Absolute Sound Recorder

As you can guess from its name, Absolute Sound Recorder is intended to grab audio from different sources, such as a microphone or directly from your computer’s sound card.

The application’s interface may have looked perfectly right some years ago, but now it seems to me it looks somewhat outdated. It is characterized by compartmentalizing features into four tabs, which are meant to manage the recording process, set recording options, adjust playback and volume and edit file info respectively.

The tool supports three output file formats: WAV, MP3, and WMA, which may be enough for most common tasks; yet, some users may still feel the need to use other frequently used formats. Moreover, the application lets you take control over file size by adjusting the bit rate. A nice feature is the one that permits automatic trimming of the recording into files of equal time length. However, it would have been nice if it also allowed creating output files with the same size. Another inconvenience is that, unlike other similar tools, this one cannot detect silence, which lets you save a lot of disk space, particularly when recording speech. As a final point, it allows editing file tags, and it is good to hear that 'ID3v1' and 'ID3v2' are supported.

In general, Absolute Sound Recorder is a nice, light, and stable application supporting various input sources. Although I understand that this tool is not intended for editing, some users may find that the absolute absence of some features to trim and cut recordings is an important drawback. Finally, although it has an affordable price, you should know that there are more powerful tools out there at no cost.