Category Archives: PC

Personal Computer Audioware

MicToggle ~ Microphone Control Tool

Posted by tom2tec on

MicToggle is a lightweight microphone control tool designed for focus and clarity. Instantly mute or unmute your mic using a custom hotkey — no matter what you’re doing. Stay aware of your mic status with a movable on-screen overlay, system tray icon, and optional audio cues. Choose your preferred microphone, set startup behavior, and enjoy a clean, unobtrusive interface. Whether you’re gaming, streaming, or in meetings, MicToggle keeps you in control.

Features:

  • Custom Hotkey — Instantly mute or unmute your mic using a hotkey you choose.
  • Microphone Selection — Pick which mic to control if multiple devices are connected.
  • On-Screen Overlay — Always know your mic’s status with a floating icon that you can reposition or disable.
  • Startup Options — Start minimized, run at Windows startup, or launch with mic muted.
  • Mic Status on Launch — Optionally hear a sound or get a notification showing your mic’s state when the app starts.
  • Visual Status Indicators — Colored icons clearly show your mic state both in the app and system tray.
  • Tray Controls — Toggle mute, open settings, or exit — all from the tray.
  • Clean Interface — Simple, responsive UI designed to stay out of your way.
  • Lightweight & Fast — Uses minimal resources, ideal for streamers, meetings, and gamers.

sourceforge.net/projects/mictoggle

shntool ~ WAVE Processing & Reporting Utility

Posted by tom2tec on

shntool is a multi-purpose WAVE data processing and reporting utility. File formats are abstracted from its core, so it can process any file that contains WAVE data, compressed or not – provided there exists a format module to handle that particular file type.

shntool has native support for .wav files. If you want it to work with other lossless audio formats, you must have the appropriate helper program installed. The “Helper programs” section below contains links to helper programs for each format that shntool supports.

shnutils.freeshell.org/shntool
github.com/bayun/shntool

Drops ~ Single Sample Player

Posted by tom2tec on

Drops is a single audio file sample player plugin in lv2 and vst format for linux.

Load an audio file, play it, loop it, pitch shift it, and make it into something entirely new.

github.com/clearly-broken-software/drops

Buzz ~ Audio Transcription & Translation

Posted by tom2tec on

Buzz transcribes and translates audio to text offline using OpenAI’s Whisper. Import audio and video files into Buzz and export them as TXT, SRT, or VTT files. Buzz supports Whisper, Whisper.cpp, Faster Whisper, Whisper-compatible models from the Hugging Face repository, and the OpenAI Whisper API.

Features:

  • Transcribe audio and video files or Youtube links
  • Live realtime audio transcription from microphone
    • Presentation window for easy accessibility during events and presentations
  • Speech separation before transcription for better accuracy on noisy audio
  • Speaker identification in transcribed media
  • Multiple whisper backend support
    • CUDA acceleration support for Nvidia GPUs
    • Apple Silicon support for Macs
    • Vulkan acceleration support for Whisper.cpp on most GPUs, including integrated GPUs
  • Export transcripts to TXT, SRT, and VTT
  • Advanced Transcription Viewer with search, playback controls, and speed adjustment
  • Keyboard shortcuts for efficient navigation
  • Watch folder for automatic transcription of new files
  • Command-Line Interface for scripting and automation

github.com/chidiwilliams/buzz
sourceforge.net/projects/buzz-captions

MODICIA OS ~ Multimedia Digital Workstation

Posted by tom2tec on

MODICIA O.S. is a complete multimedia workstation for creatives, professionals, and curious users. Runs live from USB with no installation required. Stable, multilingual, and packed with ready-to-use tools.

✨ Key Features

🔃 Live system — boot from USB without modifying your PC

🎥 Multimedia suite — video, audio, graphics, photography

🗂 Office suite — documents and business tools

🧰 Curated software — no duplicates, no broken tools

🖥 Optimized interface — compact layout with visual alerts

🌍 Multilingual — over 30 languages supported

🛡 Invisible fallback logic — safety and stability

🔗 Clickable license buttons — semitransparent, linking to local control files

🎯 Ideal Users

🎬 Filmmakers, editors, streamers

🎧 Musicians, podcasters, sound designers

🎨 Designers, illustrators, photographers

🧑‍🏫 Teachers, writers, office professionals

🧑‍💻 Students and beginners

🐧 Open source users seeking localization and compliance

📦 Included Applications (Examples)

Category Applications

🎞 Video Kdenlive, Shotcut, OBS Studio

🎚 Audio Audacity, Ardour, LMMS

🖌 Graphics GIMP, Inkscape, Krita

📷 Photo Darktable, RawTherapee

📝 Office LibreOffice, PDF Studio

🌐 Web Firefox ESR, Thunderbird, FileZilla

🧹 Utilities GParted, Timeshift, BleachBit

🚀 How to Use

📥 Download the ISO from modiciaos.cloud

🔧 Write it to USB using Rufus or Balena Etcher

💻 Boot the live system on any compatible PC

🎉 Start creating — no installation, no subscriptions, no limits

www.modiciaos.cloud
sourceforge.net/projects/modicia-o-s

foo_truepeak ~ True Peak Scanner

Posted by tom2tec on

foo_truepeak is a ITU-R BS.1770-5 compliant True Peak scanner. It can also scan ReplayGain, Loudness Range (LRA), Dynamic Range (DR), show the amount of clipping samples and report the position of highest peak.

www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_truepeak

For users primarily concerned with playback quality and simplicity, foo_truepeak can replace foobar2000’s ReplayGain and DR scanners. It uses modern loudness standards, detects true peaks and can write all relevant tags in a single pass. While its ReplayGain and DR values may not exactly match legacy scanners, they are more appropriate for real-world playback on modern systems.

1. Download and install foo_truepeak

  1. Download foo_truepeak.fb2k-component from the official component page.
  2. In foobar2000, open File → Preferences → Components.
  3. Click Install…, select the foo_truepeak.fb2k-component file.
  4. Restart foobar2000 when prompted.

2. Disabling legacy scanners (optional but recommended)

To avoid confusion or duplicate workflows:

  1. Don’t try removing the ReplayGain scanner as it’s built in.
  2. You can uninstall foo_dr_meter and or foo_dynamic_meter.

This keeps foo_truepeak as your single analysis tool.

3. Open foo_truepeak preferences

Go to File → Preferences → Advanced → Tools → True Peak Scanner

4. Ensure the following is enabled

✔ Scan True Peak Values

True peak scanning accounts for inter-sample peaks created during digital-to-analog conversion, ensuring that peak levels reflect what a real DAC actually outputs, not just what is stored in the file.

5. Enable ReplayGain scanning

✔ Scan ReplayGain values

Notes:
  • Gains are derived from EBU R128 loudness, but written as ReplayGain tags.
  • Peaks are true peaks, not simple sample peaks.
  • Playback normalization works normally in foobar2000.

6. Enable Dynamic Range scanning

✔ Scan Dynamic Range (DR) values

Notes:

  • These values are analytical, not official TT DR Meter values.
  • They are suitable for comparison within your library, not for DR Database submissions.

7. Choose tag writing behavior

✔ Use ReplayGain tag fields for peak and gain

8. Run a True Peak scan

  1. Select a track, tracks or albums in a playlist.
  2. Right-click → True Peak Scan.

You can also create custom buttons on the toolbar for Album or Track scans.

Download True Peak Toolbar Button Icons

9. Verify tags at first

After scanning, check the file(s) to ensure tagging happened correctly:

  • Open Properties > ReplayGain
  • Confirm presence of values for:
    • Track Gain
    • Album Gain
    • Total Peak
    • Lowest gain (loudest track)
    • Highest gain (quietist track)

10. Use ReplayGain during playback

  1. Enable ReplayGain in Preferences → Playback → ReplayGain.
  2. Choose your preferred mode, Track or Album.

foobar2000 will now use modern loudness analysis and playback without intersample clipping.

Summary:

  • One scan
  • One pass
  • Peak safe playback
  • Modern loudness normalization

This setup is ideal for users who prioritize listening quality and ease of use over legacy metric compatibility.

References:

www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_truepeak
foobar.hyv.fi/?view=foo_truepeak
wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/Foobar2000:Components/True_Peak_Scanner
hydrogenaudio.org/index.php/topic,125719.0
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplitude
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_normalization
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayGain

Alternative DSP
www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_dsp_replaygain

foo_audio_wizard ~ Full-track Analysis & Real-time Monitoring

Posted by tom2tec on

Audio Wizard (foo_audio_wizard) is a fiery chapter of The Wizardium, granting foobar2000 audiophiles and engineers tools for full-track analysis and real-time monitoring. Harness Pure Dynamics for psychoacoustic clarity.

foo_audio_wizard panel interfaces

github.com/The-Wizardium/Audio-Wizard

Harmonoid ~ Play & Manage Music Library

Posted by tom2tec on

Plays & manages your music library. Looks beautiful & juicy.

Features:

  • Fluid animations & beautiful design, everywhere you navigate
  • It’ll find lyrics or give your own .LRC files
  • Closely paired to work together. Windows & Linux
  • Experience the consistent Material Design
  • Music library management based on metadata tags
  • Capable of indexing 30+ files/second & saves cache for future app start-ups
  • Very strictly follows Material Design guidelines for UI & animations
  • Taskbar & System Media Transport Controls for Windows
  • Small installer (≈ 35 MB) & low RAM usage (≈ 150 MB)
  • Discord RPC integration with album art support & “Find”/”Listen” buttons

harmonoid.com
github.com/harmonoid
sourceforge.net/projects/harmonoid.mirror
itsfoss.com/harmonoid

cdparanoia ~ Linux Digital Audio Extraction

Posted by tom2tec on

Cdparanoia is a Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA) Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) tool, commonly known on the net as a ‘ripper’. The application is built on top of the Paranoia library, which is doing the real work (the Paranoia source is included in the cdparanoia source distribution). Cdparanoia reads audio from the CDROM directly as data, with no analog step between, and writes the data to a file or pipe in WAV, AIFC or raw 16 bit linear PCM.

Cdparanoia is a bit different than most other CDDA extration tools. It contains few-to-no ‘extra’ features, concentrating only on the ripping process and knowing as much as possible about the hardware performing it. Cdparanoia will read correct, rock-solid audio data from inexpensive drives prone to misalignment, frame jitter and loss of streaming during atomic reads. Cdparanoia will also read and repair data from CDs that have been damaged in some way.

Cdparanoia is easy to use and administrate; It has no compile time configuration, happily autodetecting the CDROM, its type, its interface and other aspects of the ripping process at runtime. A single binary can serve the diverse hardware of the do-it-yourself computer laboratory from Hell.

www.xiph.org/paranoia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cdparanoia
wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Cdparanoia

Resources:

Documentation
man.archlinux.org/man/cd-paranoia.1.en

Command Line Music Metadata Manager
github.com/krateng/mumema

foo_ui_wizard ~ User Interface Wizard

Posted by tom2tec on

Sealed within the luminous Sapphiraz Sanctum, where ethereal interfaces shimmer in eternal twilight, the UI Wizard is a spellbinding chapter of The Wizardium’s grimoire. Its runic seal, the radiant ᛋ Sowilo, yields only to masters of window enchantment, reshaping foobar2000’s form with mischievous elegance — from glass-like Aero effects to borderless designs that defy mortal UI constraints.

  • Window Appearance Customization:
    • Supports multiple frame styles: Default, Small Caption, No Caption, No Border.
    • Configurable Aero effects: Default, Disabled, Glass Frame, Sheet of Glass.
    • Customizable window background color and transparency.
    • Optional custom window title and icon.
    • Configurable window shadow for borderless styles.
  • Window Behavior Control:
    • Adjustable window positioning and sizing with constraints (min/max width and height).
    • Customizable caption area for dragging with various move styles (e.g., mouse buttons, key combinations).
    • Snap-to-edge functionality with configurable snap and unsnap distances.
    • ESC key actions: None, Hide, or Exit.
    • Inactivity-based window hiding with customizable timeout.
  • Window State Management:
    • Toggle between Normal, Maximized, and Fullscreen states.
    • Option to disable window maximizing or resizing.
    • Automatic saving and loading of window position and size.
  • API: COM/ActiveX interface for scripting in foobar2000 via Spider Monkey Panel or JSplitter.
Foobar2000 > Preferences: UI Wizard Menu

www.the-wizardium.org
github.com/The-Wizardium/UI-Wizard

Zenamp ~ Player With Visualizations & Games

Posted by tom2tec on

Multi-format audio player with MIDI, minigames, playlists & many visualizations

Lightweight GTK3 audio player supporting MIDI, WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, AIFF, and Opus formats. Features OPL3 FM synthesis for authentic MIDI playback, drag-and-drop playlist queue, real-time spectrum visualization, 10-band equalizer, and M3U playlist support. Built with SDL2 audio backend for cross-platform compatibility across Linux and Windows. Includes intuitive controls with keyboard shortcuts, 5-second seek buttons, and efficient format conversion. Perfect for musicians and audio enthusiasts needing reliable playback of both modern and legacy audio formats. Multi-threaded architecture ensures smooth performance. MIT License.

Features:

  • Music Player
  • Queue Support
  • Playlist Support
  • Visualizations
  • Minigames

sourceforge.net/projects/midiplayer
apps.microsoft.com/detail/9p7ddq785vq2

Foobar2000 ~ Album & Artist Artwork

Posted by tom2tec on

Foobar2000 displays artwork in a panel which can be added and configured to suit your preferences. The artwork panel displays the image file associated with an audio track. If the standard options are insufficient, Foobar’s image handling can be extended via additional components.

To add an artwork panel to the default user interface (DUI), Enable Layout Editing Mode from the menu View > Layout. Add the Album Art Viewer from the Selection Information section.

Context Menu (Right Mouse Button On Artwork Panel)
Selecting the Album Art Viewer on the Add New UI Element menu

Album Art Viewer (built-in)

Sources:

  • Embedded tags (front, back, disc, artist, etc.)
  • External image files (folder.jpg, cover.png, etc.)

Notes:

  • Supports multiple artwork types.
  • Very stable, but basic (no advanced layout or scripting).
  • Artist art is only shown if tagged or present as files.
Foobar2000 Artwork Display Context Submenu

Context Menu

Display Components (Artwork panels)

foo_ui_columns (Columns UI)

Displays: Album & artist art
Sources: Embedded tags and external files

Notes:

  • Legacy but still widely used.
  • Artwork panels are static (no scripting).
  • No longer actively developed, but stable.

Resources: