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Introduction |
  
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Introduction |
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Active Sound Recorder is an ActiveX control custom control developed by MultiMedia Soft that makes it easy to add sound recording and CD ripping capabilities to applications written with the most widely-used development environments that accept ActiveX controls; thanks to the integration with DirectShow codecs and with the BASS library, both allowing decoding capabilities for the most common sound formats such as MP3, WAV, Ogg Vorbis and many others, Active Sound Recorder allows creating powerful audio recording applications
Active Sound Recorder is designed to work directly with a sound card or with CD/DVD player, so you can record almost any audio source including a microphone, a line-in jack or a CD player (CD ripping), at near-perfect quality. This makes it ideal for implementing a variety of audio applications from music recording and editing to powerful dictation applications.
Recorded sounds can be kept in memory for later use or stored on the hard disk in any of the supported formats or using the ACM codecs in the system. Once a recording session has been completed, it is possible to play the recorded audio using the embedded playback system. If you need more sophisticated playback features (such as changing the tempo or pitch), consider using this component in conjunction with our Active DJ Studio component.
Active Sound Recorder supports deep analysis of the recorded sound waveform with rich visualization capabilities including range selection, zooming and panning. Recorded sounds can be edited, resampled, mixed with other sounds and exported to different formats.
Many tutorials are available to help you beginning your developments with this powerful control.
Brief summary of available features:
Audio recording from physical devices
Audio recording from sound files
Audio recording from the Internet
Protocols and sound cards management
Audio recording from physical devices
| • | Recording from any DirectSound, ASIO or WASAPI compatible sound card available inside the system. |
| • | Support for half-duplex devices (like the Phillips SpeechMike™). |
| • | Support for switching the output file without stopping the recording session and without loosing any sound data. |
| • | Support for adding position markers during a recording session. |
| • | Recording sessions can be stored inside output files (on both disk or memory buffer) in the following audio formats: |
- AAC (4) |
- MP2 (5) |
- PVF |
- AAC+ (9) |
- MP3 (6) |
- RAW format |
- AIFF |
- MP4 (4) |
- SVX |
- AU |
- NIST |
- VOC |
- CAF (1) |
- OGG Vorbis (7) |
- W64 |
- FLAC |
- OPUS (8) |
- WAV (2) |
- IRCAM |
- PAF |
- WMA (3) |
(1) Support for PCM 8/16/24/32 bits, PCM 32 bits floating point, G711 U-LAW, G711 A-LAW
(2) Support for uncompressed PCM and compressed formats whose ACM codec is installed inside the system, multi-channel support with ASIO devices
(3) Requires the availability of Windows Media Player modules on the target PC, multi-channel support with ASIO devices
(4) Requires the availability of the external Faac.exe encoder, multi-channel support with ASIO devices
(5) Requires the availability of the external TwoLame.exe encoder
(6) Requires the availability of the external Lame.exe encoder
(7) Requires the availability of the external OggEnc.exe encoder, multi-channel support with ASIO devices
(8) Requires the availability of the external OpusEnc.exe encoder, multi-channel support with ASIO devices
(9) Requires the availability of the external FdkAac.exe encoder, multi-channel support with ASIO devices
Audio recording from sound files
| • | Recording directly from sound files stored on disk, memory buffer or clipboard with resampling capabilities for the following input audio formats (see Audio recording from physical devices for the list of available output audio formats): |
- AAC and AAC+ |
- MOD Music |
- PVF |
- AC3 |
- Monkey's Audio (APE) |
- Speex |
- AIFF |
- MP3, MP2, MP1 |
- SVX |
- ALAC |
- MP4 |
- VOC |
- AU |
- Musepack |
- W64 |
- CAF (1) |
- NIST |
- WAV (2) |
- CD tracks |
- OGG Vorbis |
- WavPack |
- FLAC |
- OPUS |
- WMA and WMV (3) |
- IRCAM |
- PAF |
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- M4A |
- PCM RAW format |
(1) Support for PCM 8/16/24/32 bits, PCM 32 bits floating point, G711 U-LAW, G711 A-LAW
(2) Support for uncompressed PCM and compressed formats whose ACM codec is installed inside the system
(3) Require the availability of Windows Media Player modules on the target PC
| • | Through integration with our Audio DJ Studio for .NET component, possibility to load the audio track of video clips. |
| • | Extraction of the audio track of a video clip with possibility to store it into an output audio file of a chosen format. |
Audio recording from the Internet
| • | Recording directly from HTTP, HTTPS, FTP or MMS sites with resampling capabilities (see Audio recording from physical devices for the list of available output audio formats). |
| • | Downloading and recording audio tracks of Youtube video clips |
| • | Restart of a stopped recording session in "Append mode", "Insert mode", "Mix mode" and "Overwrite mode". |
| • | Sound editing basic capabilities with possibility to export portions of sound to the clipboard. |
| • | A background sound can be applied to the current recording session, also in loop mode. |
| • | Possibility to perform append and mixing automation operations on previously recorded audio tracks through integration with Active Sound Editor. |
Audio effects during recording
| • | Sound Activation System (automatically skips silent periods during recording). |
| • | Automatic Gain Controller applied to data coming from an input channel. |
| • | Support for custom DSP effects. |
| • | Support for basic filters (low-pass, high-pass, band-pass, stop-band). |
| • | Equalizer. |
| • | Play the recorded sound or any portion of the same. |
| • | Sound card output choice. |
| • | Support for playback in reverse. |
| • | Support for changing sample rate during playback. |
| • | Exporting of the recorded sound into an audio file in the same audio formats available for recording sessions (see Audio recording from physical devices for the list of available output audio formats). |
| • | Deep analysis at different resolutions of the loaded sound's waveform. |
Protocols and sound cards management
| • | DirectSound protocol |
| • | ASIO protocol |
| • | WASAPI protocol on Windows Vista and higher versions |
| • | Management of audio endpoints (CoreAudio) on Windows Vista and higher versions |
| • | Sound card output choice and volume setting for playback |
| • | Ripping of full CD tracks with resampling capabilities. |
| • | CD ripping automation, allowing to rip a set of tracks inside one single output file or inside a separate file for each track. |
| • | During a CD ripping session, possibility to normalize CD tracks before sending them to the encoder. |
| • | Ripping of predefined portion of CD tracks. |
| • | CDDB database queries through CDDB servers. |
| • | CD cover pictures retrieval |
| • | Rich visualization capabilities of the waveform with possibility to perform range selection, zooming and panning: both waveform and spectral view are supported. |
| • | Real-time visual feedback (VU-Meter, Oscilloscope, Spectrum, Waveform display). |
| • | Creation of graphic bars for custom displaying of Vu-Meters, Spectrum and Progress bars. |
| • | Waveform scroller allowing manual and automatic movement of the waveform. |
| • | Support for drawing the waveform representation inside a graphical device context (HDC). |
| • | Enhanced graphical spectrum analyzer. |
| • | Support for adding basic tag information (Author, Title, Album, Year) to recording sessions in the following formats: |
- MP3 |
- OGG Vorbis |
- MP4 |
- WMA |
| • | Uploading of files and contents of the sound editing session into a FTP server. |
| • | Download facility allowing downloading remote files from FTP, HTTP and HTTPS servers into the local system. |
| • | Recording of the output of audio streams mixed through Active DJ Studio. |
| • | Encryption/decryption of recorded sounds, often required by medical confidentiality laws. |
| • | Support for WMA profiles. |
| • | Support for ZIP format |
| • | Support for splitting of a stereo recording session (from DirectSound device, file, memory, clipboard) into two separate destination mono files containing left and right channel respectively. |
| • | Emulation of the "Listen to this device" feature of the Windows control panel |
| • | Being an ActiveX control, it can be instanced inside HTML code also and used in order to allow sound recording from the client browser directly. |
| • | Integration with our Active Sound Editor and Active DJ Studio controls |
| • | From Windows XP up to the latest Windows version in both x86 and x64 flavours |
| • | From Windows Server 2003 up to the latest Windows Server version in both x86 and x64 flavours |
IMPORTANT NOTES:
For redistribution of the control with your application, we recommend you to take a close look to the Files to be included with your application section.
