Get The CW app for Roku, Apple TV, Xbox, Fire TV, Android TV, iOS and Android, now Chromecast and AirPlay enabled. No subscription. Best Music Player Software for Mac to Choose in 2021. Here are some of the best free music players for Mac that you can choose and enjoy your favorite music for free. Elmedia tops the list of best music players for Mac. This software offers the best music experience and offers an innovative interface. Jul 14, 2021 Best MPEG-4 Player for Mac: Wondershare MPEG-4 Player and Converter. Wondershare UniConverter is without an iota of doubt the best multimedia player on this list. It’s absolutely free and supports video qualities such as 8K, 4K, and HD. It also supports codecs such as MPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, etc.
Version 10
With a new look and enhanced functionality, I am pleased to announce Version 10 of my CW trainer is here:
Since it first became available back in 2002, my Morse trainer has been downloaded countless times. I used to request a QSL card as a download acknowledgement and the software has achieved DXCC Honour Roll in its right over the years.
As well as the QSL cards, I have had lots and lots of interesting conversations with different people about their learning methods and successes and failures. This has given me a lot of insight into how we learn Morse and it has become clear that Morse is a language just like French or German. This means that the language learning skills are just as applicable to Morse as they are to French or German, for example.
In 2018 I was invited to give a lecture at the RSGB Convention about techniques for learning Morse which was recorded by the RSGB and they have given me permission to reproduce it here. As well as giving useful tips on learning Morse, the video talks about the operation of the new version and which is, I am told, well worth watching.
The Effective Speed setting in the main window, shown above, modifies the overall length of the Morse characters by sending the character at the 'Actual Speed' and then padding out the rest of the character period with silence to achieve the the 'Effective' sending speed.
The trainer offers two types of 'Effective Speed' depending on the Effective Speed setting in the top righthand corner of the Setup window shown above.
Each Character
In this mode every Morse character is extended in duration to the chosen Effective Speed. Care should be taken when choosing an Effective Speed to make sure that you do not go below the 10 WPM plateau speed which will allow your brain to run its lookup table and so adversely affect your learning.
This method is known as Farnsworth.
Each Word
In this mode Morse characters are sent at full speed with the correct spacing and only the spaces between words or groups are extended to the Effective Speed. This method gives you a chance to assimulate a word or group before moving onto the next one.
This method is known as Wordsworth and is active when recording audio books in Morse as discussed in the next section.
One of the more effective ways of learning to copy conversational Morse in your head is not by listening to random words, but by listening to whole sentences. And what better way to do that than listening to an audio book in Morse Code?
Version 9 was able to convert text to Morse, but this version makes it even simpler. Note, that like many other options, this one only becomes available once you have learned all of the built in characters and any that you have defined yourself.
To get started, visit The Gutenberg Press , chose a book from their large selection and download it in 'Plain Text UTF-8' format.
Next open the downloaded text file in Notepad and remove any text which does not form part of the story, for example the index, and which you would not wish to listen to. Make sure that you save the file as ANSI and not UTF-8 for the software to work correctly.
Now click on 'Record Text File' in the 'Files' menu of the Morse Trainer and a window should open as in the image below:
Finally either drag the text file of the book onto the popup window or use the File button and browse to it.
You should see the window turn red and the progress bar move steadily across the window as the Audio Book is created. You have the option to create an MP3 file for an MP3 file player or a WAV file if you want to burn the result onto a CD.
You should now have a Morse Audio version of your chosen book to listen to. It will be in the same folder as the original text file.
I have found and also had it confirmed to me that you should listen to the book for several hours as you go about your daily routine. You do not have to concentrate all the time on the Morse as your subconscious brain is working hard to learn what it hears.
Oh, and by the way, if you simply want to listen to a text file in Morse Code, drag it onto the main window and it will be sent for you with each word appearing in the output window after it is sent. Again, this only works after you have learned all of the built in characters and any that you may have defined.
One of the new features of Version 10 is the Sending Trainer which becomes available once you have learned the 40 built in Morse characters and any new ones you may have defined.
My philosophy in designing this addition to the software is firstly that words should be presented to you as closely as they would come into your head during a QSO and secondly that you should be using your radio's keyer for practicing as this replicates exactly how you would send Morse during a QSO.
To achieve the first goal, the software will speak words to you. That way you have to work out the spelling in your head - exactly as you would do on the air.
To achieve the second goal you will need to connect the sidetone from you radio to your PC's sound card input. Adjust the input level until you see approximately the same display as the screenshot above. There are two windows of interest, the oscilloscope display of the incoming signal and the FFT display showing the pitch of the sidetone.
Once you are all connected up, choose a practice speed, the number of attempts you want to make to send the word back and finally the words you want to practice and away you go.
The software will speak a word which you must then send back correctly to move on to the next word. As you finish each letter it will be echoed in the main window. If you make an error then the word will be spoken again and if your Morse does not match any of the characters you have learned then the dots and dashes will be displayed to help you.
Microsoft supplies a number of different voices with Window and you have an option to select the voice that suits you best.
At any time you can ask for the word to be spoken again by sending a ? and to move on to the next random word, send a /.
You can also use the software to read the Morse that you send which will appear in the window. Note that the software is not designed to read Morse off-air!
I had originally planned to play the Morse sidetone from your keyer to the sound card output, but I soon discovered a Windows limitation that I have not been able to resolve - the latency between the sound input card input and the sound card output. It amounts to about a dot period at 25 WPM which makes it impossible to play back Morse sidetone into the headphones along with the spoken words and still make it usable.
This means that you will have to come up with a way to hear both the Morse and the spoken words!
I shall be continuing in my research into this problem and if I do resolve it then I will obviously make the results available here.
Practice Session Logging
The major changes in Version 10.7 resulted from a number of email and Zoom conversations that I had with Bob Condor, K4RLC, who I met through the Long Island CW Club (LICW).
Bob is a neuropsychologist and I reached out to him to discuss better ways by which Morse might be learnt with the notion of modifying my software accordingly.
In the end we decided that Koch's approach is about it as good as it gets, but Bob suggested what was needed to keep people motivated was some form of session logging which keeps track of the time they spent using the software and their progress.
You will see in this release that there is now a Practice History menu item. Clicking on it opens a new window which can either show a timeline or a calendar of practice sessions.
Practice sessions are coloured according to the lesson being undertaken with the width of the bar showing the duration of the lesson and the height of the bar the number of Morse characters in the session.
Clicking on an individual bar will populate a set of fields giving more details about the session, including, for example, the actual and effective speed in use.
Random Character Selection
Anne, KC9YL, contacted me to say that her LICW instructor was recommending practicing with random groups of characters, but that it was impossible for her to randomly create then and could I help. So I added a new feature where you can choose the size of a random group and the software will decide on the characters for you without your intervention. This feature is shown here:
Enable the Random Selection and choose the number of characters you want to practice with and then click the Ok button. The next time you open the window the last set of random characters will be displayed. If you simply click Ok you will continue with the same set, but enabling the Random Selection will create a new set.
GUI changes to help the visually impaired
Finally, I have been working with Howard, WA9TOP, and other visually impaired hams to improve the responsiveness of the screen readers that they use with the software. As well as subtle changes to the GUI to accommodate screen readers, I have broken out the About menu into a number of Help menu items which in turn open PDF files. I will be working to improve the help contained within the PDF files over the coming weeks.
It has come to my attention that there is a problem with running the software when it is installed as a 'standard' user.
If you need to install the software by providing an administrator password then you will also need to run the software as that administrator for it to work correctly.
The problem is caused by the installer installing the data files under the administrator password's documents folder and not the standard user's documents folder.
A workaround is to copy the files from the administrator's account to the standard user account. Unless you do that, the software will not run correctly for anyone other tnan the administrator account.
I am currently looking into the problem and will update the web site if and when I have a solution.
Download the latest Version 10 release here!
Revision History
Version 10.3.1 released 16 March 2020
- Fixed the Effective speed not being rememberd - thanks to Steve KK6VZE for reporting it.
Version 10.3.1 released 16 March 2020
- Fixed shortcut error - thanks to Tony KE4MHP for reporting it.
Version 10.3.2 released 17 March 2020
- Really fixed the Effective Speed error - thanks to David VK5PL for reporting it.
- Also started using a new installer for the files, it may be worth uninstalling your current version before installing this version. No settings will be lost by uninstalling.
Version 10.3.3 released 21 March 2020
- Added back the QSO selector which somehow got lost - thanks José EA5VK for reporting it.
- Also updated the button hints to show that greyed out buttons will become active when all characters have been learned.
Version 10.3.4 released 22 March 2020>
- Text files with accented characters were not play the accented characters correctly - thanks José EA5VK for reporting it.
Note that you need to store the text file as ANSI and not UTF-8 for this feature to work correctly.
Version 10.3.5 released 23 March 2020
- Tidied up text files with accented characters so that characters can be defined in either case - thanks again José EA5VK for reporting it. Note that the characters will display in the case that they were defined in and not in the case in the file.
Version 10.3.6 released 31 March 2020
- Sending Trainer now respeaks the word every two seconds until you start sending - thanks to Paul KW1L for the suggestions.
- Sending Trainer help reworded
Version 10.3.7 released 10 April 2020
- Sending Trainer setup is now via the Setup menu item with the Sending Trainer window active. More voice configurations available now - thanks to Paul KW1L for the suggestions.
- Fixed a bug where the displayed order of sent words was not correct if you invoked the Display Delay option - thanks to Dave VK5PL for spotting that one.
- From this version onwards the Word and QSO files have moved to a folder below 'My Documents', if you have created any special files they will need moving to the new folder.
Version 10.3.8 released 13 April 2020
- Changed the button logic for the Words and QSO buttons so that it is possible to browse for a file.
- Fixed a bug where the Voice selector in the Sending setup grew each time the window was opened.
Version 10.3.9 released 15 April 2020
- Added shortcuts to the Start, Stop, Words and QSO buttons - thanks to Dan KA4DAN for the suggestion.
Version 10.4.1 released 12 May 2020
- Added an upper case option to the main text display popup menu - thanks to Rich N1ZSC for the suggestion.
- Allowed Effective Speed to modify the length of the interword spaces when creating recorded files - thanks to Dan KG7DAB for the suggestion.
Version 10.4.2 released 14 May 2020
- Noticed a coding error in the Text File to Morse converter.
Version 10.4.3 released 20 May 2020
- Added an option to allow the QRM Generator to run a simulated contest as the QRM Source. Configurable in the Setup menu - thanks to the Long Island CW Club for the suggestion.
Version 10.4.4 released 9 June 2020
- In the continuing to improve the Sending Trainer, you can now set the Pitch of the voice which speaks the words.
Version 10.4.5 released 20 June 2020
- Added a new Phases button in addition to Words for both sending and receiving training - thanks to John G3WKL for the suggestion and Kurt AD0WE for the files.
- About Box now checks to see if there are updates available and offers a link to download them.
Version 10.4.6 released 21 June 2020
Cw Player For Mac Pc
- Internal release.
Version 10.4.7 released 29 June 2020
- Cleaned up the Phrase button code for sending and receiving.
- Tab order and Alt key cleanup for blind users - thanks to Sam W2JDB for his support.
Version 10.4.8 released 8 July 2020
- Fixed a couple of typos - thanks to Bill WA2FCN.
- Changed the character learning order to bring it into line with other software - thanks to Rich K2UPS for the suggestion.
Version 10.5.2 released 15 July 2020
- Added a Morse menu showing the toolbar shortcuts to assist blind hams - thanks to Howard WA9TOP.
- Fixed a bug from the character order change in 10.4.8 where a lower case v sent a comma, but upper case V was okay.
- Fixed a long term bug in the Common Words setup which remained disabled after all the characters had been learnt- thanks to George K4EOR
- Changing the CW Pitch 'on the fly' now also changes the QRM pitch - thanks to Howard WA9TOP.
Version 10.5.3 released 22 July 2020
- Bug where text files will not play after a phrases file has been played - thanks to Barry K6ZGW.
Version 10.6.3 released 23 August 2020
- Tap the Spacebar to pause and unpause a session (toggle action) - thanks to Steve, N5EP for twisting my arm into doing it!
- More support for accented characters in the text to Morse conversion - thanks to Med CN8YR for his help with this.
Note that text files must be stored as ANSI and not UTF-8. - Changed the runtime creation of the speech synthesiser in the hope that the software will run under Wine and WineBottler on a Mac
Version 10.6.4 released 29 August 2020
- Words and Phrases do not start again after one session - thanks to Barry K6ZGW for spotting that one.
Version 10.6.5 released 31 August 2020
- Really fixed Words and Phrases not starting again after one session this time - thanks to Barry K6ZGW for his help fixing it.
Version 10.6.6 released 3 November 2020
- Fixed the accuracy of the Session Timer after the changes I made to pause a session - thanks to Davide, IW0HLG, for reporting it.
- Modified the Words button so that it becomes active after the first vowel has been learnt.
This allows you start practicing words that contain the letters you have learnt.
To select this option, choose 'Words using only learnt letters' in the Word Files tab of the Setup Menu before opening a word file.
Version 10.7.5 released 2 December 2020
- Practice menu and session logging - thanks to Bob, K4RLC.
- Random character choice - thanks to Anne, KC9YL.
- GUI enhancements for visually impaired hams - thanks to Howard, WA9TOP, and others for their help and advice.
- Effective Speed setting not being remembered - thanks to Michael, W4PWD.
Version 10.7.15 released 15 December 2020
Gom Player For Mac
- Not long after I released the last version of the software I was contacted by Bill, WA2NFN, who had a few comments about the GUI. Bill and I struck an email conversation and I discovered that in an earlier life he had been a software QA engineer and was keen to apply his skills to this software.
Over the past two weeks Bill has put the software through his extremely fine toothed comb and we have made dozens of improvements in all areas of the Receiving trainer. I am extremely grateful to Bill for his time and diligence and you should be too as it has significantly enhanced the usability and stability of the code.
The culmination of Bill’s work so far is this release and Bill is now turning his attention to the Sending trainer – so watch out for another update before long! - I would also like to thank James, K6WRJ, who found a crash in the Practice History viewer caused by just one session being logged.
- Mark, W7DXT spotted where the software would not run a second or subsequent session without a software restart.
- Todd, W2NDA, triggered a bug when recording a session in MP3 format which turned out to be a buffer overflow and which I have now hopefully fixed.
- Dave, W6NEL, reported problems with running Windows on a Mac using the Parallels VM for which I have developed a workaround in this release.
- Dennis, AB3VA, reported problems with installing the software on a non-admin account which I have addressed by moving all the common files to the Public Documents folder.
As a result of this change, when you first fire up the new version a window will be displayed telling you that if you have made your own Words, Phrases or QSO files then they will need to be moved to the new location to be automatically included in the file lists. You can tick a checkbox once you have done what is necessary and hopefully the window will not appear again!
- Buffer sizing error which resulted in no sound being heard when using a low Effective Speed is corrected in this version.
- Corruption of Morse characters with long strings of dots and dashes e.g. comma and zero - first reported by Dennis, KN2I.
- A lot of GUI tidying up and a few bug fixes and a few new features, such as being able to resize the Practice Schedule calendar.
- Running multiple instances of the software is supported without reporting errors, but only the setup of the first instance is saved.
- Define characters bug fixed - thanks to Kurt OZ7OU for reporting it.
- A bug in the Session Calendar which placed sessions on the wrong day due to timezone issues - thanks to Scott KI7LBE for reporting it.
- Option added in Setup to keep Bluetooth connections alive - thanks to Ian NV4C for bringing it to the top of my ToDo list and helping debug it.
- Added the option to select the CWOps learning order, configured in the Setup menu - thanks to Joe, AA8TA, for the details.
- Fixed a bug with more esoteric Windows installations which prevented the Session History file being accessed - thanks to Jack, M0JMU, for the help in debugging the fix.
- I am always looking for user feedback, suggested modifications and improvements - email me with yours!
Keep checking back for updates!
Last Updated: 21 March 2021