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I’m not saying Audials is crap, I’m not saying DON’T download Audials, I’m not saying DON’T use Audials.I’m saying keep your expectations low.
I’m saying to Audials: hey, spend some time on the front end, the user interface, clearing thing up, unifying, coordinating, disambiguating ( thank you Wikipedia for that ).
And, Audials, note that others here and I are saying to you: spend some more time on the back end cleaning up the program’s reliability and independence ( from Microsoft, for example ), and stability, and predictability, and standardization — study other programs and steal what already works.
__________Audials has been recording one station for me from 7 am yesterday to an unexplained stop at 3:19 am this morning.
No recording, now that I check it at 6 am.
No sound now at 6 am.
But it’s still playing the radio station.
I can see it playing.
It’s still listing the songs that went by.
I just can’t hear it playing.
And it’s not recording, even though I left it recording when I went away last night, unattended since 9 pm last night.
I click [ Record ] in the upper middle panel, and it seems to start recording again.
But I still cannot hear it.
What is going on, Audials?
My computer’s sound works otherwise — I can play Audials prior recorded songs ( I opened one with free IrfanView of all programs just to find a hopefully non-competitive way to make sound — I did not want to accidentally mix new ersatz sounds into the recording I just restarted in Audials ).
I still have no clear understanding or presentation from Audials of what it is doing, and what I can ask it to do.
Does it record one thing only, or can it record multiple things?
Can I listen to other music while Audials is recording?
If yes, can I listen to other musing INSIDE Audials, or only with another non-Audials program?
Could you show me, Audials?
__________And, what’s with the multiple copies of recorded songs ( yeah, I know radio stations repeat song on rotation ) — is Audials waiting to combine them to make one clean final version with no announcer voice-overs or what?
Could you tell me?
__________Bonus: within Audials, I tried playing back a song from the list of prior recordings, AND IT SHOWED LYRICS!
Un-bonus: another song in the list had nothing, no cover, no lyrics … oh well.
__________Okay, how to fix Audials interface:
1 – use traditional program menus across the top:
— File Edit View Tools Help
or
— Record Save Edit PlayFigure it out.
Audials, if YOU yourselves do not know what Audials does or can do, there’s no way your end-users are going to figure it out.
Not in any reasonable time that may convince them to whip out their credit cards and say “subscribe me for LIFE!”.
I’m trying to make you rich.
2 – use a tabbed interface like a browser, let me open a tab-set for each function:
— now recording
— now listening
— now playing
— other?Or one for each radio station?
I dunno, this is YOUR job … maybe let the end user decide what a new tab means to them?
Inside each tab set, there could be one or more tabs for each tab that is recording, for each tab that is listening, for each tab that is playing ( yeah, cacophony, but I might actually like to keep a few songs playing at once, toggling pause between them as I compare songs, it could happen ), each with it’s own controls and presentation, including an indicator in the tab title itself showing that the tab is the one [ > Playing ], [ * Recording ], [ Ø Muted ] and so on.
4 – summary panel across the bottom, like a dashboard on a car ( mixed analogies, but … the tabs themselves are like looking through a car’s windshield to see where I’m going, then I look down to see the dashboard to check my speed and fuel — you take the functional analogies from here, Audials ).
5 – Seperate History and Download tabs on demand JUST LIKE A BROWSER’S History and Download tabs.
If Audials can record more than one activity, then a separate [ Now Recording ] tab makes sense, scrollable, show me how many recording activities are in process, including snipping song pieces together, converting tasks, normalizing tasks — just a scrollable list of tasks, tasks, tasks, clickable, controllable, resortable, “sort by date, sort by activity ( all snipping activities together, for example ) … maybe a separate tab for [ Converting ], [ Now shipping ], [ Normalizing ], and [ Songs Done ]
6 – anything I can see, make it clickable, left-clickable and right-clickable, make it highlightable, make it cut-and-pastable.
Stop showing me artists and song titles that I cannot highlight and then cut and paste into wherever I want.
Don’t make ne have to retype all that stuff into my own other resources to look them up and find more like that.
It’s a COMPUTER, and computers supposedly can automate anything I do once so the computer can do it from the second time on.
Yeah, that’s what computers do.
Apparently that’s news to way too many people, especially programmers.
Go figure.
Even Microsoft is wandering over to Chrome — after Microsoft’s criminal conviction for illegal monopoly practices trying to kill Netscape out of fear that Netscape’s browser could run ANY computer, no Microsoft operating system necessary.
Try porting Audials to Chrome using the breadth and depth of Chrome features and benefits.
Just a thought.
And I’m just an end-user who spent less than a day with your Audials product.
What say, Audials?
..
TRY AGAIN:After a couple of crashes, I rebooted and started fresh, with Audials loaded first and only, and I tried a disciplined, purposeful task.
I typed a term into the search window ( I chose “Christmas” to get some sing-alongs for an upcoming long-distance highway drive, because I think that it would be nice to not have to hunt for radio stations while driving, it would be nice to avoid advertisements, avoid talk-(yelling)-radio, especially avoid “news”, which I prefer to read in the newspaper or listen to NPR, but only when I want to pay attention to the news, more on that later, and listened to the results of Audials recording as played back from an SD card in the car’s dashboard ( or MP3-player-rig for older cars ) which would allow me to control the replay on demand of Audials recordings, and then, also, on a computer, I can look into each song file’s metadata, and I can lookup the artists other work that I might want to pursue ).
Audials responded to my search for “Christmas” with “1,200+ stations”.
So I clicked the [ > ] right-arrow on that result.
Audials started populating the lower middle panel with radio stations that promised to play songs that matched my search,
… AND Audials offered to “record all automatically” ( or words to that effect, your button labels may vary ).
Okay, I’ll try that.
I clicked on “record all automatically” ( or words to that effect ), and Audials popped up a mini-window offering 2 controls:
— how many songs do I want
— what’s my recording-quality preference
I chose 250 songs, and the best qualities ( full songs, ignore snippets ).
SUCCESS:
About an hour later, I had ’em all.
Well, ~14% were duplicates, so that means that Audials on my computer on my Internet connection can get approximately 200+ songs per hour ( variables also include the length of songs and the qualities of Internet radio broadcasters ).
Sweet.
ANALYSIS:
Of course, I can’t listen to 200+ songs per hour, so I now understand why, in the Audials lower right corner, where they offer to play something that you are pointing to elsewhere on the Audials screen, it has no necessary-relationship to what’s actually being recorded, if you are recording anything at all.
In Audials, you apparently can listen to one song at a time, or listen to one station at a time, or listen to one sequence of somethings at a time ( I do not know what are the limits of one sequence of “things” Audials will let you listen to ), and that is unrelated to whatever Audials is recording, if you are recording anything at all through Audials.
Yes, you can listen to Internet Radio, or listen to your own downloaded music files, or listen to your other music files, through Audials, without Audials recording anything at all.
Perhaps an informative title on that lower-right playback window is in order, such helpful titles for that little playback panel might be, “Now playing KZB Indiana US”, or, “Now playing and recording Bonnie Raitt “I Can’t Make You Love Me” from LMNOP De Moins US”.
Because when I first used this Audials, I was listening to something being recorded by Audials … but, as my first try-out use of the current giveaway version of Audials, I was listening to and recording only one radio station, and using Audials that way, it took half a day to record ~200 songs ( after removing ~66% duplicates — yeah, one radio station repeats a lot ! ).
So, I can get really, really productive in Audials if I let it automatically search and record, because it found as many as 42 stations offering full songs that Audials could record all at once-ish, well, in multi-threads, which for me, equals about 250 songs per hour, ~200 of them unique.
Good going, Audials.
In the background, and on other computers, I can bulk-download from other sources — using free AbelsSoft YouTube Song Downloader and other free resources — I can go elsewhere to get entire artist’s discography once I learn about new artists to look for, once Audials reveals new artists to me that I did not know about.
I may eventually try asking Audials to narrow it’s next search to only one artist, and see how it competes to my other music-gathering resources, that is, let Audials see if Internet radio stations are playing my songs.
RE-CONCLUSION:
I think Audials is an excellent resource, even an obligatory resource, for anyone into music, especially contemporary popular music ( though the Internet is expanding the word “contemporary” to mean dozens and dozens of years, and expanding the word “popular” to mean “one or fewer audience member is enough to keep us broadcasting” ! ).
Within Audials, I can look for new artists and new songs for my own reasons, for creative art, for entertainment, and even for social studies, and I can follow band contributors to other bands, I can follow song writers regardless of who sings their songs ( using creative search, even a specific artist-search or song-search, such as looking up a songwriter’s works on Wikipedia or elsewhere, then, in Audials, searching for those works one at a time by name ), and though I can only LISTEN to one song at a time, Audials offers a way to make my listening outside of Audials, whenever and wherever, very efficient, by pre-queueing up the next song, or the next 200+ songs, as quickly as possible.
I’ve been using Audials off and on for 10+ years ( and I still get flummoxed by it’s confuse-the-user interface ) and I’d forgotten how incredibly flexible Audials capabilities are.
Yet, if I, as a user, just hang in there and keep exploring Audials, and if I keep trying to figure out how to get Audials to do whatever Audials can do, I’ll find great value in Audials — and Audials apparently can do incredibly much, so much that even the Audials programmers don’t know how to reveal it all to you.
As I wrote earlier, keep trying, but keep your expectations low, but that’s low expectations of the Audials interface, not low expectations of the Audials program’s capabilities underneath the user interface.
What can we expect Audials to be able to do?.
For some examples, maybe someone will discover if Audials can record a radio station itself, not just songs … that is, if I want to record The Moth Radio Hour, or an entire symphony performance however long it takes, or record other classical music that may go on for a long time, including quiet or intentional pause-passages, compared to short and continuous pop songs, I may want to record an interview, or, for history, record the entire last day of an Internet radio station going off the air.
So, I wonder if Audials can record continuously, if Audials can record for a set time, if Audials can be set to record later for a pre-set start time, and a pre-set stop time — will Audials help in any of that type of Internet radio recording?
In revision, I now suggest that we all keep trying to master Audials, and dig to discover Audials treasure of features and benefits, because they are rich-a-plenty and well worth the patience it takes to discover them and figure them out — keep digging, and Audials will reward you for your efforts!
.Do NOT waste your time with this spyware garbage. It’s hard to download and activate. If you have time to bypass all the hoops to jump through here and actually get the thing to sort of work….IT SUCKS! Crashes, requires a restart to get rid of unresponding trash that won’t close, the list is endless. A good uninstaller program i required to get rid of all the buried crap that is leftover in the registry. You want a cool music library for free? Get the Torch browser and be pleasantly surprised, instead of AbigFKNsurprize which is what you’ll get with Audials.
Ignore my rating since I haven’t installed this but WHY SO HUGE?!?
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[@fknnutcse][ TorchBrowser. com ] installer stub starts off with 15 negative reports at Vitus Total, the installer itself has 6 negative reports at virusTotal — that requires a lot of research for me to feel comfortable with ( Maxthon, another free browser, phones home to Beijing, and takes over your computer as a fallback default browser indefinitely, and takes a lot to exorcise ( hey, that would be a great name for an uninstaller: THE EXORCIST ! ), all programs phone home, I guess, but 6 to 15 negative malware reports, really ?!? ).
See some background on Torch Browser at [ https :// en. m. wikipedia. org/wiki/Torch_(browser) ]
__________Audials main program has 0 — zero — VirusTotal hits ( what “spyware” do you think is in Audials ? ).
Audials starts as a 151 MB installer, and then creates 528 MB on disk ( 270 MB on a compressed disks ).
Audials has an incredible breadth and depth of features, not the least are:
— simultaneously downloading and cutting dozens of songs from dozens of sources,
— cutting pieces of songs together to make one clean version instead of getting stuck with announcer voice-overs,
— automatically downloading any number of songs according to search criteria.
That takes a lot of resources.
Audials is awkward, complex, counter intuitive, system-challenging, and the results are still only as good as whatever the radio stations choose to play ( I got a lot of cross-song fades and fade-ins and fade-outs, NOT satisfactory, but NOT Audials fault ).
I can think of no better resource to actually find and download new-to-me music.
In the prior 2 days, I have found half a dozen artists who are new to me, artists that I find interesting and compelling enough to have then downloaded their entire discography, some through Audials. most through other free resources.
Audials is just a tool, a tool that can be used by savvy folks to accomplish a vast array of different Internet radio tasks to search, sort, select, and download whatever content is out there.
I can search for new-to-me music elsewhere, outside Audials, but not also automatically download it.
Alternatively, to download clean music, I’m happy with free AbelsSoft YouTube Song Downloader and other free resources that get entire clean songs.
If someone knows of another Internet radio recorder that can also record continuously and on schedule, please share ( I found those features while digging in Audials menus, I’m sure there are additionally many more features in Audials that I have not found yet ).
__________I will have to learn how to sandbox in a virtual isolated machine to test Torch Browser, thanks for the heads up about it.
.Świetne -Oprogramowanie -Polecam !
