With podcasting now pretty much mainstream, there a plethora of software tools to help you create, edit, manage and publish your podcasts.

Podcast Studio from X-oom aims to be an all-rounder. You'll find sections for recording and editing, a subscription manager and various tools for ripping, converting and transferring.

A slightly dated interface presents you with seven options: Direct, Manage, Record, Rip, Edit, Convert and Transfer. Each option does pretty much what ‘it says on the tin’, but all with little aplomb. Everything looks the same and, to be honest, is a little uninspiring.

This isn't a huge problem as Podcast Studio is aimed at the beginner end of the market, but a little more encouraging assistance in the form of optional wizards would have been welcome.

Podcasts can be recorded in three formats – Mp3, Ogg and Wav, with a decent number of options on altering bit rates and other settings. A number of jingles that can be inserted into the recording are provided. You can also make use of the Rip and Convert tools to insert audio from other recorded media.

Once recorded, switching to the Editor provides you with options for adding and removing gaps, normalising, adding echo, fading in and out, and other basic operations.

After recording and editing podcasts they can be uploaded to a web server via the included FTP client. An RSS feed can also be generated for web visitors to subscribe to.

Although Podcast Studio can take you through the whole process of creating, editing, publishing and managing podcasts in the one program, it really doesn’t do enough with any of its elements to particularly impress.

With little scope for real control in any one element there’s little to stop you becoming bored.

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