WinADR (MP3 Recorder) is a tiny and simple audio recording tool that lets you grab any sound coming through your system’s sound card and save it not only as an MP3 file, but also as a WAV or WMA file. It can capture any audio you can hear through your speakers, including any external device connected to your computer (tape deck, turntable, hi-fi system, or CD player) and any video/audio playing in your Web browser.
Thus, you can easily use WinADR to back up your analog music and save it in high-quality digital files. The program allows you to select any possible audio source that your system can handle, and lets you decide how the different channels will mix into the final audio file. Another obvious use of this program is in capturing the audio of any video playing in your computer, or the audio coming from your favorite Internet radio or television programs. When it comes to audio extraction (say, the soundtrack of a movie), the main difference between WinADR and other tools that can extract the audio of any existing video file, is that with this program all recordings are “live” recordings, in the sense that they are all made in real time, meaning that it will take you an hour to grab the audio of a 60-minute long video. The idea here is not to compete with other (faster) audio extraction tools, but to use WinADR for those videos that cannot be downloaded and saved into your hard drive, and therefore cannot be processed “off-line” with other tools. The same goes for audio – if you can have your audio files saved into your system, do not bother using WinADR for MP3 conversion (there are other tools for that), but if you want to capture a program or a concert that is being broadcasted live, then this tool is all you need.
The program offers you basic settings for each of the three output audio formats available, which lets you configure the audio quality of the resulting files. (As a side note, it is important to know that WinADR does not produce temporary WAV files that may take up valuable disk space – the MP3 and WMA files are directly encoded into the corresponding format.) Finally, the program offers you another interesting feature available for all output formats – the possibility of splitting the audio automatically at regular time intervals.
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