Driving games differ in a number of different ways, not just because they contain different kinds of vehicles (cars, bikes, Formula 1) but also in the type of challenge they present.

In the case of Pure the main objective is not only crossing the line in the first place, but also performing as many jumps, tricks and other acrobatics while you’re on air, flying at top speed over bumpy trails with your quad bike.

Before actually starting the race, Pure makes you go through a training session that also works as a kind-of tutorial. It's a good way to get used to the game's quite confusing controls, which inexplicably mix up keys from the standard WASD combination and the arrow keys.

After you learn how to preload, boost and do a basic trick, you're ready to go: it's time for a real race! This time the track is much more fun, because it enables you to compete against other drivers and also includes higher jumps in which you'll be able to show off everything you learned during the tutorial stage. The realistic, highly detailed graphics in Pure serve to make it even more enjoyable, and a lively rock-style soundtrack adds the final touch.

Pure requires a bit of dexterity, so if you don't get any trick during the first few minutes of gameplay don't panic. Also, note that you’re supposed to perform different tricks on each jump (repeating penalizes) and that if you’re successful with the basic ones, you’ll unlock more advanced tricks.

On the downside, I must admit Pure let us down for various reasons. The first one is the file's size, which is simply too heavy for such a short demo. They could have removed all those promotional videos and include at least another track. The controls are also a bit complex: just performing a basic trick involves four different keys, which are usually configured very far apart from each other on the keyboard. Finally, the game has some absurd restrictions. I don’t know what’s wrong with going a bit off the track or even trying to turn around and racing in the wrong direction, but you simply can't. Pure interrupts the game and puts you into track again. Seriously, a bit more freedom for the player wouldn’t hurt, even if that means I don’t win the race.

Pure is not just about racing: it's also about performing the craziest airborne tricks during the race. Too bad the demo is so short that you hardly have time to enjoy it.

Download Pure in Softonic

There’s a plethora of music players to choose from, among which iTunes and Winamp usually have the upper hand. However, if you are curious enough, you might find that lesser known alternatives like MediaMonkey offer a reasonable amount of features and tools to organize and equally enjoy your music library.

MediaMonkey automatically scans your PC for all types of music formats. If you have playlists from other programs, it’s good to know that the application also adds m3u files, sparing you the pain of having to recreate them. The file explorer view on the left lets you easily navigate your music collection by categories like artist, genre or rating. You can convert tracks into any format you wish, depending on what size or quality of sound you’re looking for. MediaMonkey also lets you analyze and adjust the volume of tracks to increase your listening experience.

MediaMonkey has made its reputation on its advanced tagging management feature. Every time a track is added, the program will verify its tags. You can automatically fill in missing details with info from Amazon or Filename. The program can clean up your tags, move information into the correct categories and synchronize tags for selected tracks. You can also rename and move multiple files thanks to the auto-organize function. MediaMonkey also supports Winamp plugins and visualizations plus skins can be applied to spice up the interface.

If you want to make your own mix CDs, you’ll be happy to know that MediaMonkey rips and burns CDs and DVDs. Create a virtual CD of your favorite tracks and let MediaMonkey do its job. Budding DJs will enjoy the auto-DJ mode, which mixes tracks for you and the Party Mode, which blocks your configuration but lets anybody play their favorite tune. MediaMonkey’s versatility doesn’t stop there. The music manager also lets you synchronize with your portable music devices like your iPod or iRiver.

If you feel like completing your library with a couple of fresh albums you can browse sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble or AllPosters and purchase tracks. However, unlike Songbird, where you can type in a URL, browse and save your favorite music blogs and sites, MediaMonkey only allows you to browse their selection of online stores.

We were disappointed with the web radio selection, which only features Shoutcast and Icecast, and were surprised to see no sign of podcasts anywhere in the application. However version 3.0 is planning on incorporating this to the application.

Despite these drawbacks, we recommend MediaMonkey to anybody looking for a solid alternative to iTunes or Winamp. This original music manager is more than capable of organizing a very large music library and offers advanced tagging management rarely seen in other music applications. While the browser and web radio are fairly limited, MediaMonkey allows you to rip your custom CDs and connects to most portable music devices. If you really take a liking to MediaMonkey, cough up a few bucks and upgrade to the Gold version, which will open up all of the program’s functionalities like finding missing tracks or creating auto (smart) playlists.

Download MediaMonkey 3.0.5.1187 in Softonic

Tab Mix Plus completely enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.

Features:

• Undo close tab
• Duplicate tabs
• Open selected links in tabs
• Drag and drop reordering of tabs
• Display unread tabs in red

Download Tab Mix Plus Extension 0.3.7 in Softonic

Real Desktop is one of those PC applications that aren't really that useful, but have such an attractive effect on your system that you want to install them anyway.

This app turns your Windows desktop into a three-dimensional environment where all your shortcuts look like small pieces that have been dropped on the floor – and they actually behave like that. You can move them, rotate them, lift them a bit from the floor and mix them all around the desktop surface. The only icon that remains somewhat apart is the Recycle bin, probably to help you find it faster.

This precisely the main drawback in Real Desktop: finding icons. The 3D effect is really amazing, as well as the icon behavior almost as Lego pieces. But having them scattered all over the places doesn't exactly make your PC easier to use – especially if you're anything like me, who likes to have as few icons as possible, and always perfectly organized.

With Real Desktop you can apply an amazing 3D effect to your Windows desktop, although you'll lose a lot of icon usability on the way.

Download Real Desktop Light 1.42 in Softonic

What do you get if you mix balls, puzzles and action and add your own level editor in their for good measure?

The answer is Axiebal 7 which sees you control a ball through a valley of torment and even allows you to design your own levels. Axiebal 7 works on a top-down view and scrolling levels to give you the feel of a hand held console game. Your aim is basically to guide the ball through several death defying levels while avoiding all kinds of obstacles and dangers that lie in your way.

On your way, you must collect flags until you reach your base again. However, the biggest danger you'll face is falling off a cliff so steering your ball to reach the craftily placed flags is not as easy as it may sound. There are also solid walls that stand in your way but you can blow them up with bombs to find your way home. Best of all however is the Axiebal 7 level editor which gives you the option to create your own challenges and courses when the default levels become too boring.

For a free fun game, Axiebal 7 is a decent time waster and offers a nice combination of action and puzzles.

Download Axiebal 7 in Softonic

A powerful tool for cleaning cobwebs of useless information clogging your system. SBMAV Disk Cleaner searches for and deletes temporary files and folders created by Windows and other applications, as well as searches for invalid links to documents that have long since been deleted. SBMAV Disk Cleaner also finds useless uninstall software, disables/enables seldom used fonts, deletes cookies, and searches for and removes duplicate files.

You can also use this tool to work with your documents: to find and delete old back-up files and duplicates based on various criteria you can select. The program is easy to operate for first time users, yet has a powerful mix of settings for advanced tweakers. The disk cleaning process can be launched automatically by command-line, reducing your supervision to save you time.

Download SBMAV Disk Cleaner Lite 2.86 in Softonic

Over the years Nero has evolved from being a simple CD burner in its earlier versions to becoming the complete multimedia suite we find in its latest version, Nero 9.

As well as the classic Nero Burning ROM tool – which now includes support for Blu-Ray – Nero 9 includes pretty much everything you need to make the most of your music, photos, videos and creativity. You'll be able to carry out complete multimedia projects, from ripping your favorite audio CDs and mixing the tracks with Nero SoundTrax to creating videos with your photos, and even design CD artwork (top and back covers, booklet and CD sticker) by yourself with Nero CoverDesigner.

All these tools are conveniently available from Nero StartSmart, a handy app launcher with two main toolbars: on top of the window, shortcuts to Nero's apps; on the left-side menu, direct access to the most frequent tasks (data burning, audio burning, copy disc, etc.) than open right on StartSmart's main area.

Nero 9 features other interesting tools that try to cover even more areas. You can use the built-in Nero Backup tool to make safety copies of your most important data, for example. Nero also includes an embedded video player and a photo editor (known as Nero PhotoSnap) though these two apps are quite basic and could have probably been left out without much remorse for the user.

Talking about extra apps, Nero has often been accused of being bloatware, and this version won't change that. It does include a large array of tools, though to be honest they're all quite straightforward and easy to use. I guess the discussion about complexity versus simplicity will still go on, but my view is that Nero 9 is no longer a simple burning tool: it's a full-featured suite that happens to include a burning app, plus many other features that make it an excellent application for all your multimedia projects.

Nero 9 follows the trend of previous versions and adds even more features. If you only need a DVD burning tool, look elsewhere; but if you're looking for a complete multimedia suite, this is your program.

Download Nero 9.0.9.4b in Softonic

The Google Toolbar is probably my favorite toolbar on the net and something I've gradually come to rely on everyday.

Now, it's got even better with the latest release which is packed with improvements and updates that Google fans will lap up. These include custom buttons with gadget support, synchronized toolbar settings (so you can sync two toolbars across different computers), Google Notebook integration, a word find function, suggestions for navigation errors and an improved autofiller. It also now features details of your Web History (which is totally unnecessary although very easily searchable compared to Firefox or IE). Apart from the sync feature, I think the best addition is the gadget support. Through these, Google Toolbar now supports live feeds and when you click on any of the gadget icons, the gadget pops down from the Toolbar, no matter what site you are on and close when you are done with it. You can mix and match gadgets as much as you want although the danger is you end up adding so many that the toolbar becomes bloated.

This is the best release of Google Toolbar yet and it creeps even further into territory that formerly was the domain of browsers - check it out now.

Download Google Toolbar Firefox 5.0.20080919Wb1 Beta in Softonic

Since Firefox exploded onto the web-browsing scene in 2004, it has been downloaded an incredible 200 million times according to its developers, Mozilla. Since then, apart from some minor changes, visual teaks and security fixes, there haven’t been any radical changes – that is until now. Firefox 2.0 is finally here and brings fans a whole host of integrated functions that were previously either unavailable or needed plug-ins.

Note that many of the existing themes and extensions will not work with this beta release although you can try forcing them with the “Nightly” extension – at your own risk of course.

Amongst the security highlights of 2.0 are anti-phishing support which helps the browser discriminate between genuine websites and those intended to store and retrieve your personal information. Other goodies include enhanced tabbed browsing (each with their own close option finally), the ability to un-close tabs, search plug-in/add-on manager, and much, much more. One of the most useful features we found was a predictive search function within the Google toolbar that would suggest potential phrases and popular search terms as you typed. The automatic session retrieval option (previously available with the Tab Mix Plus plugin) is also a tonic when your system crashes or you’ve got too many tabs open and Firefox cripples under the strain.

The extension incompatibility issue is the main drawback although this will change as developers update their plugins over the coming weeks and months. The legendary memory leak also still doesn’t seem to have been fixed as Firefox continues to guzzle processing power. This resulted in frequent crashes, keyboard head-banging and violent swearing.

Whilst the recently released Internet Explorer 7 is only just introducing tabbed browsing, Firefox 2.0 is already taking internet surfing to a new level. Although many of the new features are available with plug-ins anyway, this is still a rip-roaring browser and consolidates Firefox’s position as the best browser on the market by miles.

Download Firefox 2.0.0.17 in Softonic

Metin2 is a new online role-playing game in which you enter a world of fantasy in the Eastern world and attempt to become a grand master.

You can use a range of martial arts in your struggle against the dark forces of the Stones Metin.

This classic role-playing game is based online with different classes based on various martial arts weapons. You can use swords, spears or bows and over time, your aim is to become the most powerful warrior in the Orient. Graphically, the game is steeped in Oriental symbols with some fantastic buildings and backdrops although it's the excellent soundtrack that sticks in the mind. The battle scenes are also pretty memorable as you take on warriors from other empires in your quest for dominance of the continent. You can switch between a mix of martial arts from what seems like kung fu to taikwando and karate.

If you like kung fu and martial arts games, then you'll love this - great graphics and a great soundtrack mix to make it a beat-em-up classic.

Download Metin2 20080915 in Softonic

With Last.fm, music fans have found a place to congregate and share musical tastes. The Last.fm player places the “social music revolution” onto your desktop, giving you access to thousands of tracks from all musical genres.

The beauty of the application is that it encourages you to find similar artists to the ones you’re accustomed to and also pushes you to interact with users who share the same tastes. Search results appear as a tag cloud, with the biggest elements being the most popular. With thousands of songs available on Last.fm, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll listen to the same thing twice. The player is streaming and you’ll have to be connected to the internet and have a Last.fm account for it to work.

Although slightly bulky, the Last.fm player interface is sleek and accessible. We like the shiny control icons and the “now playing” window. This is where you’ll find all artist information like album cover, a small description of the artist, related tags and artists and top listeners. The menu bar on the left includes your recently played tracks, recently loved and recently banned, although to listen to these you’ll need to upgrade your Last.fm account (€2.50/month). The last 10 stations you’ve listened to are automatically saved in your history file.

The social experience is central to Last.fm and becomes pretty addictive. By listening to tracks you create a profile of yourself, the music you listen to and the artists you like. Last.fm then connects you to other users that have similar tastes, whom it calls neighbours. In the Last.fm player, you can connect to neighbours' stations and listen to their tunes. The lists of the friends you made on Last.fm will also appear in your player. If you have the Audioscrobbler plug-in installed, Last.fm can also track all the songs you play in your favourite desktop music app (like iTunes) and connect you with even more neighbours.

Most of us here at Softonic have Last.fm connected all day, simply because it doesn’t require you to have your own music library, it’s free and provides an endless flow of new tunes. In line with modern evolutions in online music, this web music application mixes streaming and social tools to give you an exciting music player. No music fan with access to Internet should be caught dead without it.

Download Last.fm Player 1.5.2.38918 in Softonic

After having successfully launched their own webmail service, RSS reader, online suite and many other apps, having a Google web browser was only a question of time.

Google Chrome has joined the so called web browser battle with a neatly designed web browser which, in spite of being still at a development stage, already shows a lot of potential.

The first thing that caught my attention when launching Google Chrome for the first time was its minimalist design. Besides a couple of bars and a couple of buttons, there's nothing else on the interface to steal screen space from the websites you visit – not even a status bar, as it automatically shows and hides whenever it's necessary.

Another feature I loved is the fact that Google Chrome uses the same keyboard shortcuts and mousewheel combinations as Firefox. With a zero learning curve, you immediately feel at your element and there's no need to start testing new shortcuts or reading the documentation. Other similarities to Firefox in Google Chrome include a complete download manager (which reminded me a lot of the Download Statusbar extension) and a handy password manager.

If you don't want Google Chrome to track down your browsing movements, try the incognito window. This special window won't save anything about your session (no browsing history, no cookies, etc.), so no breadcrumbs will be left after you close it.

But if there's a feature that makes Google Chrome really stand out, that's having separate processes for each one of the tabs you open. That means that you can check the amount of system resources used up by each tab, and close any of them in case of trouble without having to shut down the whole browser.

That said, I don't think Google Chrome is perfect yet. Like I said before, it's still in development so there's still plenty of room for it to grow and improve. I must say I had some stability issues when trying to install the Flash plug-in, and that I was totally unable to make the Java Virtual Machine work – which eventually prevented me from using certain web services. Despite these flaws, I really liked Google Chrome and I think it may become a serious option when choosing your web browser. Only time will tell.

Google Chrome, Google's web browser, mixes a clean, minimalist interface with a variety of powerful tools that can easily turn it into a great web browser.

Download Google Chrome 0.2.149.30 in Softonic

When playing RPG games, some people prefer real time action while others fall for old school turn-based strategies. But what if you could have the best of both worlds?

King's Bounty is an original RPG game that mixes real-time free exploration with turn-based battles, all set in a medieval environment with kings, dragons, wizards, treasures and spells.

The first step in King's Bounty is creating your character, though unlike other similar games this process is limited to choosing any of the three classes available (warrior, paladin or mage) and coming up with a name. You're then introduced to a bit of historical background, but you can skip that if you can't wait to start questing.

The gameplay in King's Bounty slowly unveils a main plot while presenting the player with various quests, puzzles and mysteries. You're free to explore the game's universe at your own pace, but as soon as you engage in a battle, the game will change to a turn-based structure in which you need to plan your next movement very carefully if you want to defeat the enemy.

While this kind of battles may be a bit boring for those of us used to real-time action, there's one thing King's Bounty stands for: its graphics. Characters, objects and scenarios are depicted with a high degree of realism, great light effects and very vivid colors, creating an immersive atmosphere that makes the whole adventure even more enjoyable.

King's Bounty is an entertaining RPG adventure with excellent graphics and an original turn-based battle system that will put your strategic skills to test.

Download King's Bounty The Legend in Softonic

Build better iTunes™ and iPod™ playlists using beaTunes. By analyzing the songs in your existing library beaTunes is capable of finding songs that simply match. Could your last mix CD's song order use some improvement? Let beaTunes re-arrange your playlist for you!

Always wondered how you could take advantage of the BPM (beats per minute) field in iTunes? Let beaTunes fill in the blanks and help you while DJ'ing at your next party.

Here are some more examples of what you can do with beaTunes:

• Automatically determine BPM (beats per minute) and store the result in iTunes
• Manually determine BPM and store the result in iTunes
• Sort existing playlists so that matching songs succeed each other
• Create matchlists, i.e. playlists based on one or more sample songs
• Browse songs from your music collection that match the currently selected song
• Discover albums that aren't in your music collection, but would complement it
• Keep up to date through Amazon™ album charts
• Automatically set start and end times of songs based on their volume
• Categorize songs by their sound color
• Build playlists per drag and drop
• Create blog entries on blogger.com with your favorite playlist or songs
• Inspect and fix your music library
• Add tags to your songs

Download beaTunes 1.2.14 in Softonic

The first time I saw this program I thought it may be the most useless invention since the one stringed banjo.

However, on further inspection, I can see that Keycounter does have some practical use especially for writers who want to track when they are at their most inspired. Quite simply, Keycounter tracks the amount of strokes you've bashed away at your keyboard. The program tracks keystrokes per minute and whether the mouse has moved or not.

For writers, Keycounter is a useful way to see when you're at your most prolific although unfortunately, there's no way to tell what you were doing at a particular point in time - you have to make a separate note of that yourself so that you don't get your genuine writing activity mixed up with sending emails or leisure use. The results are displayed in graph format so you can easily see when your peak moment were. There is no way to export this data though it seems.

Simple and effective, Keycounter gives you full control over your keyboard activity and may help writers track their most productive periods.

Download Keycounter 2.0 in Softonic

Finally you can create fully navigable online versions of your PDF files in a very stylish way. It’s like turning the page of a book but with the possibility of zooming in, so as not to stress your eyes.

3D Issue Manager is very easy to use, although the graphics could have been nicer. All it requires is that you select a PDF file, choose the orientation of the output document as portrait, landscape or a mix of both, and select the image resolution together with its quality. The program automatically creates the virtual booklet, which is optimized for search engines.

In the main window there are some interesting options you can choose from which allow you to personalise the zoom navigation to either click and drag, or mouse movements, and allow users to download an offline edition of your virtual glossy magazine. These are just two examples, but there is a whole feature list on offer. Strangely enough, the program’s windows are not resizable, which can be annoying if you have to work with different windows open.

With 3D Issue Manager you can easily and efficiently convert your PDF files into fully accessible online 3D booklets, so as to present documents in a stylish, glossy way - and save paper along the way.

Download 3D Issue Manager 3.1 in Softonic

Have you ever wondered how cover girls and models in magazines seem to have perfect skin?

Obviously, not all of us can have skin as smooth as a baby's bottom. On the contrary, some of us look pretty rough in photos, especially if you've had one too many the night before the shoot. While Face Smoother can't guarantee perfect results, it can help smooth over blotchy skin and make you look more presentable.

Face Smoother is very simple - just load in the photo you want to smooth and you can select to what degree you want to smooth your skin. You also have control over the brightness, contrast and color levels. The main options, however, are to sharpen, smooth or even rotate photos. There's not much more to it than that and results can be mixed - depending on the original state of your photo, the "smoothed" result will either look realistic or like someone has painted your face pink.

Face Smoother is in no way a professional tool but it does offer a decent temporary solution for those that need a quick fix and don't have filters in their photo editing software.

Download Face Smoother 1.49 in Softonic

By a bizarre twist of fate 3DS Max is now owned by the same firm that publishes its age rival, Maya, yet the pair of heavyweight 3D applications remain the two main choices for animators working in the three-dimensional realm. Although Maya’s popularity has increased of late (perhaps largely due to its superior accessibility for newcomers), 3DS still remains a key player within the industry, and this latest incarnation significantly improves upon the wire-frame mapping approach of the past.

Perhaps the biggest innovation within version 8 of the app is the inclusion of a ‘pelt mapping’ feature. For the benefit of those who don’t work for Pixar or Rockstar Games, this is basically a device for ‘unwrapping’ a wireframe model in order to paint its exterior. This can save you a lot of time and unnecessary Photoshop tomfoolery when working with organic objects, such as human faces or characters. However, it isn’t so adept at handling non-organic objects like cars, streets or houses, as the results are typically very liquidy.

As always, 3DS Max allows you to be very precise in terms of the mapping of your creations, perhaps even more so than Maya. Besides the standard mapping tools, the application now contains all manner of alignment features to ensure that you get pinpoint accuracy when modelling. What’s more, 3DS now contains more flexible options for relax, the tool that averages UVs and allows for the automatic relief of texture distortion. If used in conjunction with another function, show edge distortion, then the mapping of your characters becomes all the easier.

There are dozens of other features within the software that will help you produce stunning 3D models without tearing your hair out. We were particularly taken with the render UVW template function, allowing very quick template rendering of your prepared UVs, either in wireframe, filled, mapped or shaded versions. With a raft of skinning and modelling tools, 3DS Max gives you very precise control over your models, without having to code or program every co-ordinate, making it a very user-friendly option.

Naturally, the cost of the full version of the program will put off many 3D hobbyists, but for serious animation professionals it’s an application that is to be ignored at your peril. Although it remains to be seen whether there will be an amalgamation with Maya, 3DX Max remains a world leader in its market and, given enough patience, can be used to transform the outer limits of your imagination into a fantastic reality.

Download Autodesk 3ds Max 2009 in Softonic

To extract and compress your files, 7-Zip is a perfectly viable alternative to the better known WinZip or WinRAR. The application works exactly like its main competitors yet manages to mix in WinZip’s selection of tools with WinRAR’s versatility.

The 7-Zip interface is similar to that of its competitors, with a main file manager and a command line to search and select files to extract or compress. The control panel is comprised of the essential buttons like extract, add and test, but also features copy, move and delete functions to allow you to manage your files. 7-Zip extracts and compresses files as fast as WinZip and WinRAR and handles the main archive formats like ZIP, TAR, RAR and ISO.

The archiving process is where 7-Zip differs most from its rivals. Where WinZip only lets you compress to ZIP and WinRAR to RAR or ZIP, 7zip offers you up to 5 different archive formats to choose from. The application lets you choose the update mode, depending on whether you want to add and replace files, refresh the archive or just synchronize files. If you don’t want somebody opening up your archive without your permission, you can set a password to protect your archive.We particularly liked the split tool because it can cut up your archive into equal parts which fit on a floppy, CD or DVD, handy if you need to distribute a particularly large archive.

Security is where 7-Zip lags behind its main rivals. There is no option to scan archives for viruses and you can’t repair damaged or corrupted files. While you can set a password to protect your archive, you can’t choose between different levels of encryption.

7-Zip might not be as secure as WinZip or WinRAR but it is definitely more versatile. It works with more archive formats and offers many useful tools like update mode or splitting. If you feel too limited by WinZip and if you don’t like WinRAR we suggest giving 7-Zip a try and taking advantage of all its possibilities.

Download 7-Zip 4.60 in Softonic

For all those in agreement with the French government that proprietary formats are damaging to the legitimate spread of digital music, then Tunebite will be right up your street. Proprietary music is essentially locked, so it can only be played using a particular brand of player. This software can be used to make any music playable on whatever portable devices you have or to burn your own music CD. It works by creating a playlist in the file’s native player, (Media Player for WMA, iTunes for M4B, M4P) playing the list and recording each track as an unprotected file. It could be seen as the modern equivalent of recording radio onto cassette, although Tunebite will automatically separate the different tracks.

The installation of this program is a bit tongue-in-cheek with a notice to say that you may see a warning during the process, swiftly followed by a pop-up warning letting you know that a particular driver hasn’t been registered with Microsoft. Following the advice of the previous notice and ignoring the warning dialog lets you finish the process. You are then taken to the configuration wizard where you complete six steps to choose what file format you want to record in.

The interface is so intuitive that when you first open the program you should have no doubt as to how to get recording. The three main elements of the interface are clearly marked as the “songs to record” window, the “recorded songs” window and an unmistakable “GO!” button in the centre. To get started you can either drag and drop your music files or use the “add file” or “add folder” buttons within the program. From there, it’s a simple matter of clicking the “GO!” button and letting Tunebite go to work.

Because the files are protected, they must be played through their own player, for example iTunes, and recorded in real-time. During our test, we happened to have another audio player in use as the recording began and as a result, the unprotected file was an incomprehensible mix of two tracks. This also means that if Tunebite is making a recording, you shouldn’t use your computer for other tasks such as browsing the net since every click sound that plays when you hit a link or even the Start Menu button will be recorded as well. With recording taking place in real-time you should plan for times when you won’t be using the computer, especially if you have a large music collection.

Tunebite is a solution to a problem that many music lovers face as control over their digital content becomes tighter and more restrictive. Protected tracks that have been paid for can easily be copied to any MP3 player or burned to CD for use in regular stereos. Admittedly, the method for recording is not ideal for everybody, but used properly, the results will be of the highest standard possible today.

Download Tunebite 5.1.120 in Softonic