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What are the Best Freeware Apps usable with this hobby?

Blue Shadow

Blue Shadow

Waiting for Vintage Gear from this century
@Mike Mag just posted an adobe pdf app free, monthly, and premium in another thread. Works a treat so far. Many have dB meters, rpm meters and other apps usable in our hobby. There are piles of them. Be nice to have recommendations from folks that have been using them for a while, tried a few and found the good ones.

What apps do you like to use in this hobby?

Adobe app thread:

I never realized how easy it is to scan a manual for sharing

I just downloaded adobe SCAN to my iPhone and scanned a manual and uploaded it to hifiengine. I did not realize how easy it was to do that... I scanned a user manual in a few minutes. so if you have a manual you want to share and your phone has a high quality camera then download Adobe SCAN, use...
audiokarma.org
 
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There are a multitude of them for a multitude of applications.

Off the top of my head, the ones I use regularly are:

Audacity for audio editing
Shazam and Sound Hound for song ID
EAC and Fre:ac for CD ripping
Winamp / WACUP for audio library management and playback
 
I don't know what app I have and it's likely not the fault of the app, but likely the device, but the db meter on my Andriod phone seems far from accurate. I get readings that seem to be WAY too low... like 10-20 db lower than waht I would be expecting. I'll have the music up really loud and it show a db level that's supposed to be "moderate conversation" or something like that, but I'd have to yell to get my voice over the music.
 
RunOutGroove said:
I get readings that seem to be WAY too low
Click to expand...

dcmfan said:
I like the NIOSH app for sound metering
Click to expand...
I have a few level meters and two are close but the NIOSH is way off. I think it needs to be calibrated and this is offered but without knowing exactly what the volume is how do I set the calibration? So I use the other two more often. Then one needs to learn a bit of the differences between the weighting systems for the dB scales
 
Blue Shadow said:
I have a few level meters and two are close but the NIOSH is way off. I think it needs to be calibrated and this is offered but without knowing exactly what the volume is how do I set the calibration? So I use the other two more often. Then one needs to learn a bit of the differences between the weighting systems for the dB scales
Click to expand...
The way phone apps interact with the microphone is a crap shoot for sure. Tried a bunch of apps and readings were all over the place. The NIOSH is within 1.6 dB of a calibrated meter - clearly we're having different experiences with it. :dunno:

IMG_20250916_220534.jpg

I used the phone app when soundproofing so accuracy wasn't the goal as much as being able to see comparisons with the same tool. It was super helpful for that!
 
I believe the NIOSH can be very good but not without calibration and I don’t have a real sound level meter. Guess I need to see if anyone in our group has one or something that can sub for one to get my NIOSH se up properly.
 
For those still ripping the occasional CD to Lossless or converting files, which I still do, I have always had no issues with XLD
 
Gigantic said:
I have found HornRESP, WinISD and Room Eq Wizard to be indispensable for designing, building & tuning speakers.
Click to expand...
I wonder, which tool do you use for crossiver design?
I've used Jeff Bagby's Excel spreadsheet in the past, but wonder if there's something that superceded it or if there's another one you prefer.
Cheers

P.s. http://audio.claub.net/software.html < The spreadsheet and more speaker & crossover design tools can be found on this page.
 
Taking measurements (scope and frequency spectrum) on a PC with sound card is Visual Analyzer:

Visual Analyser 25.78

A powerful software implementing a Spectrum Analyzer, Oscilloscope, Frequency meter, Distorsiometer, Volt meter and more... plus complete D/A conversion, ZRLC, Impedance meter
www.sillanumsoft.org
 
GlamrLama said:
There are a multitude of them for a multitude of applications.

Off the top of my head, the ones I use regularly are:

Audacity for audio editing
Shazam and Sound Hound for song ID
EAC and Fre:ac for CD ripping
Winamp / WACUP for audio library management moviebox app and playback
Click to expand...
How to use Winamp / WACUP for audio?
 
graoumia said:
How to use Winamp / WACUP for audio?
Click to expand...
Winamp / WACUP is a media player and music library manager for local audio files. I use it to send audio files to my DAC for playback. Has a very customizable interface and still has a multitude of plugins and skins available to add capabilities to the main program. Most development stopped more than 10 years. WACUP is an actively maintained modern clone of Winamp that runs most plugins, skins, and visualizers and is updated quite frequently. Last update was several days ago.
 
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