Existing users, 
Every upgrade adds 1 or 2 tiny features, almost
as if it's just a way to bump it up in versiontracker
awareness, without really making significant changes.
Audacity gives me whatever speed I want at equal sound
quality plus waveforms that give a sense of the music
dynamics while playing back. Or Soundhack allows much
more flexibility / audio quality in examining nuances
of what the original player did. Both are free. Hard
to justify such a high price for ASD given those TRULY
amazing systems.
Also, I don't actually want to do play the CD---I'd
rather transfer it to hard disk so it doesn't wear my
laptop battery down as fast. That "feature" does not
help mobile users.
Amazing Slow Downer
Slow down music with no pitch change.
Version: 3.2.6
still a puzzle after all these years
Feedback Type: Review
Contributed by: mickmcq Tuesday, February 27 2007 @ 03:28 PM PST
Product Platform: MacOSX
Used Product For: Less than a month
Recommend Product: NO
Overall Rating:
Ease of Use:
Support:
Features:
Quality / Stability:
Price:
Comments
still a puzzle after all these years - pg99--2008
what's "still a puzzle after all these years" is why you continue to post negative reviews of a product that does exactly what it says, based on:1. the fact that it has features that you don't need. well, other users do need and use those features. why is that a problem for you?
2. false claims that other product provide the same functionality. NONE of the other products you are touting provide REAL-TIME change of speed and pitch, which is much more useful and convenient for many applications of speed-change software: learning music, rehearsals, and more. i use amazing x every week at a dance rehearsal, and the ability to change speed up or down instantly, in real time, at the click of a mouse is invaluable. again, this feature may not be useful to you, but it is to me and many others - why does that deserve a negative review?
and - i've compared the quality of slow-down of music by amazing x with the other programs on music (which is what i use it for). amazing x is far superior.
but, that's not to knock those other programs. they are great at what they are - sound editing programs. they have a different purpose, and have features that amazing x doesn't have, and vice versa. comparing them is pointless, and counter-productive.
i'd been using some of the programs you mention, and others, for years to slow down music. it was always inconvenient, and the quality wasn't very good. but, they were the best options at the time. when amazing x came out, i bought it immediately (after evaluating it to verify that it did what it claimed), and have never regretted it. it keeps getting better and better - the developer keeps adding useful functionality (not just fluff), and provides very good support.
Thursday, March 15 2007 @ 09:55 PM PDT
still a puzzle after all these years - Roni Music
Mr. mickmcq,
During the last five years you have made five comments on VersionTracker about Amazing Slow Downer, each time with a positive attitude for Audacity and SoundHack and a negative for ASD. Since you have written so many comments about ASD, you seem to care about the software?
So I would like to correct you somewhat:
1. I constantly work on ASD to improve it, add new features, correct bugs etc. Every now and then I release updates which are posted on www.ronimusic.com so that existing and new customers can download them. It seems VersionTracker is monitoring my site, updates always show up there within a day or so. That's a very good service but it's not why I release updates.
2. Audacity and SoundHack are two great and free software that are completely different to ASD, although their use overlap somewhat - they are all music software. Now, if one compare the sound quality, no-one can claim that they have equal sound quality when changing the speed of audio. Audacity uses the WSOLA (waveform-similarity-based synchronized overlap-add) algorithm that produces high-quality speech output, for music it sounds terrible, especially for larger slow down factors. SoundHack uses a standard phase vocoder algorithm originally invented in the late thirties, described by J.L. Flanagan in an article 1966. Mark Dolson wrote an article about it 1986 (Computer Music Journal Volume 10, Number 4) which made the phase vocoder more widely known. Since then a lot of new research has been done, especially during the last five years and the phase vocoder sound quality have developed a lot. ASD incorporates all the latest phase vocoder technology and the sound quality is quite astonishing. Also, SoundHack is an old PPC application that doesn't seem to be developed anymore. Btw, did I mention that ASD is doing the speed change in real-time?
3. I don't really understand how a feature you do not want to use could be a problem? (ASD work with CD's as well as most types of audio files).
If you don't want a feature in a software, just don't use it. I assume there are many, many features in Audacity and SoundHack that you never use, would that be a problem?
Rolf Nilsson / developer of ASD
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Wednesday, March 07 2007 @ 04:57 AM PST