Most of us have a fairly large collection of media files on our home computer. These could be our audio tracks, the photos we've taken on vacations or videos we've ripped from our own DVDs. There's little point using our laptop screen to view a movie or attempt to listen to our favourite tracks through the computer speakers. As your laptop or home computer is likely to have a VGA-OUT or DVI-OUT socket, you only need one cable to connect this to your TV. Problem is that you need some decent media management software to get the most from your collection.

Boxee for Windows and for Mac is an early preview version of this superb free open-source media centre technology that's designed to find and group together your media collection, connect your computer to your TV and watch your movies, photos and listen to your audio tracks.

Boxee for Windows and for Mac links.

Whilst the latest non-DRM audio tracks from online music stores, such as iTunes, are produced from the original masters, many of us still have tracks that we've sourced from other locations. We'll have live tracks taken from bootleg recordings, recorded from the radio or even tracks we've recorded ourselves from old LPs or cassettes. Either way, they'll be poor quality, with a lot of crackle, perhaps cheering at the start of the track and other parts that might need some editing.

WavePad for Windows 4.03 or for Mac are free audio mastering tools that will enable you to take a track and fade it in or out, perhaps remove some crackle, merge with another track and much more. Of course, if you need more than basic audio editing tools, there's a paid-for Mastering Edition available, too.

WavePad for Windows or for Mac links.

We read some market research recently which stated that teenagers are so used to audio recorded in the MP3 format that they prefer this to the quality you find when playing back a CD through a high-end amplifier and speakers. Audiophiles will despair as no-one wants our audio experience to be dominated by poor-quality MP3 recordings. Do not despair though as the latest non-DRM audio tracks from iTunes are far superior to the previous DRM-based revisions. Why? Probably as the tracks are sourced directly from the music publisher and compressed to a higher bitrate (256Kbps) than previously. However, compare the same tracks against those from the equivalent CD and they sound more dynamic, punchy and so on.

iTunes 8.1 is what you'll need to buy and download tracks from the iTunes Store. We'd definitely recommend you give the new non-DRM tracks a go and compare them to your regular CDs.

iTunes link.

If you read interviews from various musicians, some of the most famous song writers tend to write very simply. Perhaps a few chords, with someone humming a basic melody over the top. At this stage, any words are just made up to fit in to the melody. Once that sounds effective, the musician will start to build the rest of the song. This means that you don't necessarily require traditional song-writing skills to produce your own track. Or at least the early version of the track.

Microsoft Songsmith is a tool from their Research Labs that will enable a user to hum or sing in to a microphone, choose a theme and record their first track. The application ships with a number of pre-designed tracks that will automatically wrap around your singing. This isn't a completely free application though, so you'll need to purchase if you find it useful.

Microsoft Songsmith link.

Started iTunes this morning and found that I was able to upgrade all my previously downloaded iTunes tracks to DRM-free versions. This has benefits. The DRM-free tracks can be transported and played on other portable music players and as many computers as you own. You're not limited to 5 PCs for your purchased audio. Other benefits included a higher bitrate for your tracks, which means the quality should be slightly improved over the previous tracks.

Problem, however. The upgrade requires an 'all or nothing' approach to replacing your current tracks. You can't simply choose the tracks you want to upgrade. So, if you're bought a lot of tracks that, quite frankly, you are somewhat embarassed to own, if you do upgrade these will be upgraded too. Apparently I had 169 tracks that required an upgrade, which cost around £20. Each track is around 20p per upgrade.

iTunes download link.

Only yesterday did we mention that the Amazon UK MP3 music store has gone live. This store enables users to download DRM-free audio from the site and some of the prices are certainly compelling. For example, the latest Will Young album - if you like that kind of music - is available for only £3 as a download. However, whereas the Apple iTunes Music Store is a self-contained manager that enables you to purchase, download and manage your tracks from the application, the Amazon MP3 store requires some basic technical knowledge.

Amazon MP3 Music Downloader is a simple free tool that enables your computer to intercept the MP3 audio files you purchase and download from the store and integrate directly in to your existing music manager, whether that's iTunes or another tool.

Amazon MP3 Music Downloader link.

Most people will go out and purchase and audio CD or use an online music store to purchase a song or album they like but more casual music listeners, who aren't too worried about audio quality, will use music download sites to obtain the majority of their music. Unfortunately most file sharing sites are littered with users sharing poorly compressed or recorded audio files, all of which do no justice to original audio recordings. However, if you do want to listen to a track online, is there any way of legally obtaining free audio files using the web?

Songbeat 3.1 is an interesting application that enables you to search for, listen to and download audio files for free, well, kind of. It uses search engines to locate audio files rather than relying on users to share files from their drives, the audio is streamed but can also be downloaded but you only get twenty-five free downloads, after this you are required to upgrade, which costs of course.

Songbeat 3.1 link.

Most of us have an extensive digital audio collection and one of the wisest moves would be to synchronise this audio with a digital media player and then take that on the road. However, we're not always able to get from the office to home, before we head out on the road or need to stay over night somewhere, but we still want to be able to access our favourite audio tracks.

TVersity 1.0 RC5 is a media streaming device that you can install on your computer (or media centre) and then use this to provide and stream your audio tracks over the Internet. It also enables you to stream your media, video and audio, to other devices within your home, such as your Playstation 3, XBOX 360 or mobile device.

TVersity link.

The dream must be to setup your own digital audio media centre where you could move from room to room and hear the same track being played, through any audio device, wherever you are located in you house. It's possible, it's easy and cheap to create. Apple iTunes already allows you to distribute audio to various locations, whether this is your computer speaker or a remote Airport Express audio unit. Connect one of these Airport Express devices to an audio device and you can get iTunes to send audio to any or all of these units, at the same time, wirelessly. However, what happens when you don't want to use iTunes?

Airfoil for Windows 2.6.2 is a commercial tool that uses the same standard that Apple uses within iTunes to distribute any audio to your Airport Express device. You can hijack Windows Media Player, your web browser or most other applications. This means you can listen to Internet radio on your hifi, wirelessly.

Airfoil for Windows 2.6.2 link.

Some of our better audio tracks are those that were remixed by other producers. However, you might feel that you could do something better or more suited to your taste. If you feel a track is slower than you'd like or feel it could be enhanced by a loop from another track, there's no reason why you couldn't remix the track yourself and then save it as a new track. As long as you don't make it available commercially or spread to other users without permission, you can do what you like with your own audio (DRM free) audio tracks.

With Computeractive 281 magazine, on-sale now, we're giving you the full version of MixVibes Home v6 which will enable you to mix together two different audio tracks and then output the result as a new track.

Computeractive 281 link.