User Profile for gdwright

Fission 1.5.2 (Mac OS X)

Excellent, but something to consider  

Fission is a world class lossless audio editing product that does what it says it will do - elegantly. The same can be said for the recording software from the same developers - AudioHiJack Pro, which I also highly recommend. With these two shareware applications I can now record audio with or without a number of excellent effects. I can now edit my recordings: split or join tracks, normalize levels, cut out unwanted content, fade in and fade out, and convert an audio file to a limited selection of other audio file formats. But to complete the bigger picture, here is what I still can't do: post process or batch process audio files. So if you go the Rogue Amoeba route as I have done, you will discover the filters and effects which most developers have included in their audio EDITOR were instead built into the RECORDER - so your editor is pretty limited. Say you want to lower the pitch of a voice recording and add a little reverb to give your podcast more punch - your editor is not going to help - Fission does not support these effects, and according to Rogue Amoeba, probably never will. Your only option if you want to apply the effects will be to re-record it in real time. So, after buying AudioHiJackPro and Fission, I find myself shopping for yet another audio editing program - which will support post-processing, and will also duplicate most of the function of the shareware I have already paid for (although perhaps not as elegantly). Not only is the cost of buying 3 shareware applications getting up there, but it's more work to learn 3 applications and keep them updated. My point is, I really enjoy using the two Rogue Amoeba audio programs, but I'm wondering if I might not have been better off to start with one full featured semi-pro application rather than two or three low cost, but limited apps? Any suggestions? [alert admin]

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Friday, January 25 2008 @ 12:00 AM PST

ClickRepair 2.2 (Mac OS X)

Excellent product - good value!  

First impression, based on very limited use:

I have spent countless hours using CD Spin Doctor, various effects filters, and SoundSoap2, trying to clean up the minor pops and crackles from recordings of my not-so-terrible vinyl LPs. Up until now, everything I tried which had any (limited) success in reducing the unwanted noise also degraded the overall recording. That is, the brilliance and clarity of the recording were harmed, and while the pops and crackles may have been reduced, they were still audible to an annoying degree. Not only were the software products I've tried less than successful, but they were also time consuming to configure, requiring much experimentation to find the right combination of settings.

Well no more! Using the "Default LP" setting, ClickRepair was able to clean my LP recordings far, far better than everything I have tried up until now! I played back my raw recording and the repaired version, using a separate QuickTime window for each file. When monitored through pretty good headphones (Sennheiser HD 485s), switching between the two versions, the only difference I could hear was the almost complete absence of all pops, crackles, and even faint "static" on the repaired version. With zero user-defined configuration!

Apparently, some kinds of music are harder to repair than others - there is another default setting called "Brass" so maybe I was just lucky to pick an LP without a lot of brass ("Lord of the Rings" by Bo Hansson - has many low-volume passages where noise can easily be heard, and enough cymbals to know I wasn't knocking the edge off). There are several sliders and options which I have not yet played with, but my first experience gave me such good results, I did not feel the need to try the other settings.

I only wish I had discovered ClickRepair before I spent $100 on SoundSoap2. Actually, SS2 has been somewhat useful to me for cleaning tape hiss, recorder motor noise, and microphone wind-noise, but for LP vinyl noise I have found ClickRepair to be vastly superior. [alert admin]

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Friday, September 07 2007 @ 10:12 PM PDT

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