Hi!
Best Practice is a new CD-audio, mp3 slowdown and pitch compensation software.
Looks very much like the “The Amazing Slowdowner” but it’s free.
So far only for Windows platforms.
Also comes with a cool karaoke function that one can use to filter out singers,
whistle, ehh I mean recorders, or bodhran players, more fun than usefull but still cool.
Here is the website:
BestPractice
Spread the news to anyone interested.
/MarcusR
Screenshot
Awesome! Thanks for the link Marcus.
Thank you for that Marcus
Just was looking for something like this
Carel
That’s great Marcus, I’m going to check it out. Up till now I’ve been using the unregistered version of Amazing Slowdowner meaning I could only play the first 3 tracks of any CD. So to get around that I had to burn any tracks I wanted to learn which weren’t the first 3 onto a CD-RW first.
Cheers,
DavidG
Hmmm. interesting. I just installed it and get an ‘Illegal Operation’ error popping up. If I’m persistent I can eventualy get it to open. Now it won’t play MP3s - tells me there is no Codec available. The website says you can??? Can’t play WAV untless in 16 bit stereo - mine are what I download off Clips and Sniffs - are they not 16 bit stereo? Mono perhaps?
I shall persevere. Thanks again Marcus.
Cheers,
DavidG
Here are a couple of performance comparisons:
Playback Speed Adjusment:
Amazing Slow-Downer: 20% to 200%
Best Practice: 50 to 150%
Pitch Adjustment:
Amazing Slow-Downer: +/- 12 semitones
Best Practice: +/- 3 1/2 semitones
Audacity:
Speed change: -99 to +400%
Pitch change: -80 to + 28 semitones (theoretically - the freqency response of your speakers and your ears are limiting factors)
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
I’m not clever enough to post a screen shot, sorry.
Like the man says:
“Try it - you’ll like it!”
Roger
I’m not sure if Audacity can change the speed or pitch of a CD track as it is playing like the other two can.
Cheers,
DavidG
I have only runned it from my laptop and my computer at work (good to have when you work late nights and the office is empty) and it all worked just fine. I have had similar problems with some older versions of Amazing slowdowner, I will look around and see if I can find something useful. I’ll get back to you on this.
Best Practice is a quite new and I believe that Robert Moerland have spent many hours of work to save himself 50$ and in the same time provided us with a good and FREE alternative. The software is also open source so anyone that wants to can contribute with new features.
I have tried to do something similar with wav-files in Matlab a few years ago but gave it up after a few weeks of frustration. Got it to slow down 50% with pitch compensation but then I could hardly recognize the tune 
Other software
Sure, there are other applications out there that can slow down tunes or change pitch. Audacity, winamp, cubase … but for simplicity and ease of use The Amazing Slowdowner and BestPractice are hard to beat. When it comes to performance for the purpose of practicing and learning tunes I found BestPractice to be very useful. I’m also sure it will improve with time.
What are you listening to if you need to slow down tunes 400%, speedmetal???
/MarcusR
I’ve got the same problem, I thought it was because I was chugging along on a Windows '98 but maybe not.
Them Ashes are feeling mighty warm now David 
Same here, nine out of ten times I try opening the program it disappears in illegal operations. The odd time it does manage to open properly it’s pretty clunky and I have uninstalled it again.
Seems like I was a bit overoptimistic, but BestPractise really works great on my computers.
I have tried to provoke the error you described but it runs smoothly every time for both mp3s and CDA (only had trouble with one home burned CD but I don’t blame the software for that).
However, I could not get it to open Ausdag’s mp3’ from clips and snips which worked just fine in Amazing slowdowner so I guess there still is some development left for BestPractice.
The Amazing slowdowner is a great little application but I have always had trouble running it (even v2.76), tend end up getting Error 139, “file type not supported” all of a sudden and a “Lower the settings in General Settings option”. This doesn’t happen with BestPractice when I’m running the same files.
So the conclusion is to try what works best for your system and stick with it if you are happy.
Cheers!
/MarcusR
All you guys with problems probably need to update your audio codecs.
Knock yerselves out.
For the technically challenged.., your best bet is to download a codec pack like K-lite’s pack or the older Nimo pack, uncheck the vid codecs and just install audio, like lame mp3, ogg, AC3-Wav, etc.
http://www.free-codecs.com/Codec_Packs.htm
good luck!
You may be right - I haven’t tried it, and it’s on my home machine far, far away so I can’t check. I used a freebie CD to wav file converter and saved the tune I was working on. Audacity can slow it down and save it at the slower speed so it can be played in any player.
“+400%” means that it will speed it up 4 times. If you want to jazz up a slow air, you can give this a try.
Besides, don’t you play speedmetal on your flute, or are you one of theose hidebound strict traditionalists?
Roger
Anything out there for Mac users?
KAD
I haven’t seen similar freeware for the Mac, but I’ve been happy with Amazing Slow Downer and I think it is worth the $45, considering how often I use it. A couple of big selling points for me were the audio quality when slowed and the ability to slow down AAC files, which is the compression codec I use for my iTunes library.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/mac
Sourceforge is an open-source software development site. Lots of exciting and way cool stuff for the geeky and uber-geeky types out there.
I’m no geek - I can’t even figure out how to display an umlaut for “uber-geek”, so I think it’s handy, but it doesn’t get my nipples hard.
Roger
Hey all,
the Error 139 in Amazing Slowdowner just means it isn;t registered. I bought it a little while ago and it works great on both MP3’s and AIFF’s. I am running on a Mac so no problem there. I think this is the only solution for the Mac though I may be wrong.
And for those geeky like me and working on tunes in pitches that are recorded with sets othr than D. Here’s my cheat sheet. While this may seem obvious, I wasn’t sure if that would be the case when actually changing the pitch of a tune but it appears to work fine. Feel free to add or change the numbers.
C Nat to D +1.9
C Sharp to D +1.0
B to D + 3.0
I’ll go and hide for a week, can I come back after that?
Are you sure about this?
Why would they let out a shareware that dont work properly without clearly stating why? Kind of bad marketing as this was the main reason to why I haven’t paid and registered the software.
Don’t want to risk paying for something that dont seem to work with my system. The specifics say that all features are there but only for the first track.
/MarcusR
The program bombed on my system too [ Win 98 ]. I have not tried the suggested fix of installing new codecs.
All you guys with problems probably need to update your audio codecs.
Knock yerselves out.
For the technically challenged.., your best bet is to download a codec pack like K-lite’s pack or the older Nimo pack, uncheck the vid codecs and just install audio, like lame mp3, ogg, AC3-Wav, etc.