AUDACITY
I had an e-mail from Ron (Davies) ‘Can you help?’
Some of you might have heard that Syntrillium’s Cool Edit (a brilliant sound editing program) is now being sold by Adobe as Adobe Audition. I was fairly shocked when I heard, as I have been giving demonstrations on Cool Edit 2000; software that you can now no longer buy. Adobe are not selling the equivalent of Cool Edit 2000, (the cheaper version), only the equivalent of Cool Edit Pro 2, price at £245.58 inc vat.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love Cool Edit, it’s very user friendly and versatile, so probably worth every penny, but……. this is where Ron comes in, an AV World reader had e-mailed him to ask if there was an alternative?
So I surfed…………and came up with http://audacity.sourceforge.net and was I excited! Yes, and impressed, and even more impressed because it’s FREE! There is also a Mac and a Linux version!
I downloaded the latest Beta version and the manual. It appears to have been written and honed into shape by a group of enthusiasts, so it’s development is ongoing.
So what does it do?
It uses one window where each stereo/mono track can be individually edited. All the normal controls are there, or tucked in the main tool bar. You can zoom, cut, copy, paste, work in real time, etc. It will open .wav files, .mp3 files and Ogg Vorbis (love the name, the manual says it’s a compression file like an mp3 but a free alternative). It will also save (it calls it ‘Export As’) in these formats. It does others as well but they are the ones I normally use (must find out if PTE supports Ogg Vorbis!). I then discovered that I had to download an mp3 encoder from another web site, due to the mp3 patent. The audacity website points you in the right direction, also reading the manual first gives more information.
When you ‘press’ record, a new track appears and starts recording, I had no trouble using Line In, but I was unable to record straight from my CD player in the computer. I had to play the CD using the software that is installed on my computer (media player should work as well). I just ‘pressed’ record and played the sound track I wanted, this seemed to work fine. A handy box is provided so that you can switch between Line In, CD Player, etc. (although you have to open the volume controls in the normal way to tweak the record volume).
The only thing I found lacking, is a visual ‘levels’ meter, but you can at least see the wave forms and listen. You have to lower the tracks volumes enough to avoid problems at mix down. A few trial runs using the undo facility are probably needed. According to the website, they are working on this!
Volume editing is by overall track control and/or by Volume Envelopes. These actually squash the track/(left and right are shown in stereo), as they reduce the volume. You drag the Volume Envelope symbol down to reduce the volume and up to increase it, adding more envelopes as required.
There is unlimited Undo and Redo, back to when you opened the window.
It also has a real time Label Track that enables you to mark a point with a letter/words. You can move tracks around easily and squash them up to make them smaller, handy if you have lots of tracks. I imported 11 tracks and then gave up, so don’t know how many it will hold.
There is a Draw Tool that allows you to physically alter tiny bits of the wave, good for removing clicks. It also has an impressive amount of Effects and can support plug-ins, as list of useful sites for these is on the website.
Conclusion, having ‘played’ with it today, I am still very impressed with this software. It appears to do most of the things Cool Edit can do to enable you to make a good sound track. Any small shortcomings can be forgiven, the overriding benefit being that it is free!!!
If you try it out, or if there is anyone who is already using it, please let me know what you think.
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