Author Topic: favorite audio editing software? (Read 12281 times)

deadheadcorey · « **on:** February 17, 2011, 12:17:08 AM »

I've played around with Wavelab a few times and found it somewhat easy to figure out. What you guys think is the most newbie friendly audio editing software out there?

Gordon · « **Reply #1 on:** February 17, 2011, 11:54:55 AM »

wavelab

DLay · « **Reply #2 on:** February 17, 2011, 12:10:58 PM »

Audacity is the most newbie friendly in my book, though its limited...

Pro Tools 7.3 is my go to as of now. I've invested far too much time in it to even considering opening another program.

newplanet7 · « **Reply #3 on:** February 17, 2011, 12:28:17 PM »

Soundforge
Wavelab

Chuck · « **Reply #4 on:** February 17, 2011, 01:46:20 PM »

WaveLab
CuBase

Brian Skalinder · « **Reply #5 on:** February 17, 2011, 02:55:58 PM »

Favorite and newbie-friendly aren't necessarily the same. I've tried Audacity, Audition, Reaper, Samplitude, and Wavelab. I found both Audition and Audacity easy to learn. Samplitude's my favorite, with Reaper a close 2nd.

WiFiJeff · « **Reply #6 on:** February 17, 2011, 04:07:11 PM »

I use Wavelab 6.0, which has no file length issues as earlier versions did.

But as a necessary step before CDing, you've gotta try iZotope RX2, either as standalone or a VST plugin in Wavelab. Really cleans up the crap (coughs, ticks, hum, everything). Very labor-intensive, but worth every minute.

Jeff

bobinchicago · « **Reply #7 on:** February 17, 2011, 07:23:08 PM »

I guess I'm the first Mac user up, so I'll mention Amadeus Pro. Audacity's user interface makes my head hurt. I used to love Sound Studio, but a few consecutive versions got pretty crashy on me. (This was in its 3.x days; 4.x might be much better.)

DigiGal · « **Reply #8 on:** February 17, 2011, 07:32:53 PM »

Second Mac user chiming in: I use and recommend Audiofile Engineering's Wave Editor.

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/waveeditor/techspecs.php

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/waveeditor/

boyacrobat · « **Reply #9 on:** February 17, 2011, 07:45:43 PM »

cubase
nuendo
wavelab

g

Scooter123 · « **Reply #10 on:** February 17, 2011, 07:55:30 PM »

Goldwave, which is similar to Wavelab. It can handle mutliple commands at once in a batch file, so you can highpass, compress, volume boost all in a single click.

ashevillain · « **Reply #11 on:** February 17, 2011, 08:15:26 PM »

Quote from: bobinchicago on February 17, 2011, 07:23:08 PM

I guess I'm the first Mac user up, so I'll mention Amadeus Pro. Audacity's user interface makes my head hurt. I used to love Sound Studio, but a few consecutive versions got pretty crashy on me. (This was in its 3.x days; 4.x might be much better.)

I've been using Sound Studio since the 2.x versions (on 3.6 right now) and never had any issues with it crashing. I love it. I would like to try 4.x and also would love to try the OSX version of Wavelab...but I'm also thinking that there is really nothing wrong with my current process (ain't broke, don't fix it, etc.)

- I tried Wave Editor and didn't really care for it but maybe I didn't give it a fair enough chance.
- Audacity for Mac is just ok. It's kind of clunky and I only use it rarely...sometimes it's easier than Sound Studio to do matrices with.
- Spark XL was awesome. Too bad it doesn't work with Snow Leopard!

DLay · « **Reply #12 on:** February 17, 2011, 09:52:45 PM »

Quote from: bobinchicago on February 17, 2011, 07:23:08 PM

I guess I'm the first Mac user up, so I'll mention Amadeus Pro.

I run Pro Tools on my mac.

bobinchicago · « **Reply #13 on:** February 17, 2011, 10:59:02 PM »

Quote from: DigiGal on February 17, 2011, 07:32:53 PM

Second Mac user chiming in: I use and recommend Audiofile Engineering's Wave Editor.

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/waveeditor/techspecs.php

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/waveeditor/

Thanks for the recommendation -- always happy to try new toys.

Shadow_7 · « **Reply #14 on:** February 18, 2011, 07:04:25 AM »

Audacity

As far as applications that can run in linux natively. And has semi-intuitive editing capabilities (and a GUI). And if all you need is to trim and apply a little gain, more than sufficient. It has a nyquist interfacing option too. Or if you're senile you can run nyquist directly from the cli with a script or interactively.

spyder9 · « **Reply #15 on:** February 19, 2011, 12:03:11 AM »

Adobe Audition

setboy · « **Reply #16 on:** February 19, 2011, 12:13:48 AM »

Quote from: DigiGal on February 17, 2011, 07:32:53 PM

Second Mac user chiming in: I use and recommend Audiofile Engineering's Wave Editor.

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/waveeditor/techspecs.php

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/waveeditor/

I use this too. It gets the job done. Wish it had a different way to track things out. I still miss sound forge though.
still pretty good.

OOK · « **Reply #17 on:** February 24, 2011, 10:52:06 PM »

I love soundforge.....

Matt Quinn · « **Reply #18 on:** February 25, 2011, 10:47:08 AM »

Ableton Live

pdastoor · « **Reply #19 on:** February 25, 2011, 11:24:54 AM »

I use a mixture of Audacity & Nero Wav Editor almost 95% of the time. I also use Nero Soundtrax, Soundbooth, Audition & Pro tools. Always done everything in Audacity, but now combine it with Nero Wav Editor since it has some cool features.

H₂O · « **Reply #20 on:** February 25, 2011, 08:36:42 PM »

wavelab

illconditioned · « **Reply #21 on:** February 25, 2011, 09:09:35 PM »

Quote from: Shadow_7 on February 18, 2011, 07:04:25 AM

Audacity

As far as applications that can run in linux natively. And has semi-intuitive editing capabilities (and a GUI). And if all you need is to trim and apply a little gain, more than sufficient. It has a nyquist interfacing option too. Or if you're senile you can run nyquist directly from the cli with a script or interactively.

Audacity has the advantage that it is free, and that it works on multiple platforms. The thing I don't like is the lack of real-time effects. I want to be able to change the settings while playing through an effect. AFAIK Audacity only allows you to apply an effect to a region, or preview (first few seconds only). I could live with the clunkiness if it would do realtime effects.

My general choices are Wavelab (for Montage editing, effects, cd creation), Audition (for spectrum display and spectral-domain editing), and Reaper (simplest software for mulitrack recording with ASIO devices, under Windows).

Richard

morst · « **Reply #22 on:** February 27, 2011, 02:27:19 PM »

Favorite? MOTU Digital Performer on the mac.

Easiest for a beginner to use to get some work done? The latest beta version of audacity on any machine.

Most reliable for DAT transfers? for me personally, my old ProTools project 4.1.1 system running under mac OS9 is Rock Solid for two-channel work.

moonchilddave · « **Reply #23 on:** March 09, 2011, 08:13:59 PM »

Another Mac (MacBook / 10.6.6) user here with a vote for Sound Studio... I also have never had issues with it crashing. I'm running the latest now, 4.1 and do like how responsive it is in 64 bit mode. I did have to track down a 64 bit version of the LAME framework to be able to work with MP3's though as the one I had installed prior was only 32 bit.

Gutbucket · « **Reply #24 on:** March 10, 2011, 12:31:32 PM »

Samplitude, despite the learning curve.
~~Raptor~~ Reaper looks interesting, especially for it's routing abilities, and is inexpensive but I haven't tried it.

Audacity is simpler and free but limited.
Used CEP a bit before it was bought by Adobe and turned into Audition and liked it, never did much advanced work with it and don't know how much carried over to Audition.
Tried Goldwave briefly and didn't care for it but I didn't put much time into it.

faninor · « **Reply #25 on:** March 10, 2011, 03:27:47 PM »

I used to use Audition when it was Cool Edit Pro... and I still use it as Audition. I think it's one of the rare cases where the big name acquisition didn't negatively impact the software. Some of the enhancements they've done since have become invaluable to me.

I basically use the software as a one-stop shop (except for tracking) with the multi-track mode (whether or not I'm really working with multiiple tracks). I archive the original raw recording (compressed to FLAC) and the (very small) Audition multitrack project file. Doesn't take up a lot of space but very easy to go back and make any tweaks later if I decide something needs it.

ashevillain · « **Reply #26 on:** March 10, 2011, 05:20:33 PM »

Quote from: moonchilddave on March 09, 2011, 08:13:59 PM

Another Mac (MacBook / 10.6.6) user here with a vote for Sound Studio... I also have never had issues with it crashing. I'm running the latest now, 4.1 and do like how responsive it is in 64 bit mode. I did have to track down a 64 bit version of the LAME framework to be able to work with MP3's though as the one I had installed prior was only 32 bit.

I tried the trial of Sound Studio 4 and didn't quite like it. For one it locked up on me (which is the first time I've ever had something lock up on this MBPro). The other things I didn't like is that the new FLAC support has no way of specifying what level of compression to use and the transport should have the ability to be at the bottom or the top (or floating if that's your preference)....there was really no reason to move it to the bottom. I might try it again at some point but for now I'm find on 3.6.

Also a question: Has anyone tried Wavelab 7 for Mac? I tried it out and could not for the life of me figure out why it has a 2GB limit imposed when every other piece of software uses the standard 4GB limit.

acidjack · « **Reply #27 on:** March 10, 2011, 06:34:06 PM »

I've got the current Audition Beta for Mac. The effects are obviously more powerful, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how you make it do tracking. Any advice?

Also, I have to admit, the spectral display looks cool, but I have absolutely zero understanding of what that actually does.

I watched some of the Audition intro videos on their site, which are helpful, but is there somewhere to get a sort of broad overview of software-based editing of audio files? I use Audacity almost all the time, because it's easy, and I don't heavily manipulate my files.

For that matter, I was under the impression that most people here don't heavily manipulate their files.... so what exactly are these extremely advanced features that the other editors have that Audacity doesn't, besides real-time monitoring? Audition, for example, has better zoom and compression tools, but the latter is something that I very rarely use, usually just on weird sounding or badly balanced board feeds...

faninor · « **Reply #28 on:** March 10, 2011, 08:05:47 PM »

Typically when processing recordings I make, I usually just use some combination of parallel compression and EQ to get the sound that I like in an Audition multitrack project.

As an example, if I have a recording where I feel the bass has too much dynamic range (perhaps the kick drum is standing out too much) I put the recording in two tracks on the project, on the main track I will roll off the bass somewhat and on the second track I will apply a low-pass filter effect and compression with a big ratio to knock down the peaks from the kick drum. It takes some trial and error to find the best attack and release times. Then some more playing around to fine-tune the roll off on the main track and bring the bass volume back up from the other track.

Gutbucket · « **Reply #29 on:** March 10, 2011, 08:15:36 PM »

You're doing 2-band (multiband) compression, applying compression only to the lowest band and doing the x-over between bands manually by adjusting the pass-filters and levels and summing the tracks. I often find doing stuff like this manually on several tracks is more intuitive and understandable, but you might try a multiband compressor plugin to do basically the same thing as a single stereo track effect (or as a single effect at the master bus level). If that works for you that may simplify your workflow.

faninor · « **Reply #30 on:** March 10, 2011, 08:38:28 PM »

Yep. Should've said I mainly do EQ, multi-band compression, and parallel compression (there's usually a third track in my project for that).

Audition has a multiband compressor, but I don't use it because on a few occasions I tried it out and the output sounded different than the input outside the band I was attempting to compress... so YMMV but I don't trust Audition's built in multiband compressor and do separate tracks instead. I also find it a little more intuitive as well this way.

Gutbucket · « **Reply #31 on:** March 10, 2011, 09:20:08 PM »

I've found the same concerning sonic change outside of what I'm looking for and intuitiveness. Doing it that way seems to work better for me as well, but I'm always suspect that the reason for that may be my less than professional tools and skills.

rastasean · « **Reply #32 on:** March 10, 2011, 10:46:00 PM »

Other than Brain, no one mentioned reaper. Is that because you folks haven't tried it or is there something not right about it that makes you use all the mentioned software editors? I have not used it yet but from reading on the site about it and on forums, it seems fairly popular.

www.reaper.fm

Gutbucket · « **Reply #33 on:** March 11, 2011, 12:11:42 AM »

Oops, called it Raptor instead of Reaper in my previous post.

I was considering switching to it before I started getting a better handle on Samplitude. I like what I've heard about it and found on the website, but have yet to give it a spin. What I've heard about it's flexible routing abitilites interested me. I think its definitely worthy of consideration.

edtyre · « **Reply #34 on:** March 13, 2011, 01:57:56 AM »

Quote from: acidjack on March 10, 2011, 06:34:06 PM

I've got the current Audition Beta for Mac. The effects are obviously more powerful, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how you make it do tracking. Any advice?

Just tryed it out yesterday for the first time, looks pretty interesting. To track out files, push M to insert marker (make sure to have a marker at the beginning and the end)
Select all of the markers in the markers box, click on the third icon in the markers box to merge markers then the fifth icon to export markers to separate files.
Look at the screenshot.

F.O.Bean · « **Reply #35 on:** March 13, 2011, 05:26:52 AM »

WaveLab 6

dactylus · « **Reply #36 on:** March 13, 2011, 10:25:41 AM »

Sound Forge Pro 10

raymonda · « **Reply #37 on:** March 13, 2011, 11:53:31 PM »

Cubebase studio 4 to record multitracks and Wavelab to master DVDs and CDs.

SmokinJoe · « **Reply #38 on:** March 15, 2011, 12:13:42 PM »

I started out with Audacity because it was the easiest to get working on Linux. That was sufficient for years, and it still is for 2 or 4 track work. Now I've started multitracking with 20+ tracks, and I use either Reaper or ProTools 8 on Windoze.

The thing I most like about Reaper is that the keyboard shortcuts are more configurable, and so I can use the same keystrokes I've been using for years. You can "Render" the project to disk as fast as the computer can go. So I can render a 2 hour show in 15 minutes, and go listen in the other room. There are a lot of free plugins, it's on the edge of the "free and open source software" mindset, I could write my own plugins if I wanted. The way the plugins are organized is a bit of a hassle, but it's livable (opening up a bunch of individual FX windows, as opposed to Protools where you go to Mix mode and see everything at a glance).

I have a real love/hate relationship with Protools. I do love the Mixer window with the plugins/routing on one screen, but I hate the keystrokes (Zoom in is "Control + ]" WTF?) Also hate the real time rendering and hate the fact that I get a lot of stupid interrupts. Protools really wants to be the only thing running on your computer. The mindset behind any additional tools is MONEY, MONEY, MONEY.

Gutbucket · « **Reply #39 on:** March 15, 2011, 02:14:38 PM »

I've never used Protools, but I really like this idea:

Quote from: SmokinJoe on March 15, 2011, 12:13:42 PM

..Mixer window with the plugins/routing on one screen..

DLay · « **Reply #40 on:** March 15, 2011, 02:18:25 PM »

Quote from: SmokinJoe on March 15, 2011, 12:13:42 PM

I have a real love/hate relationship with Protools. I do love the Mixer window with the plugins/routing on one screen, but I hate the keystrokes (Zoom in is "Control + ]" WTF?) Also hate the real time rendering and hate the fact that I get a lot of stupid interrupts. Protools really wants to be the only thing running on your computer. The mindset behind any additional tools is MONEY, MONEY, MONEY.

ProTools is all about love/hate. The keystrokes are a huge life (time) saver. Zooming in on a waveform should just be 'T' and out is 'R' I believe. Thats with the command focus ('A...Z' logo) on. The real time bouncing is TERRIBLE and is half the reason I haven't seeded my recordings. Nothing like sitting through a 30 minute jam just to have it fuck up on you at the last few seconds.

On the bright side of Avid/Digis money hungry ways, PT version 9 is no longer dependent on Digis hardware. Meaning no more having to find ways to bypass the God awful pres of an 002 or 003. Also, you can edit wherever you please (on a laptop) without having to lug around an interface....its about damn time.

Jofa · « **Reply #41 on:** March 31, 2011, 12:53:35 PM »

Wavelab

krsb · « **Reply #42 on:** March 31, 2011, 03:29:39 PM »

These days I am a Reaper fan, running it on a Mac. Running the AC-7 Core app on my Ipad gives me great way of mixing and it runs fine with Reaper (and a few others too)
cb

Myco · « **Reply #43 on:** March 31, 2011, 04:07:21 PM »

Quote from: dactylus on March 13, 2011, 10:25:41 AM

Sound Forge Pro 10

Same here.

bluntforcetrauma · « **Reply #44 on:** May 18, 2011, 03:50:39 AM »

mac user hear-- i use Peak bias pro along with VST plug ins L2 ultramaximizer, soundsoap, BBE maximizer