WireTap Studio 1.0.1
Ambrosia Software
Price: $69 (free trial, upgrade pricing available)
Pros: Superb input options, easy to use despite lots of advanced features.
Cons: Custom aesthetic elements contrast with standard Mac OS X windows.
by Gerrit Dalman, Capt, USAF
American's live in a world of sound bites. It's not so bad though – among the millions of annoying jingles and socially irresponsible comedies there are the hilarious and motivating quote that spew forth from countless TV shows, movies, and online cartoons. We quote them with friends, reference them at work, and sometimes even collect them so they can be enjoyed over and over without referencing the original media.
WireTap lets you record any audio on your Mac. In this core function it is highly versatile. You can select any one or two sources – everything you can hear from your speakers, just a specific application, or even the line input or internal mic on your Mac. WireTap will only collect from your selected source – permitting you to, for example, record an excerpt from a streaming video in Safari without collecting the music that is simultaneously playing in iTunes.
Selecting sources and controlling recording is handled through a single floating window. It's pretty and functional enough, but the unnecessarily unique interface doesn't really make the program more intuitive and just seems different for the sake of being different.
The rest of the windows, on the other hand, are much more utilitarian. A second far more traditional one holds a library of all your recordings while an editing window features unique but functional elements with a few classy embellishments.
That built-in editor comes in quite handy for cropping sloppy recordings, but puts a whole lot more power at your fingertips. With it you can apply an assortment of effects (those provided by Core Audio and more) to improve or style your recording, amplify quiet clips, add ID3 tags to store information about your clips, and insert markers to call your attention to key times in a recording at a later time.
Finally, you can define file format options for the sample. There are a lot of formats to choose from and each allows you a broad range of options for customizing the output. You can even get a live preview of the resulting quality, which is an impressive feat.
Once you've got a clip just the way you like it, the library window will send it wherever you like. Sure you can save it to a file, but WireTap will also handle setting up a voice email, sending clips to phones via Bluetooth, or dropping jingles into iTunes. It will even do the job of iToner (another Ambrosia app) and send compatible audio directly to your stock iPhone as a ringtone!
WireTap is clearly a handy app for anyone that has a casual recording need or loves to collect sound bytes for presentations or fun. The pricing may seem a little high, but remember what you get: a full audio editor, impressive recording capabilities, and sophisticated export options. Clearly, the new "studio" monicker is well-earned. At the very least, the iPhone ringtone support is icing on the cake and adds the $15 value of Ambrosia's iToner to the deal.
WireTap is exemplary of quality shareware and is worthy of a spot in many docks!
System Requirements:
* Mac OS X 10.4 or later
* 1 GHz G4 or better