Free Sound Recorder

Most of the Windows users remember the old System Recorder application. It's a program that can record sound that comes from the microphone or the line-in connector. But even though the program is extremely popular, it lacks a lot of features, one of them being the impossibility to use certain codecs or to change the audio quality settings. Besides that, this program cannot record the sound produced by certain applications, for example, a radio player. Fortunately, there is a replacement for Sound Recorder and that's the Free Sound Recorder application.

As the name clearly states, this is a free program that is able to record any sound that passes through the soundcard and save it as an audio file, using various settings. The software supports virtually any Windows version, ranging from XP to Windows 7. It takes up little hard disk space and it's very easy to install.

The interface of Free Sound Recorder has a nice graphical form that features some buttons for accessing the software's functions. Recording can be made by a push of a button. Optionally, the user might want to adjust the program's settings, like choosing the recording audio format and quality, setting hot keys for starting and stopping the recording or scheduling a recording to start at a certain hour. This last option is useful for recording late-night shows, making sure that the user will not miss his favorite radio show.

When a recording is over, the newly created audio file will be displayed in a list, in the program's interface, allowing the user to play it using the built-in audio player. During the recording process, the interface displays in real time the elapsed time and also the volume of each of the two audio channels.