Like the traditional Rock Band experience, you’ll get to select between four instruments — vocals, guitar, bass and drums. Each will feature it’s own authentic experience for every song in the game, and when played with friends should sync up flawlessly.  Note our use of the word “should.”  This game has been in development for more than a year now, so we’d like to think that they’ve worked all the kinks out.  But until we get a room full of band geeks jamming out on their portables, we’ll never really know how well the game will sync via Bluetooth.  At the end of the day, this will likely make or break the experience.  Knowing the top notch quality of previous Rock Band efforts, we’re inclined to believe that Rock Band iPhone should pull this off without a hitch.

Touch Arcade were given a hands-on preview of the game, and are reporting that the following 20 songs will make up the initial set list;

30 Seconds To Mars – “Attack”
AFI – “Girls Not Grey”
All American Rejects – “Move Along”
Beastie Boys – “Sabotage”
Blink-182 – “All The Small Things”
Blondie – “Hanging on the Telephone”
Foo Fighters – “Learn To Fly”
Foo Fighters – “Everlong”
George Thorogood & the Destroyers – “Bad to The Bone”
Jethro Tull – “Hymn 43″
Joan Jett – “Hymn 43″
Lynard Skynard – “Simple Man”
Motorhead – “Ace of Spades ‘08″
Pixies – “Debaser”
Presidents of The United States of America – “Ladybug”
Rise Against – “Give It All”
Silversun Pickups – “Lazy Eye”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Cherub Rock”
Steve Miller Band – “Take The Money and Run”
The Go Go’s – “We Got The Beat”

The one disappointing thing we gleamed from the Touch Arcade preview was that “every instrument has its own track that you tap along with.”  If true, that means that vocals have replaced actual singing with yet another instrument track.  It’s understandable (not all App Store shoppers have access to a mic), but still disappointing.  We would have loved to learn that iPhone rockers could belt out the hits into their microphones.  Doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case.

We’re also very glad to see that this release have gone in a very different direction than Rock Band’s other recent portable incarnation, Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP.  The PSP version had players attempting to keep all four instruments in play at the same time in a frantic, mad balancing act.  It was not unlike Harmonix’s breakthrough PS2 game Frequency, but it just didn’t seem to be a great fit for the portable player in our opinion.  Keeping things streamlined and as close the original experience as possible, much as EA Mobile seems to have done here, is really the best way to bring this to the portable market.

No word on price yet, but a number of sources are reporting that this has already been submitted to Apple for approval.  Hopefully this means we’ll be seeing it in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, enjoy every second of Tap Tap Revenge you can.  Once Rock Band hits, something tells me Tap Tap won’t carry the weight it once did in the court of public opinion.

A recent study by the market research group NPD showed that digital music purchases continued their steady rise to market dominance during the first half of 2009.  While that fact in and of itself isn’t all that surprising, what share of the overall music market iTunes now makes up is enough to knock the socks off even the most passionate Apple devotee: 25%.

That’s not 25% of the digital market — that’s 25% of the total market.  This makes them the largest music seller in the US, beating out their closest competitor Wal-Mart, currently sitting at 14% of total music sales, by a whopping 11 points.

Other figures are just as impressive.  In the digital arena iTunes isn’t only #1 — it’s blasted away the competition.  In terms of digital music sales iTunes now represents 69% of the market.  It’s closest competitor AmazonMP3 comes in at only 8%.  This runaway lead in the digital music market is in stark contrast with the relatively balanced sales in physical music.  The four leaders of CD sales — Wal-mart, Best Buy, Target and Amazon are all within a few points of each other, covering 20%, 16%, 10% and 10% of the CD market respectively.

How could one market showcase such a distinct leader while another seems to offer up a balanced competition?  Brand recognition?  Strong hardware support?

AmazonMP3 has attempted to buck the trend, offering up DRM-free music and better prices and a host of other options.  When Apple saw that the service was gaining traction it went ahead and changed its feature set to offer up the things that were making AmazonMP3 so popular.   What can a company like Amazon do to climb past 8% of the market, or more accurately, bring iTunes down from 69%?

What is iTunes doing right that everyone else is doing wrong?  What, if anything, could competitors do to level the playing field?

Apple isn’t the first company to get involved in live streaming of musical performances, but they are the first to try and put it in your pocket. This past Saturday the UK electronic group Underworld performed a concert live from Oakland, California, and for the first time ever you were able to watch this streamed live to your iPhone.

Live concert streaming seems to be gaining a lot of traction in 2009, and this is just the latest attempt to incorporate that into an already successful platform.  Back in June, for example, Hulu brought its users a live performance by the Dave Matthews Band.

While nothing has been confirmed regarding future concerts on either the iPhone or Hulu, I find it hard to believe this is the last stop.  There’s a lot of potential for both platforms to shape an experience that’s unique to what they’re offering.  It’s not inconcievable to think that we might see a “Concert Series” subscription come to iTunes, or some brilliant behind-the-scenes NBC performances live on Hulu.  Who wouldn’t want to live stream the rehearsal’s of Saturday Night Live musical guests?

The idea of streaming a concert over the internet is far from new.  A number of performers have attempted to stream concert footage dating all the way back to 1998, when John Tesh performed an intimate concert online by opening up whopping 100 phone line connections.  When you realize how many millions upon millions of people will tune in tonight, it’s kind of quaint and awe-inspiring when you think about the lengths Tesh had to go to perform to 60 people in the dial-up era.

It seems kind of strange that this Underworld streaming was announced so last minute (the news broke Saturday morning), yet there seems to be a general consensus amongst a number of blogs on why this information was held back.  The folks at NewTeeVee are suggesting that AT&T held onto the announcement for fear of their network being overloaded, which certainly doesn’t seem too far fetched a possibility.  Despite the delay in announcement, I’m sure the AT&T network went through a real stress-test Saturday night.

And yet things weren’t necesarily as “live” as advertised.  TechRadar is reporting that the concert itself actually took place the night before.  While the event was likely recorded in its entirety, and the broadcast still went out live, there’s definitely a difference between live and live-to-tape.  Regardless, multiple sites are reporting the event was executed flawlessly, with high quality video and audio broadcast to the masses with nary a stumbling block in sight.

To our readers who were lucky enough to hear about the event on Saturday, did you check it out?  How did you find the quality?  Was the stream as flawless as everyone is saying?

Ecoute has a small main windows that feels a lot like an iPod. You can browse your music just as you would on an iPod or iPhone. When you play a song the window will shrink and display the album artwork for the song. Hover your mouse over the album artwork you can easly play, pause, and skip back or forward in the track. The bottom of the screen displays the time that is left in the track and you can click the search icon to search songs. Clicking the album artwork will display the song lyrics (if available).

Ecoute also has many features that iTunes lacks. You can add a small controller to your desktop. This will display the album artwork, song title, artist, and album. You can also use it to play/pause, and skip ahead or back. You don’t need to have Ecoute’s icon in the dock. It can be in the menu bar instead. Ecoute even has Last.fm scrobbling. If you don’t know what Last.fm is, it let’s you track and share what music you listen to.

Ecoute is a very basic app. While it would be nice if it included some more features, like playlist creation and the ability to tell if a playlist is new or not, it is a great application to listen to music and watch videos without opening iTunes. You can download a free trial of Ecoute from PixiApps and a license costs $10.

The Easy Way

Naturally the easiest way to keep your Palm Pre syncing with iTunes is to download an older version of iTunes, or refuse to upgrade to the new 8.2.1 release. This limits you to the features (and security) of the older version, and isn’t very practical. Although, if you have multiple machines, it could be just as easy to leave iTunes at 8.2 on an older machine. Click here to download iTunes 8.2 from Version Tracker.

The Other Easy Way

A few months back we previewed the doubleTwist software released by famous DVD encryption cracker DVD Jon and his small team. The concept of the software is simple: sync your all devices from one piece of software, without all of the hassle. doubleTwist is still fairly new, but it offers support for a few hundred smartphones, Mp3 players, the Sony PSP. Recently added to that mix is the Palm Pre. A note for Palm Pre PC users: the doubleTwist is available for Windows as well on the company’s website.

1) Download and install the doubleTwist software from the company’s website, and launch the app.

2) Sign up for an account with the company in the dialogue box that appears at your first launch.

3) Once loaded, you should be able to see tabs for your music, photos, and videos from your iTunes or iPhoto libraries.

4) Connect your Palm Pre (or other smartphone/device) with the USB cable to your machine.

5) Your device will show up in the column under the “Devices” section. This should look remarkably familiar for iTunes users. Then syncing both ways works the same way as it would in iTunes. Select the music you want to transfer to your device, and drag and drop it onto the device in the sidebar. When transferring video, doubleTwist will automatically convert the video for the right format of your device.

doubleTwist’s interface is attractive, yet sparse. It’s merely a sync manager,
you’ll still want to use iTunes for content management.

It’s as simple as that. While normally I would think it’s a hassle to have yet another step to sync to my phone, I find doubleTwist a friendly, simple, and intuitive solution.

This video is a company demo of how doubleTwist syncs content from an Android phone (or similar phone).

There was something magical about it.  The small of the vinyl and cardboard.  Grabbing a record by the edges so as not to scratch it.  Dropping the needle.  And of course, picking up a 45 in anticipation of an albums release.  Now Apple wants to recreate this experience with Digital 45’s, virtual reproductions of classic singles on the iTunes Store.

At a glance, this whole thing might sound like a marketing ploy to simply bundle songs together at a discounted price, and should they begin to clutter the Digital 45 Store with new albums together it would be an easy argument to make.  As it stands now though, the Digital 45 Store is offering up reproductions of actual 45’s, complete with the original sleeve art and matching B-side.

In the cases where sleeve art isn’t available, they’ve opted to show the label art from the center of the disc on a vinyl background.  It’s a great look, one that some will actually prefer to the sleeve art.  For those who missed the heydey of 45’s and later, CD singles, the real highlight to these releases always lay in the B-side, which usually featured a song not available on the album.  Adding B-sides to the iTunes catalogue should seriously satisfy the needs of music fans who think they’ve heard everything from their favorite artists.

Click here to check out everything that is currently offered on the Digital 45 Store.

SweetFM is a mash up of sorts, mixing Last.fm streaming with your average iTunes helper app. Like all other iTunes helper apps, SweetFM displays the album artwork of the song your currently listening to and that functionality also works with music you stream from Last.fm. It also has an indescript spot where you are suppose to enter what you want to listen to on Last.fm and an arbitrary arrow button next to it. One would think you could just enter an artist name into the box and get Last.fm to play it but this is not the case. Instead you have to press this arrow button to display a group of addition buttons labeled “Artist”, “Tags”, and etc. You then have to hit one of those buttons and enter further information into the box. For example, if I wanted to listen to Pink Floyd on Last.fm, I would have to open up SweetFM, click the arrow, click artist, and then enter “Pink Floyd” in the box.

In reality all they are really doing with this convoluted process is adding a little tag behind the information you enter into the box. You would think they could automate this or have a little bit of magic happen behind the scenes, but unfortunately that is not the case.

Aside from that the application feels more like a beta than a final release, I’ve encountered multiple bugs in the few days that I’ve been playing with it. The first of which is that what the application shows as playing and what is actually playing in iTunes don’t match from time to time, even though SweetFM says the right info in it’s menu in the menu bar. Also, the progress indicator, which allows you to scrub through songs, occasionally does not work.

But the most disappointing part of this application is it’s user interface. Even though they are touting the fact that you can design skins for this app using HTML and CSS, a well built one should still come bundled with the app. Fibre, the included skin, is an overly glossy, distracting waste of desktop space. Personally, I like my iTunes helpers to be pinned to the desktop and just meld with everything else their but Fibre is just not capable of doing that (the melding at least). Silly things like having the horizontal volume slider bumped right up to the “Scrobbling” button for Last.fm makes it seem as though the slider has something to do with “Scrobbling” when in fact it does not. The semi-transparent background in particular is my least favorite part, why does it need to be there? Take a page from the designers doing skins for Bowtie and just get rid of the app background all together, it works so much better with the desktop. Luckily choco moko has a skins directory on their website but at the moment it only has one additional theme, which seems only like a slight redesign to Fibre and nothing more.

If your at all interested in helper apps for iTunes, I would recommend you stay away from SweetFM. Although if your a fan of Last.fm it is worth checking out. It is available from choco moko for $29. If you are just looking for an iTunes helper, check out the free Bowtie.

Ringer is a very basic application. The sidebar on the left lets you browse your iTunes library and the rest of the window is for creating ringtones. You can browse many different sections of iTunes including artists, movies, and TV shows. You can also search for the specific clip.

The ringtone creator is very similar to the one built into iTunes. It has the same features and tools. You simply drag a box around the portion of the song you’d like to use, and hit preview. You can also set the gap in between loops and have the audio fade in and out. When you click create the ringtone is instantly placed under “Ringtones” in iTunes and you will be able to sync them with your iPhone.

Ringer is a great app for creating simple ringtones, but it doesn’t have many advanced features. For some ringtones it might be useful to have a few simple audio effects. There is also no way to control the length of the audio fade. Ringer doesn’t have many features, but it does just what it should. It’s an easy way to create new ringtones in a few short seconds. Ringer is available for $15 from Pixel Research Labs.

Songbird’s interface look familiar? A ghost from iTunes Past?

The most interesting thing about Songbird is the open-source code it’s built off of: Firefox. That’s right! The folks over at Pioneers for the Inevitable have built the entire thing on top of Mozilla’s popular browser, which brings me to my biggest complaint: my TI-84 graphic calculator could load my music library faster! Songbird’s Achilles heel seems to be it’s speed. It’s like trying to play streaming video on dial-up. The slow start times and rendering speeds that seem to plague the Mac version of Firefox get even worse in Songbird. I’m relatively impatient when it comes to app responsiveness and loading, but others I’ve spoken to agree: Songbird can be a bit of a clunker.

Songbird integrates Last.fm in a very classy way

Aside from my quips about speed, Songbird can be fun to use. Through extensions and themes (called “Feathers”), it has a number of fantastic features, and room for expansion. iPod support, Last.FM integration, QuickTime FairPlay integration, as well as the benefits of a built-in tabbed-browser (which I’m using right now to post this review). I know I was harsh on the developers earlier for using Firefox because of the speed, but it’s also my biggest compliment; browsing the web with your music elegantly placed in the same window is quite nice. Besides, the built-in web browser allows for easy integration of other Mp3 stores, and easy searching for legal music downloads on the web.

Firefox users will be met with a familiar preferences panel

Other features such as a Mini-Player, the ability to re-order your music window panes, song ratings, easy library search, and organizing features puts Songbird in contention with iTunes. It really is an intuitive program, and such an easy switch from iTunes, that you may not notice the difference (apart from the speed of course). Songbird will even import your iTunes library complete with music, playlists, and playcounts. If there isn’t a feature available built into Songbird check out their add-on’s page, where a number of incredibly useful plugins are available for download.

I do have one last issue to take with Songbird, and it’s video. When I imported my iTunes library, it brought in all of my video podcasts and integrated them into my music library. Songbird doesn’t support video playback, but will play the audio in a video. Putting my library on shuffle, I found it incredibly annoying to have to constantly stop and delete video from the library. Plus because I had Last.fm scrobbling enabled, I had to dig through my recent plays and pull them out. If the software isn’t going to support video, it shouldn’t allow it to import into the library.

All in all, Songbird makes a fantastic attempt at an iTunes replacement, but a number of short comings make it impossible for me to jump ship. If you can handle the slightly sluggish interface and you’re looking for an alternative to iTunes with support for other music stores, and iPod support; Songbird might just be your match.

AirPhones’s interface is plane and simple.  It’s designed to work in the background so that you don’t need to worry about adjusting any settings while the app is active.  AirPhones’s preference window is accessible through its menubar icon.

You can choose to have the app launch every time you log in as well as choose to access the preferences from the dock, the menu bar, or both.  AirPhones will also tell you which devices are paired with the app and allows you to clear it.  Speaking of devices, lets look at the interface on the iPhone and iPod touch.

Launch the app, and this is what you get.  That’s it!  You can control the volume with the supplied slider at the bottom.  AirPhones will work as far as your network will allow.  If your network is bridged across an entire campus, your AirPhones will still be receiving even if you are at the complete opposite side of the area.

You can be watching a movie, listening to iTunes Radio, staying up to date on the latest broadcast web event, etc – anywhere with your mac and an iPhone and iPod Touch.

In terms of performance AirPhones does not disappoint.  Sound quality is great, and the app does not suck up your processor.  Setup is painless and fast.  All you have to do is hit connect in the preference window on the mac and you’re connected.

AirPhones is $4.99 at the iTunes Apps store, and the client on the mac is absolutely free.  AirPhones is available at http://airphonesapp.com/.

How does it work?

Simply put, doubleTwist is constantly updated with drivers and software designed to work with all of the latest gadgets and gear that stores all of your digital media assets.  Because of this, doubleTwist makes it as easy as plugging in your device, and dragging and dropping in your media files to and from your devices.

The Interface

DoubleTwist’s interface makes up a good part of it’s feature list.  DoubleTwist takes after a longtime design principal commonly found in iTunes and iPhoto.  In the right section of the window, you’ll find a sidebar filled with a list of sources where you’ll find your media content.  The sidebar is divided into four sections:  DoubleTwist “aka sharing information with doubleTwists’s own sharing service”, Library “used to access the media on your computer’s hard drive”, Devices “used to access your digital device’s content”, and Friends “which also works with DoubleTwist’s own sharing service”.

The right side of the app is where you view and interact with your content.  This side of the app changes based on what you have selected in the sidebar.  When viewing the “My Feed” section, you get at consecutive list filled with notifications.  Inside of these notifications are thumbnails of pictures, movies, and music which you can view at anytime.

When looking at any of the the Library sections, the right area of the app shows a simple browser interface designed for the one purpose of finding your media, and dragging it onto your device.

Which brings us to the Device section.  Clicking on the device itself shows a progress bar depicting how much storage space you have available.

PSP and Video!

One thing everyone always gripes about is video conversion.  Well gripe no more because doubleTwist automatically converts your video for you no matter what device you are using.  This is a big plus for PSP users.  Just drag in the video, and doubleTwist does the rest.  Thumbnail and all!

Sharing Online

Besides integrating with your digital devices, DoubleTwist also integrates with FaceBook, Flickr, and YouTube allowing you to share your captured media online.

DoubleTwist also has a sharing service built in.  This allows you to easily share your media with all of your friends.  When you receive a photo, video, or audio file, doubleTwist will automatically update your feed.

Final Thoughts

DoubleTwist is still very new, meaning the compatible device list is a little sparse however, because doubleTwist is an ongoing project, the developers are hard at work making more and more devices compatible.

In terms of performance, doubleTwist does not disappoint.  Depending on how much memory you have as well as the speed of your Intel processor, the time it takes to transfer and convert video will vary, however testing on a 2nd gen aluminum iMac I found that doubleTwist is quite fast and will not disappoint.

DoubleTwist is available for the Mac (Leopard only) and PC at http://www.doubletwist.com/ for the unbeatable price of free.

That’s why Sirius XM has been making some bold choices lately — choices that take the “satellite” out of satellite radio.  Until very recently, you would have needed a satellite radio unit to access any Sirius or XM programming.  Now they’ve changed it so you can have an internet only subscription for $12.95 a month and listen directly through streaming.  Up next?  Sirius XM is looking to conquer your iPhone.

During their recent fourth quarter earnings conference call, Sirius executives David Frear, Mel Karmazin and Jim Meyer announced the expected second-quarter launch of the Sirius XM iPhone app.  The app will allow you to take you Sirius subscription with you on the road without the need for a satellite radio unit.  Like other internet radio options out there, the Sirius XM app will stream the music live from the channel of your choice.

As a fan of Sirius XM programming, it’s hard not to get excited about this.  But on the broader scale, will this really make an impact?  As so many apps already exist to provide internet radio free of charge, will new subscribers really be drawn in by the possibility of sporting Sirius sounds sans satellite device?  Or will it just be another nail in satellite radios coffin?

One of the long-standing iPod rumors has been a model that included an FM tuner. Some people still can’t believe Apple never included that “simple” feature. Now, with the iPhone/iPod Touch being able to stream music from the Internet, I think it’s safe to say there will never be an iPod with a terrestrial radio. And using an app like Slacker Personal Radio, you wonder why anyone would still want one.

There are several streaming music players in the App Store, with Pandora being the most popular. Slacker is very similar to Pandora — choose an artist or song, and Slacker builds a radio station with similar music. There are also several pre-built genre stations to choose from. Slacker doesn’t seem to use the “musical fingerprinting” that Pandora does. Instead, it appears to be based on the genre of the artists. Still, it manages to put together a good playlist.

Slacker has a very diverse music selection of both independent and mainstream artists. To help me really put it to the test, I enlisted my friends on Twitter to suggest music to try. Searching for everything from Irish folk to Viking metal, I was able to find all but a few really obscure bands. I had less luck with song searches. About half the time, the band would be in Slacker, but the particular song I was looking for would not. This isn’t surprising considering how convoluted music licensing is, but it’s still disappointing.

But when it does find a song, Slacker plays that song — not just a similar song, which is what Pandora does. To me, this is a major improvement over Pandora. When you’re in the mood for a particular song, that’s what you want to hear first, not just something from the same genre. On top of that, Slacker gives you some control over what gets played on a station — you can increase how often songs you favorite get played, for example.

Overall, Slacker is an easy application to use. The UI is simple, and if you don’t have an account you can register for one right in the app. One minor issue is with searching: If you click on a search result to listen to the station and then go back, your search results are gone. If you wanted to try something else from your results, you have to search again.

I didn’t have any problems streaming music with Slacker. It took a little longer to start playing when I was on the EDGE network, but once it started playing it sounded smooth and clear.

With a free Slacker account you can skip up to six songs per station and (from the web interface) request a limited number of specific songs be played in a particular station. A paid account gives you unlimited skips and requests. With its large selection and advanced features, Slacker makes an excellent radio for your iPhone or iPod Touch. Slacker is a free download and available in the App Store.

Come January 8, 2009 Boxee will open those floodgates and everyone will have open access to try out Boxee.  Well by everyone they mean only Mac and Ubuntu user’s.  Their closed alpha testing stage generated over 150,000 sign ups, obviously a much larger number than they were ever expecting.  We have been active in testing Boxee since it was announced and things are coming along nicely…for something that’s still in its infancy.

So for those of you who are completely lost as to what Boxee is here you go: Boxee builds upon the widely popular XBMC (Xbox Media Center) by taking the normal media center functions and extending them to online video streaming.  Along with that they have built a social network within the app in which friends can rate and recommend things to watch, amongst other abilities as well.

The most enticing feature of Boxee is it’s ability to stream content from sites like Hulu and Comedy Central, to name a couple.  This is extremely nice as Hulu alone contains thousands of full TV shows and movies.  All this can now be streamed right to your big screen TV which is nice and convenient, granted the quality is only so so.  This can be done from any OSX 10.4 or 10.5 computer, AppleTV, or Ubuntu system. Unfortunately the online video content is only available to people in the US.

Now keep in mind that Boxee is still in the very early stages of development and does have many bugs.  Also some functions of the software are not very intuitive on how to set up, namely the setting up of a networked hard drive that contains your media files.  When Boxee does become open to the public it will still retain it’s Alpha status, but hopefully a beta will follow quickly.

Boxee can be downloaded at the official site.

Unfortunately, I feel as though this application falls flat and only really offers the same features as its free counterparts. Like the AOL Radio application, Radioshift allows you to find all your local radio stations and search for others using an intuitive list of music genres. But unlike the AOL app, Radioshift also allows you to search for your favorite station by name.

As for quality, Radioshift works very well on 3G, Edge, and WiFi. Obviously a stream’s quality varies based upon the bitrate at which it broadcasts, so it would be very helpful if Rouge Amoeba listed that in the station’s description.

I have no doubt that this is a very well-built radio application for your iPhone, I just find it hard to recommend that you go out and spend $9.95 for this app when you could get one of many other radio apps which have the nearly the same functionality for free.

Currently Radioshift Touch is available through the App Store for $9.99.

I then set out to find a Mac application that would allow me to make an attempt at cleaning some of these tracks up. After a little bit of searching, I found a company by the name of Bias Inc., that made an application called SoundSoap which was right up my alley.

SoundSoap doesn’t have a normal OS X interface. The tools for cleaning up your audio are still cleanly laid out and simple to find. Everything you need is right there in front of you; SoundSoap has no preferences pane. To get started, you can drag a sound file onto SoundSoap’s dock icon, onto its window, or find it in the Finder with Command+O.

Once you have a file loaded into SoundSoap, it is very simple to begin removing noise. Pressing the play button at the bottom of the window will play your file “as-is,” and changes are reflected as you change the settings. SoundSoap has 9 different settings that you can alter to try and get your file sounding as clean as possible.

The feature that really makes SoundSoap a great application is the “Learn Noise” button. The “Learn Noise” button lets SoundSoap automatically set the Noise Tuner and Noise Reduction knobs to what it believes will get rid of the noise in the file.

When manually finding settings for the Noise Tuner and Noise Reduction knobs, it is good to understand what is actually happening when you turn them. Now I am no sound engineer, so I think it’s best if I let SoundSoap’s manual do the talking here:

The Noise Tuner knob is essentially a threshold control, and is responsible for determining what is considered to be noise, and what is considered to be the desired audio signal. For example, turning the Noise Tuner knob all the way to the left (counter-clockwise), means setting a very low threshold value. With a very low threshold value, all audio content with an amplitude above this threshold is considered to be part of the desired audio signal that we wish to preserve. On the other hand, setting a higher threshold value with the Noise Tuner means that any of the audio content with an amplitude lower than the threshold level will be eliminated.

There is a little more explanation of the Noise Tuner in SoundSoap’s manual, but this is all you really need to know to get started.

The Noise Reduction knob does exactly what you’d think it would do. Turning it to the right increases the amount of noise reduction being applied, and vice versa. It’s important to first find a comfortable setting with the Noise Tuner first, before setting the Noise Reduction. According to the manual though, if you use the Learn Noise feature, it usually isn’t necessary to alter the Noise Reduction setting.

The little window at the top of SoundSoap’s window isn’t a setting, but rather a helpful indicator. It is referred to as the “Wash Window,” and gives you a visual representation of how the noise reduction process is going. Blue lines represent the audio you want, and red lines represent the noise you are trying to get rid of. The line in the center of the window is the point at which noise reduction is applied. The darker the red or blue line once it has passed the line in the middle of the window, the stronger the representation.

The click and crackle slider controls the click and crackle thresholds simultaneously. Moving the slider upward removes more and more crackles and clicks. As a general rule, you want to use the lowest possible setting you can manage on this slider to get rid of the noise.

The last slider on SoundSoap’s interface is the Enhance slider. Basically, this slider enhances frequencies and tone of degraded media. It is best to leave this slider until you have finished setting all other sliders and knobs. Just like the Click and Crackle slider, the Enhance slider works independent of other controls.

The next few controls in SoundSoap are buttons rather than sliders. The Preserve Voice button filters out any frequencies that are outside the range of human voice. Remove Rumble targets very low frequencies (around 40Hz) which is commonly found in recordings of vinyl records, where the very low frequency noise of the turntable motor can be transferred through the turntable’s needle.

Finally, there are two settings with radio buttons: Broadband and Remove Hum. Broadband lets you choose whether broadband noise reduction is on or in “Noise Only” mode. When you have “on” selected, SoundSoap will process your file according to current broadband tool settings. When you are in “Noise Only” mode, SoundSoap only outputs the noise you are trying to reduce, which can be a useful setting to see how effective a setting is in reducing the noise. The louder the noise is in this mode, the more drastic the change you will hear when you go back to “on” or “off.” With Remove Hum, you can set hum removal to either “50 Hz,” “60Hz,” or “off.”

Once you are happy with how your file sounds, clicking “apply” will apply your settings to your whole file. Then, you just have to click “File>Save As…” to save your document. When saving you can choose your format (MPEG 4, AIFF, WAVE, SDII) and other settings displayed in the screenshot below.

In the end, I was quite pleased with the results that SoundSoap produced. After only a few minutes of tweaking, almost all of the noise that was affecting my files was gone once I ran the file through SoundSoap. SoundSoap also can remove noise from video files, it is not just limited to audio.

SoundSoap is also more than just a stand-alone application. It is also a plug-in for most AU, RTAS/AS, and VST host applications on Mac OS X or WinXP (including GarageBand, BIAS Peak, Apple Logic, MOTU Digital Performer, Digidesign’s Pro Tools, and more). For more serious audiophiles, Peak Pro includes SoundSoap LE (same as SoundSoap, excluding additional host compatibility) and can be an ideal tool for stereo recording, editing, cleaning, mastering, and delivery.

SoundSoap 2 retails for $129 from Bias Inc., though is available through some resellers for $99. $129 (or $99) may seem expensive for an application, but to get something like this done professionally could potentially cost much more.

Aquarius Software’s Playwatch is a handy menu bar iTunes controller which will display the song information of whatever track is playing in a little mini iTunes-esque ticker, right in your menu bar. This provides a quick and easy way to view what song is playing without even having to press any buttons.

However, if you hover your mouse over the display, HUD window pops out with a variety of options. You can play, pause, skip a song or go back to the last one. But in addition to that you can select any other song from the currently playing album to play or go directly to iTunes. Most of these features are new additions in recent versions. What started as a simple ticker display has blossomed into a full-fledged iTunes controller in only a few versions. Personally, this creates a much more full experience and could change the way that you interact with your music.

Playwatch also has a wide array of preferences which let you customize the size, colors, font, and specific information that appears in the ticker. There is also a small progress bar at the bottom of the ticker that indicates how far along in the song you are, and an optional play/pause, rewind, fast forward button that can be displayed in the menu bar.

One of the problems I had with Playwatch was, although it is very customizable in other areas, the lack of options regarding the pop-out menu interface. You can control how many seconds the mouse needs to hover to activate it, but I would prefer to just click and activate it, and perhaps Command + click would give the menu with preferences and other information. Another problem is that the preferences are a completely different application, and don’t seem as polished as they could be, organization-wise. Playwatch has some really cool features, but it’s misses the polish and cleanness that are common among many other iTunes controllers.

Finally, I can’t forget the price. Playwatch costs just under 7€, or just above $13. If Playwatch were freeware, I know it would be a much more attractive solution for many mac users. However, because of it’s fairly high price (at least in dollars) I don’t think it is my preferred controller. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t try it out and see for yourself. There’s a free 30-day trial. Additionally, I feel that Playwatch will improve in the coming versions, seeing how it has matured in only the last few months.

You can download the trial of Playwatch from German website Aquarious Software. The english isn’t great, but that shouldn’t turn you off from this interesting iTunes controller.

Admittedly, I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to music. If I need a chord, I’m going to find it with my ears. But ChordMate makes it easy to cheat. Check out my video review to see some of my favorite features.

So as you can see there are some nice features that can come in handy during a songwriting session, music theory training, or just playing around on your First Act guitar. Harmonic Sense did a great job with ChordMate Pro.

My only complaint is that to access the power of ChordMate, you need to purchase the Pro version. If you want the express or the standard version you save some cash at the expense of cool features. Tiered pricing works for power applications, but asking a user to pay more for basic features may mean pricing yourself out of the chord-finding market. Any fan of Creed will tell you that Drop D is as standard tuning as it comes, but you’ll have to buy the “professional” version to play the chorus to “With Arms Wide Open.”

You can pick up a copy of ChordMate Pro at Harmonic Sense for $39.95. Choose the Express version for $14.95 or pick up ChordMate Standard for $29.95.

I Love Stars is a free application from Potion Factory, and it’s designed to do one simple thing. It simply shows up inconspicuously in your menubar and provides you with a simple interface to rate the current track.

It’s not a fully-fledged iTunes controller; it won’t allow you to control your music or display snazzy album art. All it does is one thing, and it does it well. The interface simply consists of 1 to 5 stars, arranged nicely and unobtrusively. Sure, you can assign keyboard shortcuts to an app like Quicksilver to control the ratings, but it would be nice if you could see it, right?

I think utilities like these are really helpful because it reduces distractions. Having to switch to iTunes just to rate music is annoying and somewhat distracting. Though you originally planned to just tag a song, in no time, you’ll end up browsing album art, looking through the iTunes store, and actually buying some music. It’s simple utilities like these that get the job done, and done fast.

For extra goodness, launch System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items and add it to the list. The app will launch automatically when you login. I Love Stars is available for free from Potion Factory.

If your iTunes library is spread out over numerous computers in your house and all on one wireless network, then this is incredibly useful, but that’s as far as the fun goes. Outside of a wireless network, no sharing is allowed. That’s where SimplifyMedia comes in. SimplifyMedia works exactly like the sharing feature in iTunes, but with one difference: You don’t have to be on the same wireless network to share your music.

Downloading SimplifyMedia is easy, and it’s even available for PCs, too. Once you’re all signed up and installed, opening up the application presents you with a window that allows you to invite up to 30 friends with whom you can share your music library (you can invite someone simply by entering their username or email address). Once they accept your invitation, all you have to do is be online at the same time as them and you’ll be able to stream each other’s music libraries. Granted, your computer has to be on and both SimplifyMedia and iTunes have to be open, so this isn’t free music 24/7.

Besides sharing with friends, one of the ways SimplifyMedia can be used is to bring together music libraries spread out over various computers that aren’t necessarily in the same WiFi network. Or, it could be used to listen to music in someone’s home music library while at work. The possibilities are endless. As long as you have a capable computer connected to the internet, you could bring your music library with you anywhere, regardless of hard drive space.

One of the main problems with SimplifyMedia, though, is that you many not have any friends to share your music with. I’ll get you started, you can add me: swruler9284. There are also some music-hungry users on iusethis who have shared their usernames.

SimplifyMedia is available for free on Macs and PCs (also with Winamp support) and there is experimental support for Linux and even the iPhone — probably the coolest use of SimplifyMedia I can think of!

Despite iTunes’ big lead, Amazon still has a lot going for it. If you haven’t yet made a purchase via the Amazon MP3 store here is what you’ve been missing out on: Amazon sells high quality, non-DRM MP3 downloads for less than a buck each.

MP3 files purchased from Amazon are all encoded at a higher rate (256 kbps) than songs bought from the iTunes Music Store (typically 128 kbps). There is no DRM on songs purchased via Amazon. Unlike the protected AAC files you buy from iTunes, Amazon MP3’s can be played on an unlimited number of iPods, Macs and Windows machines as well as any cellphone, Linux machine, or any other device that supports MP3 playback. No DRM also means that you can burn your music on as many mix tapes as you want however many times as you want.

Amazon sells most downloads for $0.99 each, however they promise that the top 100 songs will sell for $0.89. You can usually save big buy purchasing a full album rather than buying per track. For example, downloading all 24 tracks from the Led Zeppelin compilation Mothership (yes, this is a shameless plug for an album that rocks so hard it could make your ears bleed!) individually would cost $23.76. Purchasing the full album, however, costs $12.99, or about $0.54 per song!

The Amazon MP3 store consists of two parts: a web app and a dedicated downloader. The downloader has improved since I first tried it out late last year. In addition to being able to monitor your download queue, you can pause or resume downloads, open downloaded tracks in the Finder, and clear completed downloads. Additionally, purchased songs are now added directly into iTunes, eliminating the tedious task of manually importing them into iTunes. The downloader is free and you will be prompted to download it the first time you make a purchase.

In order to download music from Amazon on your Mac you need four things:
Internet access (duh)
An Amazon account (double-duh)
The Amazon MP3 Downloader application
Mac OS X (10.4 and up)

In summary, Amazon sells music downloads that sound better, can be played on more devices, and are generally cheaper than tracks purchased via iTunes. Will it be replacing iTunes any time soon? Definitely not within the next few months. Fans of desktop apps may be a little loathe to switch to a web app no matter how good the product is. Also, the selection on iTunes is still a tiny bit better. Apple has done a fantastic job of training my brain to think that when I want music for my iPod I have to use iTunes. However, the DRM-free aspect of Amazon’s Music Store, coupled with their superior bit rate and pricing, makes it too good to pass up. Now, when I want music, I go to Amazon first. If (and only if) I can’t find what I’m looking for there, I go to iTunes.

Now, let’s hear from our readers. Are you using the Amazon Music Store already? What would it take to switch from iTunes to Amazon? Sound off in the comments below and let the world know what you love and/or hate about Amazon’s foray into the world of digital music distribution.

If you looked at djay when it was still at v1.2 and found it wasn’t for you, I recommend you take a second look. You can tell that a lot of work has went into improving this application. Make sure to watch the review and look for the giveaway at the end of this post. UPDATE: A new video has been uploaded, which fixes the problem with the sound.

The fine folks at algoriddim have graciously decided to give away 3 licenses of djay along with this review. If you would like to be eligible to be chosen in the draw, just comment on this post with one feature you would like to see integrated into djay. If you do not get chosen in the draw, or would like to support the developers with a purchase, you can pick up djay for $49.99 USD from Algoriddim.

Winners will be chosen Friday, April 4th.

If you have seen the teaser page and have been wondering what this app is all about, today is your lucky day. I have had a chance to play around with the beta, and the developers have sent us a short video demoing the premise behind Misu.

As you can see from the video, Misu is an application for transferring music from one iPod to another. If you have ever tried to do this yourself, you know how much of a pain it can be. Misu changes this by making it as simple as connecting your iPods, and clicking “Transfer Music.”

Misu is currently in private beta, and will hopefully be available to the general public soon.

AutoRate is a small program (and I mean small, the download is 104k) that will sift through your iTunes Collection of Shame, and rate each and every single track based on play count and frequency. This may sound like it isn’t a very good way to rate songs, but I have found the opposite to be true. When I first downloaded the program about a year ago I thought, “Neat,” set it up to run automatically (there are instructions as to how in the readme file), and promptly forgot about it. About a week ago, I started up iTunes and just hit play without paying attention. About five songs in, I was thinking that I had created an awesome playlist and then forgotten about it, but when I checked, that was not the case. Instead, my list had simply been sorted by rating and I was playing my 5-star songs.

Granted, rating by statistics is not perfect, but the program is configurable enough to make it work. When you open the Preferences pane for the program, you only have a few different options, but even so it manages to feel robust. For example, you can set whether it biases towards play count or frequency, you can set it to only rate songs that have not yet been rated, and you can choose whether you want the program to only rate songs in certain playlists or in the entire library.

There were two options whose functions were not immediately obvious, but which were explained on the forums. The first is whether the program uses cached data, which basically means whether it will reanalyze all of the songs when you run it. The second, which I think is much more interesting, is labeled “Existing rating memory”, and its function is to determine the weight that will be given to existing ratings. At one end of the slider, you have “None”, which will mean that the program will not take old ratings into account at all. At the other end you have “Full”, which means that the program will base the new ratings almost entirely off of existing ratings (if you don’t want it to modify existing ratings at all, there is an option for that as well). This option has turned out to be one of my favorite, as it allows me to rate music as I import it, and then the program will adjust that rating based on whether or not I actually listen to that music.

In the end, AutoRate does a good job, so long as you understand that it is only meant to do the heavy lifting. You might still have to tweak some of the ratings, for example I have changed a few ratings, but not many. Even if you don’t like the ratings that the program assigns, at the very least your music collection will at least look like it has been rated, enough to trick your friends and maybe get rid of some of that guilt that you’ve been carrying.

AutoRate is freeware, available for download from Tzi Software.

But where it really shines is in its totally skinnable interface and massive codec support, meaning you can watch just about any video and play most audio files — even ones that can’t be played in QuickTime or iTunes. Media can be played from just about any source, whether it be on the hard drive, on an optical disc, on a flash drive or stored on another computer on your network. Thanks to the built-in file manager, accessing those — or rearranging your desktop, if you so desire — can be done easily from the couch.

In the audio department it of course plays MP3 and AAC files but also supports Flac and OGG lossless audio types. So there’s no need to compress those flawless recordings like you would for Front Row or iTunes. OSXBMC could handle just about any video file I threw at it, and perhaps more impressive is its support for 1080P high-definition video content.

The app also features Internet-connected mini-apps, like media center widgets for checking weather or viewing online videos, and an RSS news ticker along the bottom of the main screen. You can navigate using the mouse, keyboard or Apple Remote, and lead developer Elan Feingold says connectivity with other remote controls like the wireless Xbox 360 controller is in the works.

OSXMBC only runs Intel Macs running Leopard, and it looks like it’s going to stay that way, according to the developer’s FAQ. But the future looks bright for the development of the media center with features like Growl notification support and auto-updates on the roadmap. The developers are also working on improving HD playback on low-end Macs, like the 2 GHz Mac mini, which handles 720P content flawlessly but begins to hiccup with more processor intensive videos. That’s a combination that would make the perfect media center hub for any living room.

If you’re looking for a Front Row alternative, download the free software and take it for a test drive. If you’re not convinced, check out a demonstration video of the app with the sleek, Apple-licious PMIII skin installed.

Editor’s Note: This article is a replacement for our previous (erroneous) article on OSXBMC. Sorry for any inconveniences!

The eJamming software is like Skype for musicians. It allows you to connect with fellow rockers over the Internet and jam — even if your drummer lives a few states away. And because you can do this all through a set of headphones, you won’t have to worry about the police knocking on your door after your neighbors file a noise complaint.

Developer eJamming was faced with the obstacle of having to transmit high quality audio while avoiding latency transmission delays. While AUDiiO has successfully achieved this, there are a few requirements: you need a good Internet connection and the distance between your fellow musicians shouldn’t be more than a few hundred miles (you can still use it at a further distance, but there will be a noticeable latency).

With AUDiiO you can play in sync and even record your live compositions with its basic sound editing software. The software can interface with your current audio input setup so there should be no additional hardware required to get it up and running. As musicians know, subtle facial expressions are necessary for a successful performance, so the eJamming team is working on video support.

eJamming AUDiiO is beta software and can be downloaded after signing up for an eJamming account (free while in beta). You can also check out a video demo of AUDiiO.

Yes, iTunes has many information fields that you can fill out, but there is still much more information that it does not let you add. For these, there is Lostify.

Lostify is a simple Metadata tagger for M4Vs (videos) and M4As (audio files), the perfect companion for Handbrake. It lets you fill out MCAA rating, Actors, Directors and every other piece of Metadata that iTunes can handle. The best part is that it is free!

The main window allows you to enter information about the TV show, movie or song. If you are tagging a TV show, there are more options such as production number, episode number, etc. These attributes are important for TV shows because they reflect how your episodes are going to be sorted. You can also add copyrights, encoding tools, full dates and ratings: features that iTunes has never let you have unless you bought directly from the iTunes Store!

If you are tagging a video (movie or TV show), you can add directors, producers, actors and writers in the side pane. In the long description of the video, it will list these people under the main description, just like on the movies you can get from the iTunes Store. Adding a description is a great part of Lostify because iTunes will not let you add one.

The preference pane has many options like how to write the tags and iTunes integration. Overwriting the original tags is dangerous, but it is also the fastest way. The rest of the ways take about the same amount of time. The time for them is based on how big the file you are tagging is, because it has to copy it. The advanced settings can help remove a little bit of space, but they are not that useful. You can save a few kilobytes by checking “reclaim free space in tags”, but that’s it.

The iTunes integration of Lostify is excellent. You can just select a song or movie in iTunes, go to the scripts menu, and choose “Lostify”. You must, of course, turn on “Add Lostify to iTunes Script menu” in Lostify to be able to do that. Automatically adding the files to iTunes only helps if you are tagging something, and then want to bring it into iTunes after. It does not help if it already is in iTunes.

Lostify is by far the best Metadata editor for songs and movies on the Mac platform. It is still in BETA, so it will only get better. It is based off of the shell program AtomicParsely. You can get Lostify for free, but I do suggest that you donate, because Lostify is an exceptional piece of freeware.

However, not everyone is so lucky, which is probably why iTunes controller applications are so popular and plentiful.

An iTunes controller is a companion to Apple’s jukebox that allows you to play, pause, skip between tracks and adjust volume using either keyboard shortcuts or buttons in the menu bar. As more people listen to music while surfing the web, with a recent survey by Olswang finding about one in five computer users listen to music on their computers daily, there’s a big market for these apps.

Application launchers like QuickSilver (free), Butler (free), LaunchBar ($19.95) and ClawMenu ($19.95) offer basic iTunes controls via customizable keyboard shortcuts. Firefox users also have the option of installing the FoxyTunes extension, which places a bar along the bottom of the browser with buttons to control iTunes.

There are a ton of options in the realm of dedicated iTunes controllers. I’ll start by breaking down the freeware options (because everybody loves free). But for a small price tag, you can find some really solid apps that can be worth the purchase if you use iTunes as often as I do. More advanced features can include support for system-wide Growl notifications, album art fetching and syncing with Last.fm, so if you can’t live without these extras, you might want to skip to the end of the list.

Free Controllers

Bytecontroller – This is a fairly no-frills menu bar controller. When opened, it places a set of three small buttons for advancing the track, select the previous track and play/pause, with a list of decent skins to choose from. It also supports keyboard shortcuts and Growl notifications, but it’s a basic controller that does what it sets out to do.

GimmeSomeTune – With hotkeys, album art and lyric fetching, remote control support and Last.fm syncing, GimmeSomeTune has more features than most of its peers. If it weren’t for the optional, hideous menu bar buttons and the lack of Growl support (it uses an oversized, cluttered bezel notification window instead), this would really stand out as one of the best controllers out there.

iController – The controller is very simple and optionally scrolls information about the currently playing song in the menu bar. It’s got hotkeys and its own notification system, which automatically switches to Growl if you have it installed. Sure, iController hasn’t been updated in more than a year, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

iMote – Hotkeys, Growl notifications and a menu bar with iTunes controls make this a useful app. And for those of you who still haven’t installed Growl, it has its own floater — no additional software necessary. iMote also has a feature called StepBack, which lets you specify an amount of time for the app to rewind when playing a song that was paused. It doesn’t seem very useful for music listening, but for podcasts, I can see it really coming in handy.

Maestro – Especially handy if you use a lot of playlists, Maestro is a compact app featuring controller buttons and a small list with available playlists and the songs within those lists. But it doesn’t provide much advantage over iTunes’ own mini controller, so unless you switch between playlists a lot, it’s hard to recommend Maestro.

Menuet – Standing as one of the strongest free options, Menuet places a small image of the currently playing song’s album art in the menu bar. You can click on it to get a larger version of the artwork as well as next, previous and play/pause buttons. It’s got Last.fm scrobbling, Growl notifications, keyboard shortcuts, controller skins and a sleep timer for stopping iTunes after a period of time. It even comes packaged with Art Collector, a nifty app for retrieving album artwork. Previously freeware, Menuet has since become charityware, meaning if you use and like the app, the developer encourages you to donate to a charity.

Play MiTunes – It has a nice little controller window interface, but it’s main attraction is the “type-and-play” feature, where you can type the first few letters of a song and play it. Unfortunately you need to specify whether your search applies to artist or song, so it makes the search feature somewhat less useful than opening iTunes.

QuickTunes – It’s certainly not the most attractive app, but it’s got some useful features. It can do hotkeys and places the name of the currently playing song in the menu bar, with additional controls when clicking in the menu bar. Some great options it offers is to play another song by the currently playing artist, play another from the same CD or play another from the same genre. Of course the pastel controller is hideous, but if you don’t care about aesthetics (but you probably do if you’re a Mac user) give this one a shot.

Radion – According to its developer, Radion was the best of its kind when it released. With a skinnable control window, artwork downloading and hotkeys, it has plenty of nice features. But the app hasn’t been updated in quite a while, although developer Ninja Kitten promises version 2 is in the works. In order to use the app, you’ll need to punch in the following details into the registration: Name – Ninja kitten / Email: kitty@ninjakitten.us / Serial: RADION-XkUmXF-WeDEE-hFCwY-kwEHz-wazc

Sizzling Keys ($5 for Pro version) – If you’re all about the keyboard, Sizzling Keys is a great option. It doesn’t offer a menu bar or window controller — it’s all done via customizable hotkeys in System Preferences. It even lets you add shortcuts for some actions unrelated to iTunes, like accessing the login screen. It also has a bezel notification feature and a search and play popup. My only complaint is that I keep running into a bug with the search, where I have to restart the app for it to recognize my keystrokes.

You Control: iTunes – You Control places the control and rating buttons right in the menu bar, with access to recent tracks and a ton of other information right within the contextual menu. It also has hotkeys and a notification bezel. I found You Control eating up quite a bit of memory in my use, but you might want to give it a shot to see how it runs on your system. You’ll need to register for free at the You Software web site to get a license.

Not Free Controllers

Barquee ($10) – Elegant and customizable are what defines Barquee. With a combination menu bar controller/song info marquee, which can be command-clicked to access the song’s progress bar, Barquee is a nice option whether you plan to use the menu bar controls or hotkeys. It’s also skinnable.

CoverSutra (14.95€) - As the most expensive app on the list, it’s ironic that CoverSutra happens to be one of the best. Complete with sexy pop-up alerts, Growl and Last.fm support, and a really nifty menu bar music search feature, this one is really hard to resist. One unique feature is a CD case that can be dragged around the desktop, showing the currently playing song in iTunes. With all the other options, it’s hard to justify the price tag, which works out to about $22 at the current exchange rate, but it really is a full package.

Synergy Classic (5€) – Synergy has long been one of the most popular iTunes companions. Recently the app has been completely rewritten for the Leopard version, which brought with it a number of random bugs. It offers all the basic features you would expect from a shareware controller, hotkeys, floaters and menu bar controls, but not really much “wow.” Fortunately Synergy is one of the less expensive shareware options.

TuneBar ($12) – This is probably the most attractive controller on the list. Sure, it has Growl support, hotkeys and playlist access, but it’s the interface that makes it truly shine. Everything is skinnable, from the floating controller to the incredibly well executed library search popup. TuneBar borrows one excellent feature from WinAmp — a thin controller, called SlimBar, that sits just below the menu bar, providing all the basic iTunes controls including a track timeline and search.

TuneHound ($9.95) – Put simply, TuneHound is bad. With an ugly controller window, lack of full hotkey support and an unintuitive rating system, TuneHound is a worse option than most of the freeware apps on the list. The only thing it really has going for it is the ability to edit track information from within the small TuneHound interface.

*Editor: if you make it to the end of this review you will find a nice discount just for MacApper readers.

First off, Aurora is sporting a brand new user interface which is all together more Leopardy. The two panel interface works much better than the old, smaller window, and allows you to set up the alarm on a single screen. This is a huge improvement, as it allows you to quickly double check all the details of the alarm before you go off to bed.

Next up, is a new window, entitled “Playback”, which shows an iPod-esque display of what’s playing in iTunes. It gives you the simple forward/back/play and volume buttons, but there is that all important sleep button there when you need that extra 5 minutes in bed. You can also use the Play/Pause button on your Apple Remote to snooze, so you don’t have to get out of your bed! The snooze duration can be easily changed in the preference window.

Aurora is the easiest Alarm clock you will ever set. Simply press the “+” button in the bottom left corner, then you set which days you want it to go off on, the time, then the volume (you can set it to fade in if you don’t want your awakening to be too rude), followed by the playlist/channel you want to wake up to. You can also set it to go off after a certain amount of time, if you so desire. No more pressing fiddly buttons on that alarm clock, then having to remember to reset it every night. With Aurora you should never be late again.

If you’re lucky enough to get a day off work, and you don’t need to get up, simply right-click on the alarm and press “Skip Next Occurrence”. Aurora won’t wake you the next day, but when you go back to work, no need to remember to reset the alarm, it will be done already.

You might be thinking by now that Aurora is a morning app – but it really handles both ends of the day. Are you the kind to fall asleep during a movie, and wake up to find your Mac still on in the morning? Well Aurora has another tool, just for that situation. You can specify for your Mac to fall asleep at the end of a DVD; a QT movie; after a certain number of iTunes tracks; after an amount of time, or a hour. This feature is great, and even better for those with Pre-Apple Remote macs, as you no longer have to get out of bed to put your Mac to bed.

Alright so you may still be asking; is it really worth my money? After all this used to be free. In short, Yes, it is. EyeTV integration sets it apart from the other alarm clock apps, and it’s sheer simplicity is hard to beat. The fact it’s not a one-trick-pony makes the deal that bit sweeter. Aurora is available now for €15 (~$22) and you can grab it right now from their website.

One More Thing! Jonas Witt, the developer, has been kind enough to offer our loyal MacApper readers a 20% Discount for a limited time! So now you can get it while it’s hot for just €12. Simply use the discount code MACAPPER to get your reduced wares.

If you can feel where I’m going with this click the jump.

If you haven’t heard of the game Guitar Hero, please step out from under the rock you have been living under, and give it a try. It is an incredible game. You know it’s a great game when you can watch people play and be just as entertained as playing the game yourself. My in-laws have neighbors who are all good at the game. They sit around and pass the plastic guitar around and make musical magic. My eyes widened as I was subjected to star power, whammy bars, boos and standing ovations. This was definitely something that I could be obsessed with.

“But wait,” I thought, “I play guitar for real…” Still thinking, “Why not spend the time learning how to really shred like… Weezer?” The thing is, these guitar solos are just way to face-melting to learn in real time. I need some way to slow it down to a manageable tempo. After some considerable searching, I found a way to do this with GarageBand and some demo software.

GarageBand will import selections from your iTunes library as a “don’t mess with me” media file. You can’t change tempo or pitch on imported media files without a special little spell that you can cook up with your keyboard.

This is what the main window looks like when you’ve imported a track:

Notice the track preview is a orangey-yellowish color. Media tracks need to be changed to instrument tracks to respond to tempo or pitch changes made in the master track or editor window. Here’s where the keyboard shortcut comes in. Hit “ctrl-option-G” and then click on the orangey-yellowish track preview.

It now should look like this:

Be sure to double click on the preview (now blueish purple) to open the editor and tic the box marked “Follow Tempo and Pitch” like this:

There are several ways to slow the tempo down, but if you show the master track and adjust the tempo, you can speed through the song and slow through the guitar solos. Save the file and you can come back when your fingers stop bleeding.

Another way to do this is through Annotation Transcriber by zeitAnker. This program is designed specifically for adding subtitles to films, but it can slow down audio to 30% tempo without a change in pitch. Annotation Transciber even sounds a bit better than GarageBand in the quality department at slower speeds. The downloadable version of AT is a demo that fully functions for shorter media (it worked for me on media over ten minutes) and you can purchase a fully functioning program for €29.

GarageBand has the ability to loop even the smallest selections for repetetive learning, and Annotation Transcriber can handle foot pedal operation so your hands can be ready to free small countries under communist control and save the ozone layer all through your Mexican made Stratocaster.

iTunes has playlists(iTunes link) available from each game for your downloading convenience. You’ll be able to learn the songs sweet enough to make the Guitar Hero Soundtrack. Instead of five button mastery, you’ll be able to plug your guitar into your Volkswagen just like Slash and grind your axe, burn your frets, and battle for your soul like he does every day of his life.