Be it an online radio show, your favorite music, a conference, a phone call, or the soundtrack of your best tutorial, SoundTap Streaming Audio Recorder can capture any audio signal coming into your computer via a streaming broadcast, an external microphone, or any other line-in feed.
The recording interface itself is as simple as it comes. You can’t miss the oversized “Start Recording” and "Pause" buttons that will allow you to start, stop, and pause any recording efficiently with a quick movement of the mouse. A large-font clock will allow you to follow the recording time from a distance, too. If checked, you will be able to mix the current recording with any audio coming via an external microphone, which will allow you to add your own comments to the audio stream being recorded.
You can customize your recordings by setting a few parameters, such as the output format – thus, recordings can be saved either as an uncompressed WAV file or as an MP3 file. SoundTap will save a record for each of your audio recordings. The program’s simple recording manager will let you search for specific recordings by duration, recording date and name, etc., and remove, edit, convert, or burn selected recordings to disc in a convenient and simple way. Note, however, that to benefit from most of these features (i.e., the audio editor, the disc burner, the audio transcriber, and the conversion tool) you will need to have your Internet connection ready to download and install the NCH utilities that perform all those useful tasks.
However, the program does include an audio player and a backup utility. The former comes with just the basic controls you need to playback your recordings (though it includes a useful waveform graph), while the latter will let you send your recordings to a shared location or a local folder or burn it to CD. Additionally, in order to save valuable disk space, you can compress your audio files here before backing them up.
Though simple and easy to use, SoundTap Streaming Audio Recorder is one of those tiny tools that are worth having installed on your system for a wide variety of reasons. It can not only capture any audio signal coming into your computer, but also manage them in an orderly and convenient way.
Pros
- One-click recording
- Customizable playback and recording options
- Built-in audio player
- Audio backup capabilities
- Supports both WAV and MP3 for the output
- Includes a basic recording manager
Cons
- Some extra functionality requires downloading and installing other NCH tools
Very disappointing. Treble rolloff starts at about 800 Hz. Quite useless for recording. I had a version previously which was quite good, but the money spent this time is completely wasted.
SoundTap performs tricks: you only get a free period. If you accidentally lose it from your machine, do not expect any service to reinstate it unless you buy a "service" deal.
Great Program to record anything you can hear from your computer!