still a broadband connection.

The beauty of Acidxpress is that it automatically adjusts samples to fit the tempo you're working to. So, it's extremely easy to layer samples on top of each other and create arrangements for songs. Acidxpress comes with some built-in sounds so you can get started straight away.

The full version of the software is the undisputed champion of loop sequencers and the cut-down version still offers many of its big brother's most important features, so head over to www.acidplanet.com and start downloading.

Midi matters
No serious Midi musician should be without one of the smallest but most useful programs ever written. Called Hubi's Loopback, it's only 41KB in size but don't let its diminutive footprint fool you - this is one useful little application.

It allows your Midi drivers to speak to more than one application simultaneously, so that you can run multiple Midi applications at the same time. It installs itself as a Midi driver and then gives you access to four virtual Midi ports.

Each port acts as both an input and output device. It used to be essential for syncing up Cubase and Rebirth before Steinberg introduced its Rewire technology, but it's still useful today. Get it from the author's homepage here.

The program also comes with Hubi's Midi Cable, which is useful for allowing you to play the synth sounds on your sound card without having to load up a sequencer.

Of course, the programs listed here are just the tip of the iceberg. If you search the internet you'll find free applications for almost any audio task. The best place to start is at dedicated audio sites such as www.sonicspot.com and www.harmony-central.com.

But, as ever, just trawling through the results from search engines such as Google and Altavista will turn up interesting results.

Contacts
Niall Magennis welcomes your comments on the sound column. Contact him via email: sound@pcw.co.uk. Please do not send unsolicited file attachments.