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JetAudio

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COWON Media Center – JetAudio
Developer(s)Cowon Systems, Inc.
Initial release1997; 27 years ago (1997)
Stable release
8.0.17 (May 4, 2012; 12 years ago (2012-05-04))
PlatformMicrosoft Windows, Android
Available in11 languages
TypeMedia player
LicenseProprietary
Basic: Shareware
Plus VX: Commercial
Websitewww.jetaudio.com

JetAudio (sometimes stylized as “jetAudio”) is a shareware media player application for Microsoft Windows which offers advanced playback of a wide range of multimedia file formats.

Initially released in 1997,[1] JetAudio is one of the oldest extant media players for the Windows platform.

Apart from music and video playback, JetAudio offers functions such as CD ripping and burning, data conversion, sound recording and Internet radio broadcasting. The commercial “Plus VX” version of the program includes unlocked BBE sound enhancement algorithms and a wider file format support, as well as the ability to transcode more than 30 seconds of video files.

With over 21 million total downloads, JetAudio Basic is the most downloaded music management software on CNET Download.com.[2]

A copy of JetAudio is supplied on a mini CD with every MP3 player produced by Cowon.

Features

File format support

JetAudio supports all major audio and video file formats, including MP3, AAC, FLAC and Ogg Vorbis for audio, and H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, MPEG-1, WMV and Ogg Theora for video. It also supports several less common “audiophile” formats such as Monkey’s Audio, True Audio, Musepack and WavPack.

Sound effects and enhancements

JetAudio features a large number of built-in sound effects, including:

Visualizations

Like many other media player applications, JetAudio offers the option of displaying an animated visualization synchronized with the music. JetAudio comes with three visualization plugins pre-installed: PixelTrip, Space and Synesthesia. Additional visualization plugins can be downloaded from e.g. SoundSpectrum and morphyre.com.

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 (accessible by pressing the “Show Lyric” button above the timer module in the Main Window), along with the album art of the file and optionally a spectrum visualization (accessible by clicking the menu button in the top left corner, selecting “Sound/Visualization” and then “Internal Spectrum Viewer ON/OFF”).

Below are listed the different methods to display lyrics in JetAudio 8.0.17:

Press the “Load Lyric Files” button at the bottom of the Lyrics Window and select either “Search Lyric from CIX Lyrics” or “Search Lyric from Leo’s LDB”. If a match is found in the database, the lyrics will be downloaded and displayed in the Lyrics Viewer.

It is a known error that JetAudio is unable to connect to Leo’s Lyrics database to download lyrics. As of version 8.0.17, this problem has yet to be solved.

  • Place a text file in the same directory as the music file.

The simplest alternative is to place a text file (*.txt) containing the lyrics in the same directory as the song. The text file needs to have the exact same file name as the song. The lyrics will then be displayed in the Lyrics Viewer when the song is played.

  • Place an LRC file in the same directory as the music file.

This will yield lyrics that are synchronized to the music, as LRC files contain timecodes in addition to the lyric text.

  • Add a lyric tag to the music file.

To add a lyric tag to your music file, press F4 to open the Tag Editor and select the “Lyrics” tab. In the Media Center, the Tag Editor is accessible by right-clicking a track, selecting “Edit” and then “Edit Tag”.

JetAudio uses Cowon’s proprietary lyric tag format rather than the standard Lyrics3v2. As such, files tagged with the Lyrics3 format are not compatible with the lyric viewing function of JetAudio, and conversely, applications supporting Lyrics3 tags will not be able to display lyrics for files tagged with JetAudio.

Use the “Lyric Maker” utility that comes bundled with JetAudio to write timecoded lyric data to your files. Alternatively, you can use the iAUDIO LDB Manager application intended for use with Cowon’s portable media players.

Plugins

JetAudio supports most Winamp plugins.

Other features

Interface

JetAudio’s user interface has similarities to that of (earlier versions of) Winamp in that it features separate windows for e.g. playback, playlist and music library. Like Winamp, JetAudio can also be minimized to a toolbar (what Winamp calls “Windowshade Mode”) by pressing the “Toolbar Mode ON/OFF” button in the upper right portion of the Main Window.

The interface centers around a 10-band spectrum visualization which doubles as an equalizer. Different implementations of the spectrum visualization can be found in the Main Window, the Media Center, the Video Window, the Lyrics Viewer and 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-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 homepage.

Some skins apply to every part of the user interface (including the Main Window, Media Center, Video Window, Playlist Window and Lyrics Window), while especially older skins may only affect the Main Window.

JetAudio skins can be downloaded at deviantART, Customize.org (here and here) and the JetAudio Forums’ downloads section.

JetAudio for Android

On May 24, 2012 (2012-05-24), the highly anticipated[citation needed] mobile application “JetAudio for Android” was released.[3] Like its desktop counterpart, it is available as a free, “Basic” version and a paid “Plus” version, of which the latter is currently under development. When released, the Plus version will contain the same BBE and BBE ViVA sound enhancement algorithms seen in JetAudio for Windows.[4]

History

JetAudio was first released in July, 1997.[5]

JetAudio 4

JetAudio 4’s graphical user interface was designed to look like a high-powered stereo rack.

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 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 & MKV files
  • Enhanced skins
  • DXVA subtitle support
  • New file association method for Windows Vista and Windows 7
  • DVD PAL/NTSC option for video conversion

JetAudio for Android

On May 24, 2012 (2012-05-24), the Android version of JetAudio was released.[6]

See also

References

  1. ^ http://eng.cowon.net/about/about_1_4.php
  2. ^ JetAudio on Download.com
  3. ^ JetAudio news story
  4. ^ JetAudio for Android on Google Play
  5. ^ http://eng.cowon.net/about/about_1_4.php
  6. ^ JetAudio for Android on Google Play
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