My name is Joseph Watt and I am the owner of Razormaid Productions, a professional remix service for Dance Music worldwide. I was one of the original members of the Digidesign testing team back in 1986, that helped mold and shape Sound Designer II into the timeless entity that is was. It held the prestigious honor of being "the best of the best" for nearly two decades. Unfortunately, back in 1997 when lawsuits froze it in time forever, we thought that was the end. When Apple took the leap to UNIX and Digidesign had no way to alter the program (as terms of the lawsuit settlement) we thought our days were numbered... and the were.

In September of 2006, through VersionTracker, I discovered a little program called Wave Editor. Keep in mind, like hundreds of you, I too has taken in financially by programs like Spark and Peak, with promises of things it just could not do, so I was skeptical when I first downloaded the free 15 trial version of WE (Wave Editor). (In Peak's case even today after numerous attempts by me to offer to help them "get it right" they have done nothing after 4 revisions of their software).

While I waited for WE to download, I read a bit about the programmers, through their online bios. When I saw the phrase, "We wrote this program to pay homage to Sound Designer II"... I knew instantly I found the right program... or so I thought.

My first reaction to the free download was not a good one. When I went to the pulldown menu's, expecting to see all the same things I had in SDII, it hardly had anything at all. Even the preference window only had the option to change the sound wave's color. What's up with that? I mean, despite it's obvious flaws, even the dreadful PEAK program had similar "phrases" to SDII, so I was about to bail on this program. Before I did, I wrote to the programmers to ask them what part of WE did they pay homage to SDII with, 'cause I can't find it. <lol> I received an immediate response - I mean like 2 seconds later! In fact, they wanted to call me right then and there, at 6:00am my time. Now THAT'S customer service.

Keep in mind, this was version 1.1 which I noticed a few reviews on here that were not that positive, probably because they were expecting one thing, but saw another... just like me.

When the programmers, Matthew and Ev, walked me through the Keystrokes Window, (the guts of the program) I was completely blown away. What they had written was a program with extremely limited tools "turned on" out of the box, allowing the user to customize 100's of WE's tools, through the Keystrokes WIndow. Basically, all of us get to pretend we're programmers and assign the tools whatever keystroke we want. What a blast!!

This was the coolest thing I ever saw! Not only can you remix for the first time since 1997, EXACTLY like SDII (with the right combination of keystrokes turned on) but it goes WAAAAY beyond that.

I can't stress enough that at first glance, clicking the pull down menu's, you will be somewhat disappointed, but that is due to the programmer's insistence of having WE "stay out of your way" while using it. For those of you who wish to take the time to setup the keystrokes to your exact specifications - this will be "a dream come true" program. For those of you who want to click on things immediately with the same results as SDII, this will be a little frustrating, as it was for me. (We now have a custom Razormaid Setup installer that will turn on everything you need, to get the SDII experience, right off the bat. Write to me and I will send it to you free of charge.)

After contacting them on several follow up phone calls, Matthew and Ev began making a few changes, allowing the user a few more options "from the get go", to thwart off any critics that may see nothing right off the bat, like I did and say, "This thing can't do Jack"... and from their perspective, they would be correct. With these adjustments, like having the Keystrokes Pallet launch upon opening WE, curiosity will indeed take over, leaving the Cat alive. (Referring to the old adage, curiosity usually killed the cat, but in this case it will not <haha>) You will begin to click on things and VOILA!... hundreds of tools that were not there just moments earlier and now functioning and to YOUR particular needs.

One other thing that I did personally, once they had a version I felt comfortable about, I placed in our own company website, a series of small training videos, that range from 2 minutes to 10 minutes in length. I used these to bring my own staff up to speed, here at Razormaid. I decided to leave the vids on our web site and give the "back door" access to anyone that takes the time to read this review. Within minutes, just like me, these videos will not only bring you up to speed, but will in fact reveal hundreds of hidden tools, that I'm not sure even the programmers know about. <grin>

These videos are not part of Wave Editor or associated with Audiofile-Engineering at all, so if you have questions about them, you need to write to me, not them. They were intended to be seen "in house" by our production staff only, so they are quite real and VERY "raw". We were in fact training someone while we made them, so the questions are real and so are the situations presented in each video.

The address for those who would like it is: http://razormaid.com/Training

My hat's off to Matthew and Ev. They set out to "remake" SDII and they did so much more.

Imagine being able to Time Shift with the accuracy of Time Factory (a $499.00 program from Prosoniq), but it's included FREE in WE's processor window. Or be able to overlay the beginning of one song, onto the end of another song (like live DJ'ing) using their LAYERS option. You can even "force align" the same two songs to 1000th accuracy, using the same Time Shift program found free in WE.

One of my favorite tools is the built-in 31 band Equalizer. None of this 5 and 10 band junk from SDII and Peak. This is a full sized, full band EQ. In addition to our other duties here at Razormaid, we also double as a mastering facility for many of the major record labels. They do not necessarily want us to remix everything (they can't afford me), but they DO want our sound. Using SDII, to process EQ (5 bands at a time) would take about 6 minutes per pass. With WE, I can EQ the same exact song, with one click of a button and it takes about 20 seconds That's seconds... not minutes!!

There's WAAAY to much stuff to mention in this review, without it being edited back by the administrator of this site, so feel free to jump to our business web site, click on the training vids I made and get ready to be dazzled, BIG TIME!

A big thanks to Matthew and Ev who took the time to "get it right".

Joseph Watt
Razormaid Productions
Contact E-mail: razrmaid@aol.com