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Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Via CNET.com DigicartPC Program and play audio clips with WDM and ASIO drivers using this excellent freeware.
DigicartPC
Quick Specs
- Version:1.0
- File size:855.08K
- Date added:November 08, 2011
- Price:Free
- Operating system:Windows XP/Vista/7
- Total downloads:3,548
- Downloads last week:1,841
- Product ranking:#11 in Music Management Software
- See full specifications
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CNET Editors' review
by: CNET staff on November 30, 2011
Digicart PC's developer modestly explains that his freeware plays audio samples using Windows (WDM) or ASIO drivers. A better description might be the easiest tool we've ever used for creating audio programs, which means party mixes, radio broadcasts, podcasts, iPod playlists, soundtracks, and any situation that calls for tunes. It has pages full of large, individually programmable buttons, each button representing a song, sample, or audio clip. You simply load your files in sequence and click each one to play it. With eight pages of 42 programmable buttons, you can program 336 different tracks. You can save, load, and play as many programs as you need. Digicart doesn't take a pass on audio, editing, and programming settings, either.
Digicart's user interface consists of a field of 42 gray squares, with eight pages accessible from the menu bar. The File menu includes not only controls but also a tool to select ASIO drivers, a song list, a CD burner, and a CD ripper. A Ports menu accesses MIDI, SMPTE, P-bus, and game ports for external devices. The excellent Help file is a separate download in .chm format. However, Digicart is easy to set up. Pressing Shift while left-clicking a square calls up the Setup Button tool, a detailed properties sheet for adding, editing, and playing audio files. Clicking OK added our clip to the square, changed its color (file types are color-coded) and displayed its time. Clicking the square played it, clicking it again stopped the clip, and left-clicking a running clip restarted it: totally easy, especially when we'd added a series of clips. We could program files as archives instead of sequentially, too. For example, you can create a page of go-to sound effects for improvising and audience response, or group all the most popular tunes on another page and announcements on another.
We loaded a series of late '70s punk rock songs recorded off LPs and saved as MP3s, and then saved our session. A neat feature is the ability to clone sessions; you can create a basic program that can be edited at need. While the quality of the audio playback depends on many factors, ASIO is known for low latency and good audio quality with a wide range of soundcards. Digicart PC impresses.
Publisher's Description
From Digicartpc:
Digicartpc plays audio samples using WDM and ASIO. It provides 336 buttons arranged in 8 pages of 42. Each button can be assigned a media file - WAV, MP3, MID, MPG, AVI, MOV, WMA, WMV, BWF, AIFF, AC3, JPG, and BMP. Output can route to any available output using WDM or ASIO. Button parameters include Volume, Pan, Varispeed, Fade In, Fade Out, Loop. Can set button caption and colour. Buttons can be triggered by mouse, midi, GPI, keyboard and/or midi or SMPTE timecode. Buttons can be set to stop other buttons on play - collectively or selectively. Stop and re-cue or Pause. There is support for Playlists, Songlists and Surround. A CD ripper and Burner are included.
What's new in this version: Added logging.