JetAudio is a
shareware media player application for
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...
and
Android that offers advanced playback options for a wide range of
multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...
file formats.
Initially released in 1998, JetAudio is one of the oldest extant media players for the Windows platform.
Apart from music and video playback, JetAudio offers functions such as
metadata editing,
CD ripping
Ripping is extracting all or parts of digital content from a container. Originally, it meant to rip music out of Commodore 64 games. Later, the term was used to extract WAV or MP3 format files from digital audio CDs, but got applied as well to e ...
and
burning,
data conversion
Data conversion is the conversion of computer data from one file format, format to another. Throughout a computer environment, data is Character encoding, encoded in a variety of ways. For example, computer hardware is built on the basis of cert ...
,
sound recording
Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording ...
and
Internet radio
Online radio (also web radio, net radio, streaming radio, e-radio, IP radio, Internet radio) is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not transmitted ...
broadcasting
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting beg ...
. It also includes numerous
sound effect
A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditi ...
s. The commercial “Plus VX” version of the application includes unlocked
BBE sound enhancement algorithms
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...
and a wider file format support, as well as the ability to
transcode
Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target dev ...
more than 30 seconds of video files.
With over 30 million total downloads, JetAudio Basic is the most downloaded application in the “music management software” category on
CNET Download.com
CNET Download (originally Download.com) is an Internet download directory website launched in 1996 as a part of CNET. Initially it resided on the domain ''download.com'', and then ''download.com.com'' for a while, and is now ''download.cnet.com'' ...
.
A copy of JetAudio is supplied on a
mini CD with every
MP3 player produced by
Cowon
Cowon Systems, Inc. (simply known as Cowon) is a South Korean consumer electronics and software corporation. The company’s initial focus was software development and microelectronics, specializing in speech synthesis and speech recognition tec ...
, the
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
consumer electronics manufacturer responsible for the development of the application.
Interface
JetAudio’s
user interface
In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...
has similarities to that of (earlier versions of)
Winamp
Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Sinc ...
in that it features separate windows for e.g. playback, playlist and music library. Like Winamp, JetAudio can also be minimized to a
toolbar
The toolbar, also called a bar or standard toolbar (originally known as ribbon) is a graphical control element on which on-screen icons can be used. A toolbar often allows for quick access to functions that are commonly used in the program. Some ...
(what Winamp calls “Windowshade Mode”) by pressing the “Toolbar Mode ON/OFF” button in the upper right portion of the Main Window.
The interface includes a 10-band spectrum visualization which doubles as an equalizer. Different implementations of this spectrum visualization can be found in the Main Window, the Media Center, the Video Window, the Lyrics Viewer and the External Spectrum Viewer.
Windows
The JetAudio interface comprises the following windows:
* The Main Window
* The Media Center
* The Video Window
* The Lyrics Viewer
* The External Spectrum Viewer
Skins
JetAudio comes with a number of pre-installed
skins: “Default Gunmetal Grey”, “Default Silver”, “Default Silver Mini” and an older version of “Default Silver” with a
potentiometer
A potentiometer is a three-terminal resistor with a sliding or rotating contact that forms an adjustable voltage divider. If only two terminals are used, one end and the wiper, it acts as a variable resistor or rheostat.
The measuring instrum ...
-style volume control. In addition to these, there are four skins that display the Main Window as a bar.
Users are able to create their own skins using the JetAudio Skin Development Kit (SDK) available for download from the JetAudio website.
Some skins apply to every part of the user interface (including the Main Window, Media Center, Video Window, Playlist Window and Lyrics Window), while others (especially older skins) may only affect the Main Window.
Features
File format support
JetAudio supports all major audio and video
file formats
A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free.
Some file formats ...
, including
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
,
AAC,
FLAC and
Ogg Vorbis
Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjun ...
for audio, and
H.264
Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...
,
MPEG-4,
MPEG-2,
MPEG-1
MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s (26:1 and 6:1 compression ratios respectively) without excessive quality loss, making ...
,
WMV
Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology ...
and
Ogg Theora
Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container ...
for video. It also supports several less common “audiophile” formats such as
Monkey’s Audio,
True Audio,
Musepack
Musepack or MPC is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180 (manual set allows bitrates up to 320) kbit/s. It was formerly known as MPEGplus, MPEG+ or MP+ ...
and
WavPack
WavPack is a free and open-source lossless audio compression format and application implementing the format. It is unique in the way that it supports hybrid audio compression alongside normal compression which is similar to how FLAC works. It ...
.
Sound effects and enhancements
JetAudio features a wide array of built-in
sound effect
A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditi ...
s, including:
* A 10-band non-parametric
equalization filter
*
BBE (
exciter) and
BBE ViVA (spatializer) sound effects
* “X-Bass” and “X-Surround”
* “Wide”
*
Reverb
Reverberation (also known as reverb), in acoustics, is a persistence of sound, after a sound is produced. Reverberation is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is abs ...
*
Time stretching
Time stretching may refer to:
* Audio time stretching and pitch scaling, in audio
* Time stretching, in video
* Time dilation
In physics and relativity, time dilation is the difference in the elapsed time as measured by two clocks. It is eit ...
* Pitch change
* A variety of other special effects, including:
** “
Flange
A flange is a protruded ridge, lip or rim, either external or internal, that serves to increase strength (as the flange of an iron beam such as an I-beam or a T-beam); for easy attachment/transfer of contact force with another object (as the f ...
”
** “Invert Flange”
** “Robot 1”
** “Robot 2”
** “Slow
chorus”
** “
Phase shift
In physics and mathematics, the phase of a periodic function F of some real variable t (such as time) is an angle-like quantity representing the fraction of the cycle covered up to t. It is denoted \phi(t) and expressed in such a scale that it ...
”
** “Invert Phase Shift”
Music visualization
Like many other
media player applications, JetAudio offers the option of displaying an animated
visualization
Visualization or visualisation may refer to:
* Visualization (graphics), the physical or imagining creation of images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message
* Data visualization, the graphic representation of data
* Information visuali ...
synchronized with the music. JetAudio comes with three visualization plugins pre-installed:
MilkDrop, PixelTrip, Space and Synesthesia. Additional visualization plugins can be downloaded from external providers.
Lyric support
JetAudio has the ability to display both synchronized and unsynchronized lyrics to the music using several different methods. Lyrics are displayed in the dedicated Lyrics Viewer window, along with the album art of the file and optionally a spectrum visualization.
Plugins
JetAudio supports most
Winamp
Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Sinc ...
plug-ins.
Other features
JetAudio offers several other features such as bookmarking the current position in a song, looping a section of a song, a dropdown
on-screen display
An on-screen display (OSD) is an image superimposed on a screen picture, commonly used by modern television sets, VCRs, and DVD players to display information such as volume, channel, and time.
History
In the past, most adjustments on TV sets ...
with configurable content and a configurable “sleep timer” for shutting down the computer after a set period of playback (among other options).
JetAudio for Android
On , the highly anticipated mobile version of JetAudio, “JetAudio for
Android,” was released.
Initially, the app included the same
BBE sound effects found in the desktop version of JetAudio, but these were quietly removed with the release of version 1.0.2, likely due to licensing issues. Cowon has made no official statement on the matter.
The app has been praised for its user interface, with one reviewer citing it as “arguably one of the best and most user-friendly that we’ve seen on an Android device”.
Like its desktop counterpart, JetAudio for Android is available as a free, “Basic” version and a paid “Plus” version. Apart from removing the advertising banners present in the Basic version, the Plus version doubles the number of bands available in the built-in equalizer, as well as adds the ability to display unsynchronized lyrics to the music.
History
JetAudio was first released in July 1997.
JetAudio 4
JetAudio 4’s graphical user interface was designed to look like a high-powered stereo rack and installed with an on-screen equalizer and remote control.
JetAudio 5
JetAudio 5, released in 2002, saw a major overhaul of the entire user interface and added support for
skins.
JetAudio 6
JetAudio 6 was released in 2004.
JetAudio 7
JetAudio 7 (now also known as Cowon Media Center) was the first version of JetAudio to include
BBE sound enhancement algorithms. The
Consumers' Institute of New Zealand
Consumer NZ, previously known as Consumers' Institute of New Zealand, is an organization that covers a wide range of activities relating to consumer protection and information. Its work includes comparative tests and surveys of consumer goods and s ...
evaluated the Basic version and remarked that it “doesn’t have a plug-in for Firefox compatibility”, but judged the range of video and audio file formats supported as “good”.
JetAudio 8
JetAudio 8 is the first version of JetAudio to be fully compatible with Windows 7. Some of the new features in JetAudio 8 are:
* Conversion support for
FLV
Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content (e.g., TV shows, movies, etc.) over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are t ...
&
MKV files
* Enhanced skins
* DXVA subtitle support
* New file association method for Windows Vista and Windows 7
*
PAL
Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...
/
NTSC
The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...
option for video conversion
JetAudio 8.1 Preview
The JetAudio 8.1 Preview was released for download on the JetAudio Forums on . New features introduced in the Preview include:
* Menus of MC/Playlist were changed
* Playcount column added in MC
* Convert Path : change path of files in media library/playlist (useful when move files to different drive/computer)
* Convert ID3 tag : change ID3 tag charset to unicode
* Modify file path when export to PLS/M3U
* List with Thumbnail mode for MC/Playlist
* Pause while converting audio
JetAudio for Android
The
Android version of JetAudio was released on .
JetVideo
On , Cowon announced the release of JetVideo,
a
media player program with features which partially overlap with those of JetAudio. Like JetAudio, it relies on external codecs (such as those included in the
K-Lite Codec Pack
The K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of audio and video codecs for Microsoft Windows DirectShow that enables an operating system and its software to play various audio and video formats generally not supported by the operating system itself. T ...
) for some of its data decoding.
See also
*
Cowon
Cowon Systems, Inc. (simply known as Cowon) is a South Korean consumer electronics and software corporation. The company’s initial focus was software development and microelectronics, specializing in speech synthesis and speech recognition tec ...
*
Comparison of video player software
*
List of audio conversion software
An audio conversion app (also known as an audio converter) transcodes one audio file format into another; for example, from FLAC into MP3. It may allow selection of encoding parameters for each of the output file to optimize its quality and size. ...
References
* Francesco Caccavella (8 January 2006),
Sul web con voce e musica Come creare una radio online',
la Repubblica
''la Repubblica'' (; the Republic) is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. It was founded in 1976 in Rome by Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso (now known as GEDI Gruppo Editoriale) and led by Eugenio Scalfari, Carlo Caracciolo and Arnol ...
* רוני שני,
JetAudio 6 Basic JetAudio 6 Basic' (review),
Ynet
Ynet (stylized as ynet) is one of the major Israeli news and general-content websites, and is the online outlet for the '' Yedioth Ahronot'' newspaper. However, most of Ynet's content is original work, published exclusively on the website and wri ...
, 15 May 2005
External links
*
{{Media player (application software)
Android media players
Windows media players
Windows multimedia software
Android (operating system) software