audio software, was editing wave files

From: Richard Webb (elspider@interl.net)
Date: Mon Dec 01 1997 - 16:48:17 PST


Hello Listers,
Lloyd wrote:
>I suppose some of you are way ahead of me on this, but here's what I
>have recently learned to do with Window-Eyes and CoolEdit. It
>isn't a method that is efficient enough to use in a recording
>studio under tight deadlines, but it seems to work.
>Cooledit, from Syntrilium Software, is a shareware audio editor and
I've had decent luck with it with asaw, too. I'm pretty sure one
could get Saw from Innovative quality software to work okay too,
though haven't worked with it with anything but an early beta version
of asaw.
For casual audio editing jobs with some pretty advanced features,
Cooledit's useful. A couple of studios I know keep a registered
version handy for some jobs. It's a little further toward the high
end of the market where we've got real troubles with software that
isn't speech friendly. STill beats a razor blade at times, and if
you've a helper around to view the waveform and operate the mouse for
you, some decent edits can be done fairly efficiently.

Here's the problem. I'm sure the engineering types
can understandd my explanation. I'll try to point
you toward some urls that discuss the problem from the audio side.

Cooledit, saw, and I think sound forge all operate on files up to 16
bit resolution. TWo of the three I know are somewhat accessible with
speech, Cooledit seeming to get the vote of most speech users I've
talked with.

The first problem you have with a lot of material that might come to
you for mastering is that it was maybe recorded analog, but then mixed
or archived to dat at 44.1 kilohertz, 16 bit. A lot of the hardware
you'll find at state of the art recording facilities works on the
audio in the digital domain, under the theory that once you take the
signal digital, stay in the digital domain as much as possible. This
is because of what happens to the signal every time it passes through
a digital to analog converter, or vice versa. AS you change overall
level, perform equalization, compression, or any number of operations
on the file, you change some of the bits. You start with a 16 bit
file, but by the time you've gotten done compressing, tweaking,
cutting, cross-fading, you've got it down to a ten bit file.
If you take this same audio source, and create a file at 20 or 24 bit
resolution, you can get back to 16 bits later with all 16 bits, but if
you've got only ten bits now after all your processing, you've changed
the least significant bit. You're going to want as much resolution
as possible when you get done, especialy if you're mastering for
aproduction on compact disc, which is at 44.1 and 16 rrespectively.

A lot of the software and hardware used at high quality
mastering and production facilities works with audio at 20 or 24 bit
resolution. Even if the premaster is regular 2 track quarter inch
analog tape, they bring it into the system at 24 bit resolution. Now,
they can run their digital processors on the resulting file, and still
have a 16 bit file at the end.
For real explanations of this, see http://www.digido.com which is the
web sdite for a cd mastering facility.

AT this time, few of the audio software products that work at 20 or 24
bit resolution are accessible, from my understanding.
The platform du jour in this niche has been the Mac, and we all know
where we're at with those guys. We're catching up with the Pc.
though.

I"m sure SOnic solutions and other folks which are mac based are going
to enter the PC. market soon. Let's hope they're better about giving
us some keyboard equivalents of a lot of the mouse stuff.

REgards,

Richard Webb

Electric Spider Productions

Net-Tamer V 1.08.1 - Test Drive



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