Freeware Midi Monitor Download

Free midi monitor Free Download,Free midi monitor Software Collection Download. Free midi monitor Free Download Home. Software Search For free midi monitor free midi monitor In Title: Monitor 1.1.0 Improve worker productivity, cut bandwidth waste and reduce spyware. Download now. Fast downloads of the latest free software!*** HWMonitor is a hardware monitoring program that reads PC systems main health sensors.

1. Free Midi Software

More on Free Midi Monitor Data Added 1: April 06, 2015 PCMate Free Folder Monitor is a cross-platform free folder monitor that automatically records all activities of all the folders including subfolders for newly added/deleted/changed files in real-time. This free file monitor also has the ability to monitor any kind of execution of a program with access to full installation. It displays the activity info of the monitored files & folders in a list, distinguished with blue/green/red text and provides you specific log info of the tracked files. Size: 982.0 KB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: June 08, 2015 There are so many programs in your PC performing tasks in the background that it can be thankless to watch over all this activity with your own eyes.

PCBooster Free File Monitor will lend you a hand to monitor the whole disk, the C drive or any specific partition/directory. It reveals the events in real-time in the main window, including file and folder creation, modification and deletion. Meanwhile, you are allowed to choose which kinds of notifications to display. Now just focus on your.

Size: 1.1 MB License: Free Trial Keywords: -Data Added 1: August 19, 2014 Free File Monitor is a system utility that can persistently monitor all the folders including subfolders for newly added/deleted/changed files. It lets you easily monitor the software activities in your computer system.

With most specific log information, you can easily get the timestamp & location of the incoming files and tell if they are processed separately or all together in a group. Now you will never miss what's going on with your system behind your watch. You can choose the. Size: 1.1 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: February 02, 2015 You want to monitor the content of particular folders?

You want to monitor the modification of particular files? Then PCTuneUp Free Folder Monitor is what you need! This free folder monitor software is an advanced application designed to keep an eye on a specific folder or file and get notified whenever a specific change occurs. Working as an execution file monitor, PCTuneUp Free Folder Monitor allows you to monitor any kind of executable program with access to full installation to know.

Size: 842.2 KB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: August 02, 2012 Free MIDI to MP3 Converter is a simple utility that lets you convert all your MIDI files to high quality MP3 music. The program works very fast and has a straightforward interface. Just drag-and-drop MIDI files into the application and click the Convert button. Size: 7.6 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: September 25, 2012 Free Port Monitor is one free network port monitoring software, it enables you to monitor all open TCP ports on the local and remote computer, show one alert message or send your one warning email once the your computer, web servers and network server becomes unavailable, it is one useful network tool from FreePortMonitor.com, at the best, it is one absolute freeware. This network tool is easy to use very much, and can work in silent background.

Size: 643.0 KB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: September 30, 2014 FREE Disk Monitor watches disk space and utilization, directory and file sizes, temp file info, and file and folder permissions to protect your data and ensure network storage uptime. Effective utilization of resources is key in every department within an organization.

Ensuring proper management of disk space is critical to your business continuity plan. Running out of disk space can result in a loss of services, unproductive users, and potentially corrupt data. The disk monitoring capability. Size: 15.8 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: October 01, 2010 Setting up WMI monitoring for your Windows servers and apps can be time consuming and tedious. Ready to take the guesswork out of determining which WMI counters to use for applications like Microsoft Active Directory and SharePoint? Want to look like an application expert without sifting through boring WMI tutorials? SolarWinds free WMI Monitor is the answer.

This new free tool makes it easy to monitor your Windows applications and servers and gives you amazing insight into real-time. Size: 59.9 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: March 18, 2012 IsItUp Network Monitor allows companies of all sizes to monitor critical applications and infrastructure. A wide variety of monitor types are included such as a Ping Monitor, Web site Monitor, Tcp/Ip Port Monitor, Windows Service Monitor,Disk Free space Monitor and an e-mail System Monitor. IsItUp continuously monitors multiple IP devices, Web sites, e-mail systems, windows services, disk free space and alerts you by pager, e-mail, or execution of a user defined program. A failed windows. Size: 10.2 MB License: Shareware Price: 19.95USD Keywords: -Data Added 1: September 22, 2010 SurveilStar Activity Monitor is free web activity monitoring software which can help you to monitor, record, control and block internet activities. This free web activity monitoring software can easily record all visited web pages with URL link, visiting time, page title, web host and data size, record all incoming and outgoing web emails including sender, receiver, time and detailed contents, record all emails sent and reveived by email clients including Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird.

Size: 2.8 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: October 01, 2010 SolarWinds free Exchange Monitor delivers a clever desktop dashboard that continuously monitors Microsoft Exchange to deliver real-time insight into Exchange services, mail queue sizes, and host server health. With Exchange Monitor at your fingertips, you'll be able to track Exchange health at-a-glance and ensure this mission-critical app never fails you.

Plus, the Exchange Monitor offers up some fancy desktop eye candy with its 21st century transparency mode, impresses your boss, and ensures. Size: 8.4 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: February 28, 2011 A free ping monitor utility with the visual interface to track connection to remote hosts, located in LAN/WAN or Internet. The application sends pings on a regular basis and analyze response to detect status of connections. Connection outage is reported automatically if ping response isn't delivered a particular number of times in a row. The application has a visual interface that displays a current state of connections to monitored hosts and reported statistics. For every host you can see an.

Size: 31.3 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: July 15, 2012 A free ping monitor utility with the visual interface to track connection to remote hosts, located in LAN/WAN or Internet. The application sends pings on a regular basis and analyze response to detect status of connections. Connection outage is reported automatically if ping response isn#039;t delivered a particular number of times in a row. The application has a visual interface that displays a current state of connections to monitored hosts and reported statistics. For every host you can.

Size: 37.4 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: March 17, 2008 FREE - Remotely monitor health and status information of system critical programs and servers using a browser based Web Panel. Automatic alert notifications (audio and urls) for realtime failure detection and broadcast. Native support for Blaiz Enterprises' Network Monitor enabled programs and implements a basic Open UDP plain text data format for easy 3rd party software interoperability. Program Features. Built-in Web Panel for remote monitoring via web browser. Monitor Blaiz Enterprises'. Size: 634.7 KB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: January 15, 2017 MIDIPlayer is a free MIDI file player with detailed file information display including individual track details.

MIDIPlayer allows you to select any MIDI interfaces present for playback and can be used to play a file through an external synthesizer or MIDI device. It is a complete rewrite of an older Windows XP program that relied on DirectMusic, which is no longer supported by 64-bit versions of modern Windows. Instead, it has it own MIDI decoding and playback engine and uses the. Size: 6.1 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: December 10, 2017 a free hardware monitor for Windows, you can see your CPU/GPU/MB/HDD/RAM state in desktop or overclock your GPU, AgaueEye also support in-game overlay for popular games, so you can monitor the hardware state in games(over 3000 games supported now), then inspect the performance. Support popular graphics engines (DirectX 8,9,10,11,12 and OpenGL) What's AgaueEye? AgaueEye is a hardware monitor with in-game overlay tools for Windows, with AgaueEye, you can monitor your hardware, like.

Size: 22.0 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: February 22, 2010 A simple Personal Information Manager (PIM) that allows you to store your sensitive private information (ideas, passwords, credit card numbers, website logins, etc.) in a very strong encrypted database. The same database file can be used both in desktop and Pocket PC version. Internet monitor. Internet monitor by SoftX, free internet monitor, internet monitor tool, network monitoring with internet monitor software Size: 852.0 KB License: Trial Price: $14.95 Keywords: -Data Added 1: May 05, 2012 KMidimon is a MIDI monitor for Linux using ALSA sequencer and KDE user interface.

Size: 334.3 KB License: Freeware Data Added 1: September 30, 2012 - Basic MIDI monitor, works w/ JACK or ALSA MIDI drivers - Most types of MIDI messages can be filtered from the monitor. MIDI events can be captured to a text file (SMF planned). UI Widgets can be hidden to reduce screen clutter. Size: 174.5 KB License: Freeware Data Added 1: July 02, 2014.

Thunderview is designed exclusively for use with the CalDigit T1, T2, and the AV Pro only. CalDigit ThunderView is a Free App monitor of CalDigit Thunderbolt devices for professional video and audio media. This App also comes with Bitrate Calculator, which can help editors quickly translate codec and film length into storage size. SYNC, EASY, & MOBILE, professional media editors all desire to have ThunderView to monitor their CalDigit Thunderbolt drives. Size: 1.6 MB License: Freeware Data Added 1: May 06, 2012 Ping Monitor is a free automatic tool for tracking connections to hosts, located in the local network and Internet.

It detects connections statuses by sending regular pings and analyzing responses. If pings to host are failed a defined number of times in a row, application detects and reports a connection outage. Ping Monitor can work in 24/7 mode to track the connections states and calculate connections statistics, which is reported on the main application screen. Displayed parameters. Size: 37.4 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: January 13, 2013 WFilter Free is a free tool to monitor, filter and block internet usage of network computers. You only need to install WFilter Free in ONE computer to monitor and filter a whole network.

Key Features: 1. Web filter, website black/white list for both http and https websites. P2P blocking, blocking various p2p downloading.

Online streaming blocker: block online audio and video. Bandwidth monitoring: realtime internet connections and bandwidth monitoring. Size: 3.7 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: June 21, 2007 Abaiko Disk Space Monitor is a program monitoring free space on the disks of your computer. Modern computers have a lot of space on their disks. And people stopped watching the space thinking that disks of that size just cannot be too small. Most likely, some software developers stick to that opinion as well and some software occupies quite a lot of space on disks or do not save it.

In addition, software capabilities increase together with the development of computers. A lot of people can. Size: 2.6 MB License: Shareware Price: $19.95 Keywords: -Data Added 1: August 19, 2013 Advanced Disk Space Monitor is a remote monitoring software. The program will allow administrators to monitor disk space usage on a remote server or workstation via email alerts and reports. It can monitor each disk independently, with separate threshold value for each disk. Also it is possible to use local warnings, sound notifications and tasks. Advanced Disk Space Monitor can be installed as a service and supports SSL/TLS for SMTP.

Free Midi Software

Features of 'Advanced Disk Space Monitor': - Can. Size: 3.5 MB License: Shareware Price: $29.95 Keywords: -Data Added 1: February 05, 2017 Monitor large and medium networks without leaving your chair! Total Network Monitor looks after your LAN no matter how large, raising alerts automatically if certain events occur.

Watch network performance and get notified about the problems instantly with a variety of alerting options. You won't miss a problem no matter where you are! Total Network Monitor can notify you by email or by phone, while making an attempt to fix the problem by performing an action or your custom script. Size: 8.9 MB License: Shareware Price: $190 Keywords: -Data Added 1: August 31, 2010 ManageEngine Free Ping tool is a simple yet powerful tool with an elegant UI that helps to issue ping requests to 'Multiple IP Addresses' in a single instance. And can find the health of the sever continuously for a maximum of 10 hosts.

The ping data such as Ipaddress, RoundTripTime, Time To Live (Ttl), Buffer Size and the status are shown in a table. The ManageEngine Free ping tool gives the round trip time in a intuitive moving real time graph. Graph is drawn with Number of instances in the. Size: 1.5 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: December 21, 2010 SurveilStar Email Recording is free email monitoring software to record incoming and outgoing emails including web http mails and pop3, smtp, imap mails by email clients including Outlook 2003, 2007, thunderbird, etc.

It can block all emails or block outgoing emails only. SurveilStar Email Recording also provides comprehensive email statistics and allows you to search emails with sender, receiver, subject, attachment and attachment size. SurveilStar Email Recording can monitor, record. Size: 2.8 MB License: Freeware Keywords: -Data Added 1: May 06, 2012 Ping Monitor is an automatic tool for tracking connections with hosts, located in the local network and Internet. It detects connections statuses by sending regular pings and analyzing responses. If pings to host are failed a defined number of times in a row, application detects and reports a connection outage. Ping Monitor can work in 24/7 mode to track the connections states and calculate connections statistics, which is reported on the main screen.

Displayed parameters for every host. Size: 38.4 MB License: Shareware Price: $49 Keywords: -Data Added 1: June 21, 2007 MID Converter includes several MIDI tools in one. MIDI to Audio (WAV, MP3, OGG, WMA) recording feature lets you easily record MIDI and Guitar Pro files to the most popular audio formats.

MIDI types converting tool lets you to convert various.mid formats from one to another. The program also features the built-in sequencer engine. That allows to playback MIDI and Guitar Pro directly in the program and record to Audio with the highest quality.

At least, batch conversion mode. Size: 1.4 MB License: Shareware Price: $29.95 Keywords: -For searches similar to free midi monitor see 'Related Downloads' under the categories listing. Products 1-30 Go to 1 page Categories Related Downloads Top Downloads New Downloads Latest Downloads Latest Reviews (reshim) Programmers feel the comfort of coding using ConyEdit which is capable to edit codes in batch.

(harish) No need to go for a professional designer for the cover of new record, you can do it on your own. (Anthony) Scans software to find whether it is harmful for computer and also checks for updates of security. (Maxmuller) This just another awesome product from Comodo to protect your computer from unwanted inbound. (Redrick) This lets the data packets we send split into several packages which is convenient for many. (Tensialar) This is a light weight software for viewing MS project files easily without the MS project. (Mortinus) I had difficulties with the pdf documents which needed to be edited before presentation, then I.

(Nielsine) You can enable your guests book any room instantly through your website, also receive the. (Sokki) It gives good result of any keyword you are looking for compared to standard default file search. (Magaidh) Integrated pop up and ad block facilities, secure all the online transactions by protecting.

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Whether you're running a single PC in your bedroom or a bank of them in a professional studio, sometimes a tiny freeware or shareware utility can make the difference between frustration and elation. We round up some of the best and point you to places where you can find more. The right freeware or shareware utility can be a godsend for the PC musician. It might help you track down an annoying problem, cure it or bypass it altogether; it might provide you with a new means of generating or modifying sounds; it might simply save you money you'd otherwise have had to spend on a commercial equivalent. Ironically, although such utilities are often quick and easy to download via the Internet, their relatively small size often results in them being overlooked among the morass of available files. Some of the best ones aren't hosted on the mainstream web sites either, but on the developer's own pages.

So this month I've rounded up some of the most useful utilities that should specifically interest the PC Musician, organised into various categories with suggested uses. Many new musicians seem to be moving across to making music on their PCs after working for years on hardware multitrackers or elderly Atari ST computers, so I make no apologies for including some old favourites in the list. However, whether you're a newcomer or an expert, there should be something for you. The majority of the utilities I include are freeware, and the few shareware ones have very reasonable registration fees considering how useful they are. There are those who consider MIDI an outmoded technology — sales of new MIDI hardware synths are falling, and some musicians are busy selling their existing ones second-hand because they now use totally software-based sources. However, other musicians are eagerly snapping up these bargains, and anyone who uses a VST or DX Instrument is probably still using MIDI data to trigger it from an external keyboard.

Moreover, MIDI controllers are an incredibly popular way to add real-time expression to MIDI performances, to automate both MIDI and audio sources, or simply to control sequencer functions from a distance. So, given that MIDI still plays a big part in many musicians' lives, what can utilities do to enhance this experience? For many, a big frustration comes when they're trying to make a certain controller change a particular synth parameter and nothing is happening. If you know what data you're trying to generate from your controller, the answer is to monitor what's actually coming out to see what's amiss — it may be something as simple as incoming data being sent on the wrong MIDI channel.

For many years, the standalone 800KB MIDIOX has performed this function for me and many other musicians with finesse, and it's still a free download from. All you need to do is open its MIDI Devices window, select the MIDI input that your controller is connected to, and then you can view every MIDI message the controller generates.

For those who want to see which MIDI data is arriving inside their VST-compatible sequencer application, Wally Cescato's MIDI Data Monitor loads as a VST Instrument and displays incoming MIDI note, aftertouch, pitch-bend and controller data on four 'LEDs', as well as providing a scrolling data display in text form. Those with hardware MIDI synths will easily find loads of soundbanks for their particular make and model on the Internet, but after you've downloaded these SysEx (.SYX) files to your PC you'll need a way to send them on to your synth. Sonar users can do this directly (as can users of Cakewalk's older Pro Audio sequencer range) but if, like Cubase, your sequencer doesn't recognise such files, you'll need a suitable utility. Once again, MIDIOX comes to the rescue.

However, if you want something even simpler that's devoted to SysEx transfers, SendSX also works with all versions of Windows. There are still times when MIDI routing utilities are useful. Some can add multi-client support to MIDI hardware that doesn't have it, so that you can route a sequencer and synth-editing software simultaneously to the same MIDI output for changing sounds while playing back a song.

Hubi's Loopback and Herman Seib's MultiMID were the ones that started it all for Windows 3.x and 9x, and they're still available (. Others can act as MIDI patch cables, so that you can port data from one application to another in real time, or modify incoming MIDI data before sending it on elsewhere.

Hubi's MIDI Cable did this for Windows 3.x and 9x, while Jamie O' Connell's MIDI Yoke worked for many on Windows NT and subsequently Windows 2000 and XP, but caused problems with Tascam's Gigastudio. MIDI is still an important part of most musician's performances, and utilities such as MIDIOX, Maple Tools and Markleford Friedman's MFX plug-ins, shown here, can help you get the right MIDI data to the desired destination. Fortunately, a modern patch-cable alternative is now available that seems to work with everything: Marble Sounds' Maple Virtual MIDI Cable ( Mapledriver.html) is freeware and runs on Windows 95, 98/ME, 2000 and XP. Once you've installed it and rebooted, it appears in all your MIDI applications as four extra MIDI Ins and Outs, so if, for instance, you want to send the MIDI output from your main sequencer to a stand-alone soft-synth, you can select Maple MIDI Out: Port 1 in your sequencer and Maple MIDI In: Port 1 on the synth and the two applications will be connected via MIDI. This really is a handy utility to have installed.

The associated Maple Tools utility either accepts MIDI data from your sequencer via the Maple MIDI Outs, or directly from up to four hardware MIDI input ports, and then modifies it in various ways in real time, using various plug-ins individually configured for each channel of each port. There are two plug-ins bundled with the utility: Layering lets you achieve complex patches by sending the incoming MIDI data to any combination of channels on multiple output ports, while MIDI Control Surface lets you send a huge variety of controller-data messages using software sliders and buttons. Various third-party developers have added special performance features to their sample libraries by writing plug-ins for Maple Tools. For instance, PMI supply their Grandiose FX plug-in to enable users of their Gigastudio piano libraries to re-pedal (switch between sustaining and no-sustaining samples in real time), and add pedal-noise samples and extra release samples. This is a free download for those who would like to try using it for other applications. Gary Garritan also includes the Maestro Tools plug-in for his Orchestral Strings, to add legato, alternating bow strokes and mono mode to its repertoire. For those who would prefer to record their MIDI data in its original form, then modify it inside their sequencer in real time via a MIDI plug-in, there are lots available to suit any sequencer that accepts plug-ins in MFX format, which includes Cubase, Nuendo, Sonar and Project 5, amongst others.

There's a wonderful collection of 19 plug-ins by Markleford Friedman at Ten Crazy , including MFX Auto Alternator, which provides the alternating bow strokes feature of Orchestral Strings, but with options to send the alternate messages to different MIDI channels so that you can create the same effect with your own sample sets. Others include MFX Track Doorman, which ensures that only notes from a specific key range reach your synth (ideal for making sure your string orchestrations are correct), MFX Kick Peddler, to convert sustain pedal or other switch movements into kick-drum data, and MFX Key Tweaker, to generate any controller data from a range of keys, for those who don't have modulation or pitch-bend wheels on their keyboards. Some users have found the install process confusing, but all you do is unzip the three files belonging to each plug-in into any folder of your choice. In the case of Cubase SX, I just created an MFX folder inside my existing VST plug-ins folder. Then you double-click on the file ending in 'BAT', to let the Windows Registry know of its existence. Further MFX plugins can be found at the Frank's MIDI Plug-ins web site , and Nicolas Fournel's web site. The vast majority of offerings in the Multimedia sections of utility libraries tend to be for general-purpose use — audio players, plug-ins for use with them, various codecs and encoders to work with compressed audio formats, CD rippers and simple audio editors.

For those who already have a full-featured MIDI + Audio sequencer and a clutch of plug-ins, and are more interested in creating their own music than copying other people's, there's probably little of interest. However, there are some gems to be found if you search hard enough. Here are some web sites that I've found rewarding in my travels: GENERAL PURPOSE:.

Cnet's Download.Com provides many categories, but has a handy search function, so you can narrow down the options when you're looking for something in particular. Download FreeTrial is, as its name suggests, a web site where you can download free or trial versions of software. I mention it because I found quite a few utilities here that I hadn't spotted elsewhere.

Nonags is unusual in having mirror sites around the world hosting its contents to make them quicker to download, and in hosting freeware only. It's been around since 1995 and is now absolutely vast, yet very clearly laid out, with descriptions, ratings and links to authors' home pages. Simtel is slick and very professional and has a filtering system so that you can specify the operating system, type of license (freeware, demo, shareware, and so on), price, user ratings and even file size, to narrow down your search. Snapfiles is vast. The two innocuous buttons, labelled Shareware and Freeware, near the top of the main page take you to one of the biggest selections of downloadable files on the Internet, each with several hundred categories. The Multimedia sections aren't all that useful to musicians, but there are loads of general-purpose utilities and a very good synopsis and rating system.

Softpedia is a vast repository of shareware and freeware for both Mac and PC. The Windows section offers 19 categories, but many of these are further divided into sub-categories to make searching a more productive experience. SourceForge has over 100,000 registered products across 19 categories and caters for the academic as well as the more casual user. This is a site at which you could profitably spend quite a few rainy afternoons. Tucows is always a little slow to appear for my liking, partly because of the number of ads, but it has 660 titles in its Audio section so it's well worth a visit.

UtilityGeek provides a huge range of diagnostic tools and utilities for the PC owner, neatly split into 22 categories. AUDIO/MIDI ONLY:. Audio Tools Direct has about 600 downloads available, although most of their 29 categories contained little of interest when I looked.

DA Sound has a good search/browse function that helps you narrow down the options. Particularly useful is the browse-by-platform option (if, for instance, you're only interested in files that are compatible with Windows XP). Harmony Central ( Software/Windows) has another large collection of audio-related shareware and freeware. Hitsquad's Shareware Music Machine has over 5000 software items to download, sorted into about 100 different categories, and I suspect that it's the most comprehensive site of its type around.

Partners In Rhyme ( pir/PIRwindows.html) has a good selection of audio and MIDI files, but many of them are rather old, and with few details provided you can waste a lot of time downloading things that you subsequently find will only run on Windows 3.1. Synth Zone has plenty of music-related links, although, once again, many of the utilities are quite elderly. Most audio manipulations are now carried out within host applications that already contain many internal transformation tools, and most support VST or DX plug-ins that can add loads more, so stand-alone audio utilities are becoming of less interest nowadays. Nevertheless, I did find some intriguing tools in my travels.

Let's start with a couple of very handy stand-alone tools from AnalogX. Delay Time Calculator does just what it says on the virtual tin: you enter the tempo of your song in BPM and it provides a readout of seven note lengths in milliseconds that you can dial into your hardware or software delay unit. Tap Tempo is for when you don't know the tempo of a song — just press the space-bar on each beat and a tempo readout magically appears.

At 209KB and 206KB respectively, you can't go wrong. The freeware Soundplant is a handy sample-triggering tool that you could use during live performance. The freeware Soundplant could prove very useful to some musicians, as it turns the computer keyboard into a sample-triggering device capable of assigning WAV or AIFF files to up to 72 different key combinations. You can then use it as a rough-and-ready drum pad, or as a performance or installation tool. The software's graphic interface allows drag-and-drop configuration of each key, with controls for pitch, offset, volume, pan and looping, and you can batch-assign the same file at different pitches and offsets across multiple keys. Just make sure that your keyboard repeat delay is set to High and the repeat rate to Slow.

Se/rasmuse/Coagula.htm) is described as an 'image synth' and provides a range of drawing tools for creating graphic images that you can then render into a WAV file. Each line in the image controls the amplitude of one sine-wave oscillator at a specific pitch, and different colours determine stereo placement and noise contributions.

Included are a variety of unusual filters, overlays and tools, and the results range from drones through washes of sound to evolving sci-fi soundscapes. You can also import BMP files. Audiopaint is rather simpler, providing no drawing tools but offering the facility to import GIF and JPEG as well as BMP images. You can also use a sample instead of sine-waves to generate your sounds, for very different results. Creating sounds from images may generate some fresh inspiration, using utilities such as Coagula. If you want to explore the outer fringes of audio, pay a visit to The Transparent Corporation and enter the mysterious world of brainwave manipulation. Here you can download a demo version of the Brain Sound Studio that embeds 'brainwave entrainment' into any sound or music file of your choice, using a series of over 70 brainwave transform filters.

Traditionally, such techniques have involved binaural beat frequencies that you experience under headphones only (signals that differ by a few Herz are sent to each ear separately), and while Brain Sound Studio can produce these, it can also be used over loudspeakers and even in mono. It sounds ideal for any musician working with trance or relaxation music, or who wants to add a hidden edge to their music, and the full version costs just $45. We regularly get new members on the SOS Forums asking how they can find out what motherboard make and model they have in their PC, or what processor, how much RAM and of what speed. Probably the most comprehensive utility that can tell you all this is SiSoftware's Sandra , which provides a host of modules covering Information, Testing, Benchmarking, Listing and various Wizards. You can learn a vast amount about your PC from these, and use the information to test the performance of the PC's various sub-systems. However, the beginner or casual enquirer could easily become overwhelmed with Sandra 's data read-outs, and for quick-and-easy display of all the parameters mentioned above the freeware CPU-Z is hard to beat.

It provides just the right amount of information in one tabbed interface covering your CPU, Cache, Mainboard, Memory and SPD (Serial Presence Detect) read-out from each RAM slot. The other area that beginners often find they want to measure is hard drive performance, especially if their system can only manage the playback of a few dozen audio tracks before running out of steam. DskBench is a perennial favourite for this, as it's tiny (just 36KB) and can be dropped into each partition on a drive and run from there to measure the drive's sustained read/write transfer performance, check that the drive is correctly using DMA (Direct Memory Access) for low CPU overhead (this is a common reason for poor audio playback performance) and give you an idea of how many audio tracks you should be able to run with different disk-block buffer sizes in your sequencer application.

Dskbench 's read-out is text-only, but if you're not sure what results you should be getting this makes it easy to paste your results into the SOS PC Music Forum, where more experienced users will soon provide feedback. The quickest and easiest way to find out what hardware is inside your PC is to run CPU-Z, which will interrogate your CPU, motherboard and RAM. If you'd prefer a graphic display of sustained drive performance, HD Tach is probably your best bet. Rather than providing individual transfer rates for each partition, it shows how this parameter varies from the outside (fastest) to the inside (slowest) of each of your drives, as well as providing a CPU utilisation figure. If this encourages you to think more carefully about how your various drives are partitioned, all the better. Once you understand the ins and outs of partitioning (see PC Musician May 2005 for more details), it's well worth installing a music-only Windows partition alongside the one you use for more general activities such as Internet surfing, word processing and so on. You can separately install Windows into several partitions by using its 'install new copy' option, and use Window's own basic boot-manager utility to choose which one to run each time you boot up your PC.

Quite a few musicians do this with no problems at all, but others aren't quite so lucky, running into problems and limitations. If you're prepared to lay out a little money and want a considerably more versatile boot manager, Terabyte Unlimited's Boot It NG (Next Generation) is just $35 and provides a boot manager, a partition manager (not as versatile as Partition Magic, but good enough in many cases) and a partition-imaging utility so you can save compressed security copies of partitions, as well as cloning them. Since it doesn't run from Windows, you can also use it to image Windows itself. Boot It NG also provides various special features, such as removing the usual limit of four Primary partitions on a drive (each operating system must normally be installed on such a partition, so this allows you to install more than four instances of Windows in complex setups), and has a Multi-OS option that can boot multiple operating systems from one primary partition. Boot It was first released 10 years ago, has gained an enviable reputation for reliability (particularly important when you're using it to back up your data) and can be downloaded from. Com/bootitng.html However, another product could well claim the prize of 'ultimate boot manager'.

Star Tools' Bootstar also increases the limit from four to 15 primary partitions per drive, but is the only boot manager, to my knowledge, that provides extra security features, by physically hiding each Windows partition so that when you boot into another one it's entirely unaware of the other's presence. Bootstar lets you choose an entire profile consisting of up to four visible partitions out of the 15 possible, and in its Profi security mode doesn't simply restrict access to 'hidden' partitions, like most other boot managers, but instead deletes its MBR (Master Boot Record) information so that the partitions cannot even be seen from partitioning tools such as Partition Magic or Windows own FDisk (although you can temporarily deactivate it to carry out maintenance work). If you're concerned about the possibility of a music-only partition getting virus problems, I know of no way for any infection to pass from an Internet-enabled partition to one that's totally invisible until you reboot into it. Like Boot It NG, you can test Bootstar for 30 days without any restrictions, then it costs just $25 to register per computer. Unfortunately, I can't show you screenshots of either of these utilities, because they are installed and run long before your PC reaches the Windows environment.

There are so many utilities out there that it's difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff (which is the main reason for this round-up). However, if you're searching for something different, here are a few things to remember on your travels.

Some MIDI utilities, in particular, date right back to Windows 3.1 and may or may not run under the Windows XP that most of us are now using. Unfortunately, not every download site provides details of release dates or supported operating systems, so if the utility appeals you may have to do some detective work. If the file is in zipped form, you'll be able to glean a lot from the date-stamps of the files within it, and if some of them are dated 1993 be wary: the utility may still run, but it may need some elderly DLL files that are no longer part of Windows.

If you just get a Setup.exe file you won't have any idea of its release date, but if it suggests when you run it that it should be installed in the root C: directory, or doesn't cope with long folder names (abbreviating them with the tilde ' symbol), it's probably very old. If you intend to try out a batch of utilities, the safest approach is to first make an image file of your Windows partition. Then you can install what you like, safe in the knowledge that if anything goes awry you can restore the image file to return your hard drive to the state it was in before you started (that's what I did while researching this feature). Occasionally you can download a file and find that it's in a compressed format Windows won't read automatically, such as RAR or UUE. One of the best utilities for dealing with such formats is WinRAR. It's available in a huge number of different languages and can either be launched as a stand-alone application onto which you drag and drop supported file types or can be integrated into Windows Explorer for right-click Extraction options.

WinRAR is shareware. You can use it free for a 40-day trial period and a single license costs about £19. The only compressed format I've ever had to deal with that wasn't covered either by Windows or WinRAR is MIME, which can occur with encoded email attachments from Mac users.

If you ever find yourself with a stray file ending in.MIM, the usual suggestion is to download and install Allume's Stuffit Expander. What you're actually doing is installing a 15-day trial version of Stuffit Standard Edition that includes the free Expander tool. If you'd prefer a much smaller (310K) download, try the freeware Decode Shell Extension from Funduc Software. This adds a Decode function to Internet Explorer that will extract multiple files from within a MIME one. While the majority of musicians now have few problems achieving smooth audio recording and playback, there are still regular posts on the SOS Forum complaining of occasional clicks and pops. One of the commonest problems afflicting the PC musician still seems to be unwanted third-party tasks running in the background and interrupting audio recording and playback.

The quickest way to see which processes are currently running is to use the Ctrl-Alt-Delete key combination to launch the Windows Task Manager, but although this provides a long list of candidates, many of them are required for the normal running of Windows and are cryptically named. As many third-party tasks are started each time you boot up Windows, it's generally more useful to search these out. Microsoft provide the System Configuration Utility, which you can launch by clicking Start, then Run, typing 'msconfig' into the text box and then pressing return. On the Startup page you'll find a full list of tasks that are either in your Startup folder or in the Run or Run Once sections of the Windows registry (Run Once tasks generally initialise something, while Run tasks continue to run behind the scenes as long as your PC is on).

If you suspect that one of these tasks is causing a problem you can go to the General page and click on Selective Startup. Then you can individually tick or untick the boxes in the Startup page and re-boot to see if bypassing a specific task has cured the problem.

Tracking down unwanted Windows startup tasks and laptop power-management issues that cause audio clicks and pops is made easier using utilities such as Autoruns. Alternatively, the easiest utility I've found to do all this is the freeware Autoruns from Sysinternals. It runs on all version of Windows, provides a clearer display with more meaningful names, offers icons to make each task easier to recognise, has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, and even displays the entries in the order that Windows processes them. If you ever find a task in any of these lists whose function is still obscure, try browsing through the excellent Task List Programs list on the Answers That Work web site. This provides 27 pages (numerical, plus one for each letter of the alphabet) crammed full of information on the huge number of tasks available from both third-party and Microsoft sources, complete with recommendations on whether or not you should disable them Musicians with laptops also suffer occasional audio pauses, but for an entirely different reason. On many modern designs the power management functions try to maximise battery life and keep the device cool by throttling the CPU frequency and reducing its operating voltage in real time if you require less computing power, smoothly ramping it back up when you need it all.

Unfortunately, on a few models each such change can result in an audio interruption. If you suspect this could be true of your laptop, try downloading Rightmark's CPU Clock Utility (see opening screen above), from, and monitoring the throttled clock frequency to see if changes coincide with these interruptions.

If they do, you can contact your laptop supplier or manufacturer to see if there's any way to disable the power-management functions. CCleaner will keep your PC optimised and remove traces of your Internet activities.

Finally, I've recently found another handy and reliable Windows cleaning tool that removes many unwanted files from your system, including those generated by browsers such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox that compromise your Internet privacy, temporary files left by loads of third-party applications, and the usual temporary Windows files. It will also offer to separately clean the Windows Registry of similar detritus. CCleaner is freeware, and has already been downloaded by over six million people, including me! All contents copyright © SOS Publications Group and/or its licensors, 1985-2018. All rights reserved. The contents of this article are subject to worldwide copyright protection and reproduction in whole or part, whether mechanical or electronic, is expressly forbidden without the prior written consent of the Publishers. Great care has been taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this article but neither Sound On Sound Limited nor the publishers can be held responsible for its contents.

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