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Gear / Technical Help => Post-Processing, Computer / Streaming / Internet Devices & Related Activity => Topic started by: acidjack on March 10, 2009, 06:44:21 PM
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I am finally lucky enough to be making the switch to Mac this month. I feel like the Mac is going to be a lot better for audio applications, and I have read up to a degree about the software available, but thought I'd ask opinions before I "try out" everything there is and end up with a wacky jumble of stuff (like I have now).
Here is what I use now:
Editing: Audacity. Clearly Audition is the gold standard. I would be willing to pay for nicer software than Audacity, but not sure that I want to spend up to Audition just yet. Is there something in between? What's the best free app? (No, I do not steal software, so that's out of the question).
Tracking: CDWave (or use Audacity for 48kHz files). I know this program doesn't exist for Mac.
ID3 editing: AudioShell (love this - allows you to easily edit ID3s right from the "properties" menu) - please tell me there is a mac equivalent.
FLAC/MP3 conversion: I use a handy program called NCS Switch, which I believe is available for Mac.
Ripping from CDR: EAC (which I believe is available for Mac)
Torrents: uTorrent (I assume this is available for Mac?)
Checksum/FFP files: Trader's Little Helper. I know this is not available for Mac - what's the best alternative?
Whew - think that's everything. As I said I don't mind paying for software - just maybe not ready to spend multi-hundreds on a single app just yet. Ideally I'd also like to have an app that can perform a few of these functions well - typing out this list reminds me what a ridiculous number of apps I am using to do what are really just a few basic tasks....
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audacity
xact
transmission
those are what i use
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audacity
xact
transmission
those are what i use
+1
All good choices, although I use Waveburner to track (part of the Logic Studio Suite).
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Audacity is the only full-featured free editing program that I'm aware of, unless you can locate a copy of Spark, which is no longer in development and isn't Intel-native. On the lower end of pricing you've got Sound Studio ($79) and Amadeus Pro ($40). Rogue Amoeba's Fission may be worth a look as well ($32). So there's your free editing/tracking.
xACT can do tagging, FLAC/mp3 conversion, cdparanoia (the Mac/*nix equivalent of EAC) and checksums. It'll even output a basic track listing/timing if you feed it files and track names. Absolutely free, though Scott (the developer) actually likes XLD better for ripping.
Torrents, I'm also a Transmission man.
And for burning, I've settled on a program called SimplyBurns because I've ditched my old illegitimate software now that I've upgraded machines and think Toast is a total ripoff at that price.
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not sure if its the same on Mac - but the Linux version of Audacity exports to FLAC directly...might even have some tagging features.
Also easy enough to learn tracking on Audacity...wish I had done it before switching to Linux...
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I think you're right. Amadeus definitely does direct to FLAC export as well, but AFAIK neither program cuts on sector boundaries by default so you'll have to check for SBE's if you go direct to FLAC. If you export to WAV/AIFF just use the "fix SBE" tab of xACT to fix and encode at the same time.
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I think you're right. Amadeus definitely does direct to FLAC export as well, but AFAIK neither program cuts on sector boundaries by default so you'll have to check for SBE's if you go direct to FLAC. If you export to WAV/AIFF just use the "fix SBE" tab of xACT to fix and encode at the same time.
I've been using Amadeus a bit and it's a pretty nice program for the money. It does/can split on sector boundaries. You need to set it up correctly to split on sector boundaries, but its easy to do and there is info in the manual on how to accomplish this. And it saves directly to FLAC as well as mentioned.
As to the others:
Transmission - torrents
Audacity/Amadeus/Wave Editor - music editing
xACT - tagging and format conversion
Cog/Play - playback
FLAC Multi Tagger - tagging FLACs of live shows -- Excellent!!
FLAC Multi Tagger (http://www.2007.org/fmt/) written by ts.com's own Sebastion is a great little program for creating FLAC tags of live show recordings. After using it a bit, I've come to like it more than Foobar's Live Show Tagger -- very easy to get your FLACs completely tagged without much effort.
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I just found this (no affiliation)...it looks interesting...
http://twistedwave.com/
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I think you're right. Amadeus definitely does direct to FLAC export as well, but AFAIK neither program cuts on sector boundaries by default so you'll have to check for SBE's if you go direct to FLAC. If you export to WAV/AIFF just use the "fix SBE" tab of xACT to fix and encode at the same time.
really?
maybe i have been lucky, but since i started using audacity to cut the files with "multi export" i have not had one sbe come up in xact
i was almost about to stop checking its been that long since i got one
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I think you're right. Amadeus definitely does direct to FLAC export as well, but AFAIK neither program cuts on sector boundaries by default so you'll have to check for SBE's if you go direct to FLAC. If you export to WAV/AIFF just use the "fix SBE" tab of xACT to fix and encode at the same time.
really?
maybe i have been lucky, but since i started using audacity to cut the files with "multi export" i have not had one sbe come up in xact
i was almost about to stop checking its been that long since i got one
I think I meant Amadeus vs. the program I was using, which is Sound Studio 2.1.1b3. Sorry, I screwed that post up a number of ways. Ignore that part of it. :P
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Hi everybody :)
I am looking for a software displaying spectrum analysis on MacOs (to check wether recordings are lossless or not) : I know the menu from Audacity, is there some other software ?
thnax
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Hi everybody :)
I am looking for a software displaying spectrum analysis on MacOs (to check wether recordings are lossless or not) : I know the menu from Audacity, is there some other software ?
thnax
Audiofile Engineering's Wave Editor includes a spectrograph and a stereograph in addition to the standard level meter:
http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/waveeditor/techspecs.php
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I do not know if it has been fixed but about a month or two ago there was a issue on some of the various audio trackers with the 1.9x series of Transmission.
I can't remember the specifics but it was causing a mass migration to uTorrent as that version series of Transmission was corrupting some audio files.