Prevent someone from turning up the volume on a Windows machine beyond a maximum volume.
This is a very simple Windows Forms application that lets you set a maximum value on for your volume, and then lock the setting so that a user cannot change the volume.
Disclaimer: This app is primarily geared toward young/special needs children. The “lock” provides a basic level of control, but it could be easily bypassed by someone with technical knowledge.
With these tools one can get information about (via mkvinfo) Matroska files, extract tracks/data from (via mkvextract) Matroska files and create (via mkvmerge) Matroska files from other media files. Matroska is a new multimedia file format aiming to become THE new container format for the future. You can find more information about it and its underlying technology, the Extensible Binary Meta Language (EBML), at www.matroska.org
EdgeSounds’ RatHole (former GenieSys RatHole) is a free unique nondestructive universal compression utility. Its function is based on a principle of self-training neural networks. EdgeSounds RatHole was especially designed for nondestructive compression of any files containing audio data in PCM 8/16/24 bit or IEEE_FLOAT 32 bit format.
A new EdgeSounds compression algorithm makes it possible to efficiently reduce the size of packed audio data and later unpack exactly same bits, with no difference to the original data. The compression algorithm compresses audio data, considering the bit depth of the digital data contained in the audio file (8/16/24/32 bit). The algorithm is proven to be equally effective on compressing the following file types:
The compression ratio of the algorithm depends on the size of audio data, the balance between the tone and noise component, bit depth and other factors, and usually varies from 36% to 78% or even more, with an average of 48-56%. The higher is the bit depth and the fidelity of audio data, the better is the compression ratio.
The RatHole can be successfully used as a common archiving utility for any other file types as well.
MicMute is a small program that will enable you to easily manage the level of a connected microphone. The application also supports push-to-talk thanks to the built-in ‘Transmitter Mode’. While it runs minimized in the system tray, MicMute can be controlled through keyboard shortcuts you choose. The software uses tray notification balloons and it also has a sound signal option you can activate.
sourceforge.net/projects/micmute
Header Investigator allows the user to open WAV audio files and display the header information and make changes. The actual audio data is never changed… simply the header information. This is useful if the user has accidentally recorded audio while locked to an external digital clock source so that the header sample rate is a mismatch to the actual sample rate of the data – which causes the sound file to play back at the wrong pitch. By simply changing the sample rate in the header – the WAV files can be corrected without having to retransfer or sample rate convert the file.
www.railjonrogut.com/HeaderInvestigator
Utility is a free, lightweight, universal general purpose all in one digital channel strip plugin offering precise controls over various aspects of an audio signal, from mid/side processing to soft clipping.
Features:
- input routing with separate pans for the left and right channels, or alternatively a pre mono balance control to decide how the left and right channels are blended for conversion into mono
- gain, and individual left and right channel gains, mutes
- pan and phase inversion of either channel
- width control, along with separate mid and side gain sliders and mutes
- maximally flat minimal phase high and low pass 12db/octave filtering
- optional hard and soft clipping at 0db
- everything is fully automatable with sensible parameter ranges/scaling
www.vennaudio.com/utility
gitlab.com/JHVenn/Utility
SoundVolumeView is a simple tool for Windows Vista/7/8/2008/10/11 that displays general information and current volume level for all active sound components on your system, and allows you to mute and unmute them instantly. SoundVolumeView also allows you to save a sound profile into a file, containing the current volume level and the mute / unmute state of all sound components, as well as the default sound devices, and then later, load the same file to restore exactly the same volume levels and settings. There is also extensive command-line support, which allows you to save/load profiles, change current volume of every sound component, and mute / unmute every sound component, without displaying any user interface.
As an active music fan you surely know how difficult it sometimes may be to keep your music collection ordered. The more sound files you have, the more time and effort it takes to clean out duplicates, low-quality files and purify the entire collection of any musical garbage it contains. That’s where Similarity comes in handy!
Similarity rapidly scans your music collection and shows all duplicate music files you may have. The comparison, powered by “acoustic fingerprint” technology, considers the actual contents of files, not just tags or filenames, and thus ensures the extreme accuracy of similarity estimation. Moreover, the comparison isn’t audio file format dependent; the application supports almost every file format in full.
Alongside eliminating musical doubles, Similarity also provides advanced quality control functions. Really, who wants a collection full of low-bitrate music, badly remastered compositions and songs full of noise? Similarity analyzes files and calculates a quality score basing on various technical parameters of that recording, such as: bitrate, frequency, amplitude cut value, amplitude average value, amplitude maximum and many others. The program automatically detects all common problems with audio files and assigns a corresponding quality mark to each file. A quick sort – and you’ve got files with the highest quality at the top and files you can delete without doubts at the bottom.
Aural Probe is a sample librarian tool for computer musicians / audio engineers. Automatically and non-destructively index your disorganised sample collection from a list of folders into categories (kick, snare, hihats etc.) based on folder/filename wildcard matches. Easily audition samples, load/save favourites, and drag-and-drop straight into your sequencer.
Features:
- Categorize your huge sample collections (20GB+) without moving a single file
Create categories based on file/folder keyword matches (eg. Kick category = “bd”, “kick”, “bassdrum”) or regular expressions- Quickly audition through samples with arrow keys or mouse
- Filter samples by file type (WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3, WMA, OGG)
- Full drag-and-drop support (simply drag a sample from Aural Probe into your sequencer/sampler, just like Windows Explorer)
- Mark favorites, filter by favorites, load/save favorite lists
- Automatic rescan and categorization of samples on changed categories or sample folder layout
- See details about highlighted sample in status bar
- ‘Always on top’ mode to make frequent dragging of samples into other windows easier
- Right-click a sample for frequently used shortcuts (Explore, Copy, Copy Shortcut, Favorite, Delete)
- 100% read-only – does not move/modify your samples, just indexes them
Minimize to system tray
sourceforge.net/projects/auralprobe
Automatic Volume Mixer is a tool that allows automatization of Windows Volume Mixer based on user rules. You can open the Volume Mixer by right-clicking on the speaker icon in the system tray and selecting Open Volume Mixer. This application is an automatic version of that applet.
Common usage examples:
- Pausing your audio player (e.g. foobar2000) whenever any other application makes a noise, and resuming playback once the noise is gone. This enables you to keep your audio player running in the background at all times.
- Briefly muting all applications while a notification is playing.
- Forcing application’s volume to a set level.
- Automatically lowering volume during night.
- Launching processes / popups when some application makes noise.
Features:
- Detect volume levels of applications and act on that information.
- Fully configurable rules for detection, filtering, and executing actions.
- Ability to automatically adjust audio levels of applications.
github.com/Klocman/Automatic-Volume-Mixer
sourceforge.net/projects/automatic-volume-mixer
The Audio File 