This post will guide you on how to use to record online music/radio to your local hard drive. How to Use Apowersoft Audio Recorder for Mac Install. Download Apowersoft Audio Recorder for Mac by hitting Download button below. Right-click on the downloaded file, and select “Open” to install it. After installation, Apowersoft Audio Recorder for Mac will be launched automatically, and a shortcut for it will be created on your desktop. Settings (optional) Actually, the software will work well with all default settings.
But if you wish to adjust output format, directory, quality, language of the interface, etc, just configure the settings as you like. On the interface, click “Settings” icon to open the settings window. Or you can just press “Command+,” to open it. General settings: you can change the output folder and UI language here. Record settings: you can change the audio source, output format, quality and make some advanced record settings.
For example, you may choose to split files in specified time, enable identifying ID3 tags, skip silence and so on. Keyboard Shortcuts: you can enable the hotkeys for starting, pausing and stopping recording here. Record audio To record audio, you can launch Apowersoft Audio Recorder for Mac and hit the “Record” button at the left corner.
Then you go to play the music on web pages or in applications like iTunes or Spotify. Once the audio starts to play, the software will detect and record it automatically. Just make sure the music is playing while recording, then you can go on surfing the Internet or working on other things. The recorded file will be displayed on “Library”. You can play it with the built-in player. In order to record audio when you are away from the Mac, the task scheduler can assist you. Please click “Create schedule task” button to open the “Schedule Task” window.
The hard drive must be at least 7200RPM or faster, many inexpensive external Hard drives found in USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 cases only run at 4200 or 5400 rpm which makes them too slow for real time audio access.
Then, type the task name at will. Also, please customize the start time and end time for recording. According to your need, choose the input audio source and click “Create” icon. In the list, you will see the task info.
Finally, click “OK” to confirm. The countdown for the task will show on the interface, and it will start to record audio when the time is up. If you need to edit or remove the task, just enter “Create Schedule Task” again to conduct related operations. Identify ID3 tags Apowersoft Audio Recorder for Mac can identify the music info for recorded songs automatically.
The title, artist name, album and genre will be added instantly once it finishes recording. Note: if it failed to get music information, please right-click on the music file and choose “Identify” option to identify the music again. Assuming that you want to edit ID3 tags for recorded audio, voice conversations, just utilize the ID3 editor. Convert audio The software supports recording and saving audio in MP3, WAV, AAC and M4A, but you also have the ability to convert audio to other formats with the embedded audio converter.
On the “Library”, select the file and choose “Convert” option. Choose the output format like MP3, WMA, FLAC, OGG, MKA, AU, ALAC, etc, set the quality as well. Turn on the “Merge into one file” option to merge the files that you are converting. Click “Convert” button to start conversion. When it is done, you can click “Open folder” button to check the converted files. Edit audio If you wish to trim the audio, right click it and choose “Edit” option. Click “Load file” to import an audio file into it.
Hit “Add select”, then drag the region to locate the clip you need. To add more selections, hit “Add select” again and choose another region. Click the “Preview” button to preview the selected clips. To remove the selection, select it and click “Cancel select”. After editing, click “Export” to export the audio.
At the same time, you can edit the ID3 info and choose the export mode and format. How to record audio from microphone, system sound or both?
You can change the “Audio Source” on the main interface, open the menu and choose “Microphone”, “System Sound” or “Both System Sound and Microphone” and then start recording. When I open the program, it pops up an error: “Virtual sound card can’t be detected, install it now?” After installing Apowersoft Audio Recorder for Mac, a virtual sound card driver called “ApowersoftAudioDevice” will be installed on your computer. The virtual sound card is an important component for recording what you hear, so if it hasn’t been installed successfully, the program cannot run normally.
To fix this error, click “Yes” in the dialogue, then it will install the virtual sound card on your Mac automatically. Restart the program after installation. I couldn’t record from System Sound, why?. Please make sure you select “System Sound” in “Audio Source” menu. Please make sure that you are playing music.
Please make sure the default system output device is “ApowersoftAudioDevice” (System Preferences - Sound - Output). Please make sure the “Mute” option is unchecked in output panel and try to turn up the output volume. I get an error message “Could not open device! Please try again” when I change the audio source to “Both System Sound and Microphone”. If your computer is running slowly, it will take 2 or 3 seconds to create “ApowersoftAudioDevice”, so please wait for a few seconds and try again. Or, restart Apowersoft Audio Recorder for Mac and adjust the audio source again. Why my voice volume is so low in the recorded audio file?.
Please turn up the input device volume in “Input” panel. If possible, switch to a good microphone device. Will my license code be lost or expired if I reinstall the program? Don’t worry about that, your registration status will be kept. But please know that the registration code is for the version you purchased only. Once the software takes a major update and you install it, the new key code is required.
If your key code has been lost by accident, just contact our to require the registration information again. How to uninstall?. To uninstall Apowersoft Audio Recorder for Mac, please right-click on the software icon and select “Open”. Click “Uninstall” button on the pop-up window.
Finally, it is suggested to restart your Mac.
I feel old saying this, but having used computers since before external hard drives existed, I can say with certainty that buying a hard drive is easier today than it’s ever been before. For traditional drives, prices are low, options are numerous, and capacities are so high that your only choices are “enough space,” “more than enough space,” and “way more than enough space.” I could point you towards a and end this article without another paragraph. Since Apple doesn’t even sell a Mac with that much disk space, you could back up five (or more) computers to that drive without running out of room. Or you could store a decade worth of digital photos alongside a giant media library. But buying an external hard drive isn’t necessarily that simple. There are a bunch of factors worth considering before making a purchase, including everything from reliability to portability, design, capacity, speed, and connectivity.
Some hard drives are really cheap but have a higher chance of failing after a year or two of heavy use. So in this How-To, I’m going to discuss the big issues you need to consider, and guide you towards the best external hard drive for your needs Quick Overview Most hard drives are guaranteed to work for one to two years no matter what you do with them, ranging from occasional backups to continuous video streaming. They’ll generally last much longer if you don’t use them every day.
However — and this is really important — if you keep a typical drive mechanism running 24 hours each day for two years, it’s going to burn out. Hard drive longevity used to be measured with an estimate of “Mean Time Before Failure” (MTBF).
Each year has 61,320 hours, so a drive with a MTBF of 300,000 hours would promise to last 4.9 years if actively used 24 hours each day. Desktop drives typically promised higher MTBFs than laptop drives, but there were exceptions.
Unfortunately, MTBF numbers were only predictions — and often inaccurately high. Consumers complained.
So drive makers switched to a different but even less useful metric: Annualized Failure Rate (AFR), which estimates the percentage of total drives made that will fail in a year due to manufacturing defects. All an AFR of “0.73%” suggests is that 7,300 of 1,000,000 drives will likely develop problems in year one due to defects rather than abuse. That low percentage may seem reassuring, but it obscures the reality that heavy drive use increases failures over time, and some drives are much better-suited to heavy use than others. My advice: purchase your drive with a specific purpose in mind. If you’re backing up precious photos, home videos, or important files, buy a name brand, desktop-sized hard drive from a company with a track record of reliability, and pay a little more for it. It doesn’t really matter how the drive looks, just that it will work for a long time.
But if you’re just using a drive to store apps, games, or iTunes movies that you can easily re-download at any time, or only intermittently turn a drive on for backups, you can feel comfortable going with something cheaper, more portable, or fancier-looking. Capacity + Pricing It’s easy to pick the right hard drive capacity these days: most external drives now offer at least as much space as a standard Mac (1TB) — and there are — and you can get an. Most people will find that that 4TB is more than enough to hold years of accumulated photos, media files, and data, but there’s no wrong answer to the capacity question: it’s mostly a matter of personal preference right now. That said, there are sweet spots.
Expect to pay around,. By “basic,” I mean the popular and consumer-grade desktop drives shown above from Seagate, a major (but not top) drive manufacturer with a good (but not great) warranty. The are similar up until the 4TB mark, where the price doubles. Generally, 3TB to 5TB would be the sweet spots between capacity and pricing, but of the 3TB Expansion mirror comments I’ve seen elsewhere online: Seagate’s 3TB units had lots of problems.
You’re better off considering 2TB, 4TB or 5TB units instead. Don’t be surprised that longer-lasting drives can cost twice as much as basic models. They’ll typically last longer, which is worth something. Similarly, don’t be surprised if a solid state drive (SSD) costs much more and offers lower capacity than a mechanical drive. SSDs are just beginning to become mainstream internal drives for computers, and their capacities aren’t yet at the “more than enough space” point.
Reliability Since MTBF and AFR are such sketchy measures of hard drive reliability, I suggest that you focus on two more tangible factors: the reputation of the manufacturer, and the length of the drive’s warranty. A three-year warranty is the best you can expect from a consumer-grade external drive from a top vendor, regardless of whether it’s a. (Only the very best internal SSDs now offer and, though notably with much less storage space than the drives covered in this article. See my How-To guides to, and.) If reliability is your major concern, as it generally is mine, I’d suggest you look most seriously at (featuring ultra-reliable Hitachi hard drive mechanisms) and, all of which have three-year warranties. I G-Tech’s excellent for 9to5Mac, and have trusted their earlier drives for many years without any issues.
Was covered in my, and while it’s more expensive and lower-capacity than the G-Drive USB, it has no moving parts to worry about. Go with a G-Drive if you need a large reliable drive, or T1 if you want something small and reliable. Portability + Design There are five major types of external hard drives:,.
The first two use 3.5″ hard drive mechanisms and are effectively non-portable: they sit on your desk, depend on wall power, and aren’t easy to carry in typical bags. Flash drives are keychain-sized but relatively limited in capacity and crazy expensive when they begin to approach laptop drive capacities. So if you need a portable hard drive with respectable storage capacity at a reasonable price, you’ll most likely pick a laptop-class drive with a 2.5″ hard drive mechanism inside.
Owned by Seagate, boutique drive maker LaCie’s lineup nicely illustrates the relative size differences between the categories of external drives, though there are even smaller laptop and slim laptop drives out there now. In January, I both, the world’s thinnest external mechanical hard drive, and, a boxy mirrored drive with twice the capacity.
Both use USB 3.0 for data and power, with no need for an external power supply. Either one can easily fit into a laptop bag, backpack, or purse, but Seven is much, much smaller. If you want a portable, reliable hard drive at a low price with minimal design frills, consider, which have a. But if you’re looking for something with a distinctive design — and willing to compromise a little on long-term reliability — are definitely the best around. Pick the one that appeals to your personal taste. Speed, Connectivity, iOS Compatibility, and Apple’s AirPort Time Capsules A lot could be said about each of these topics, but I’ll save you some time and cut to the chase: recent developments mean that most people will be best off with USB 3.0 wired drives, except under one of three circumstances: you need incredible speed for Mac video editing, you want to stream video to your iOS devices, or you want to do automated wireless backups. If you’re planning on doing 4K or other disk-intensive Mac video editing, Thunderbolt hard drives such as or can deliver dramatically better speeds than drives that share your Mac’s USB bus.
They’re much more expensive than comparably capacious USB drives, but they’re built for professional use, and priced accordingly. That said, USB 3.0 drives tend to outperform prior-generation FireWire 800 drives, which were adequate for pre-4K editing, so most users will have no need to look for faster options. If you’re concerned about real-world speeds for a USB drive, check the manufacturer’s stated “up to XXXMB/second transfer rates” claims and subtract around 10-20% for real world performance. If you want to use your hard drive to store content that can also be streamed to your iOS device, consider or, which offer integrated Wi-Fi streaming, a built-in battery for completely wireless operation, and USB connectivity for synchronization. I’ve tested both, and while Seagate’s version has the edge on pricing, speed, and battery performance, My Passport Wireless has an SD slot built in to back up your digital photos on the road. IOS users will have a better experience with the Wireless Plus, while Mac users and digital photographers with infrequent iOS needs may prefer My Passport Wireless.
Go with the one that best suits your needs. Last but not least, if you want to do automated wireless backups, consider — but think carefully about — an.
I currently use the latest version of Time Capsule, which has been completely redesigned and has fast 802.11ac wireless with your choice of a or hard drive. On a positive note, it works completely as expected, and although the initial Time Machine backup process for a large Mac hard drive is incredibly slow, incremental backups later on are fine. My concerns are mostly in reliability and pricing. I’ve had two prior-generation Time Capsules experience hard drive issues, and though Apple may have fixed those problems with the new model, it’s very easy to go out and buy a standalone drive for much less. I’m not a big fan of wireless drives right now, but continue to hope that wireless technology will catch up with the demands of current machines. All of my important files are on a wired, and they will probably stay there for the foreseeable future.
Author, lawyer, and award-winning restaurateur Jeremy Horwitz started his journalism career in the early 1990’s, covering video games as a freelancer for numerous publications before creating and running Ziff Davis’s Intelligent Gamer magazine. A graduate of Cornell Law School, he previously ran editorial for the Apple-centric site iLounge and created the historic iLounge Pavilion at CES before joining 9to5Mac and 9to5Toys as a Senior Editor. A lifelong consumer electronics expert and gourmet, he now focuses on the changing ways people work, play, eat, and travel.
His Spanish restaurant Aro Bar de Tapas won Best New Restaurant (Opened 2015-2016), Best Charcuterie, Best Craft Cocktails, and Best Desserts awards.