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Robots for Robots → General Hardware / Software Discussion → Audio editing software recommendation?
I'm currently using Audacity to edit my show, but am looking for something slightly more sophisticated. I'm on a PC. What would you suggest? Don't want something insanely complicated though because I'm a real dummy.
Cheers!
sound forge or wavelab are the two most used audio editors.. but they are not free..
Okay, Computerdisco has put me onto Ableton light. I'm going to try and find a full version around. This is very exciting.
You might be able to find a "free" old version of sonys Acid... its a great program for making music and other stuff like radioshows + it
Lina, I use live lite too but not for radio stuff. The version I have doesn't seem to accept mp3's. One advantage over audacity that live has is that effects like a limiter or a de-esser for vocal tracks can be used in real time instead of applied after the fact. I'm guessing that for a radio show you'd be using the arrage view which is linear as opposed to the session view which is more for improvisation or those dreaded live dj-sets and looks more like musical Excel.
As far as I am aware the Lite version limits you to 8 tracks, 4 fx and 2 vst plugins (external non-live effects or instruments), to me that seems sufficient since the only tracks that would receive effects would be the vocal tracks and maybe the master for some global 'sidechaining' action 
From what I hear, ableton has a really bastard protection system. I had some friends in Paris who had a cracked version and lost all their work when the company caught on.
Otherwise I am curious as to why audacity is not sophisticated enough?
get an old version of cool edit illegaly from the internet (not made anymore).
I used this for radio shows when I was 16, and it was the standard software on radio stations back then.
Would be still today if adobe hadn't bought it and made it a wacko program.
Another alternative would be reaper, costs 60$ and is also a quite intuitive recorder - better get the old 2.0 version than though, the new one added a zillion functions that you wouldn't need.
2nd for reaper. though you never really need to pay for it, waiting 5 seconds for it to let you in is a small(er) price to pay
I want to be able to have presets so I can just apply all the same shit to the vocals every time. Basically I'm just trying to make the process as fast and streamlined as possible so I can pump these out every week. Also it seemed a lot easier in Ableton to move bits around than in Audacity. In Audacity I was trying to figure out how many seconds I needed and added spaces all over the place because I couldn't move stuff.
I just got Ableton because James said he would give me tech support on that one.
Are any of these others (like Reaper) a lot easier? Fast and easy is what I'm looking for. And brilliant.
I used reaper when I was working for a company editing podcasts for the *ahem* economist. loads of built in FX and very intuitive.
It has some weird export features though, which lead a friend of mine to quit mixing anything ever again ever, ever.
It's always a matter of taste and personal way of working you know...I think reaper does have all what you need, but if you feel cosier with ableton just use it. For me it would be weird to have a vertical view when you got long soundfiles, tha's why I suggest it.
Edit
@ Lina, I tried Reaper because it seemed quite powerful but I found it just too confusing and seemed to require a large time investment to become proficient.
@ score 100, the vertical view is not the only one, there is also the arrange view which is linear like Reaper
Those Ableton Bastards, wanting to get paid for their work, pfff
They can do whatever they want with their copy protection but I think that corrupting files created with a cracked version so all the work is lost I think is overkill. I would understand if they disabled features or reset the program to demo but destroying people's work just cos they can doesn't make them that endearable.
Mind you, this was like 4 years ago.
They can do whatever they want with their copy protection but I think that corrupting files created with a cracked version so all the work is lost I think is overkill. I would understand if they disabled features or reset the program to demo but destroying people's work just cos they can doesn't make them that endearable.
Mind you, this was like 4 years ago.
Personally I wouldn't care about how endearing I appeared to people who stole software I wrote. If I could make their computers blow up I'd try to program that in also.
I am fairly sure that the Ableton Live copy-protection is not intentionally programmed to damage any projects.
Yeah, I don't think it's true.. Actually now that I think of it it might be against the law too, I remember a case where a company had distributed fake-cracked versions themselves that had some malicious code that would cause damage to the files.. I think it was concluded that this kind of activity is highly illegal.
I found Live quite good for putting together online radio, I used it a few times for that (Welt am Draht, KinKfm). It's not cheap though and I think it's easy to underestimate how easy it is to get a more natural flow using just two turntables and a mic, straight into a mixer then perhaps set a limiter loose on the result.
Sure you'll make mistakes at times but I feel the occasional mistake is less of a issue than a over-edited and stale final result.
i always made my cosmic space shows with live (5.2, also has mp3 support) and the early cosmic overdrives too. for some reason, recording my voice directly into live gave a hortrible result, while the same settings in sound forge were fine. so i had to import those into live, etc etc.
in the end i decided to go live partly for the fun, but also partly because it was just too much work to do all that editing, tnen rendering to wav, converting to mp3, tagging etc etc every week...
@Skkater & Rude 66, yeah I dunno, maybe I dreamt about that Live horror story.
For some reason my version of Live lite that came with a Novation soundcard does not accept mp3's. For my radio shows, I used to use Audacity on my old computer. I found it great, easy to set the volume, create fades, superimpose shit, the only weakness for me was that fx were not realtime. Now I use garageband which allows for realtime effects and has pretty much the same functionality as Audacity for this particular purpose.
it was just too much work to do all that editing, tnen rendering to wav, converting to mp3, tagging etc etc every week...
Pfff, you youngsters, in my day we would do it all by splicing tape using kitchen knives and whale-bone glue. Then the tape would be digitised to punchcards and I'd have to put all of those on a ox-card to go to the next village where there was a morse-station. From there it would be send, bit by bit to the "radio station". If halfway through you'd get a request by carrier pidgin you'd have to start all over again! Back then "pidgin eaters" was the slang term for DJ's who didn't do requests, they were frowned on.
Oh, and everybody only had "golden oldies" shows because by the time the music was broadcasted it would be out of date, the only popular DJ's were people who could predict retro fads a long time in advance.
You have no idea how easy you have it now.
@Skkater & Rude 66, yeah I dunno, maybe I dreamt about that Live horror story.
For some reason my version of Live lite that came with a Novation soundcard does not accept mp3's. For my radio shows, I used to use Audacity on my old computer. I found it great, easy to set the volume, create fades, superimpose shit, the only weakness for me was that fx were not realtime. Now I use garageband which allows for realtime effects and has pretty much the same functionality as Audacity for this particular purpose.
Live Lite only takes Wavs or aifs. you only get 4 channels and 2 fx at any time. But its free so what the hey.
Lina is using a PC so we decided to give Lite a try as she got it free with her audio card. Live wins out on quick arrangement of the audio. But having to bounce all the Mp3's to wav is a pain. I am hoping we grab a full copy of Live 6 or 7 soon. When we have that in place we'll set up "set and foget" vocal processing to make the whole job as easy as possible.
As Lina dosen't have decks, and limited time to record the show, I think this is currently the best work flow.
And for my 2pence worth I think we should all go back to Cylinders... http://www.phonographcylinders.com non of this terrible plastic nonsense.
I got a copy of the full version (for the time being). A lot of it is SO much easier to do than in Audacity. Other parts, not so much. James showed me enough to bang out a show so at least there's something to put on air tomorrow. 
get an old version of cool edit illegaly from the internet (not made anymore).
I used this for radio shows when I was 16, and it was the standard software on radio stations back then.
Would be still today if adobe hadn't bought it and made it a wacko program.
Another alternative would be reaper, costs 60$ and is also a quite intuitive recorder - better get the old 2.0 version than though, the new one added a zillion functions that you wouldn't need.
I use adobe audition and i still think it's a ruler..no problem with it at all..filters are the snitz if you ask me..
Even the interface is still the same/similar to cooleditpro (?).
Check this out: http://podcast-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
Anyone tried Propaganda?
Ive been using Cool Edit/Audition for many years now. Eversince I made an intership at a radio station. Cool Edit was the standart software at many radios around here.
I use wavelab... handy for presets and so on. Most functions in it have been optimised now. There's nothing where i think 'why the hell did they do this to work that way?'. Except it won't rip audio off DVDs which is a pain, but I think that's a copy protection thing.
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