ben m
Joined: 15 Sep 2002
Posts: 337
Location: UK |
| Week 4 - Practical |
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Ok, firstly, this practical is only of secondary importance - the questions are your priority!
What we are asking for this week is an evaluation of at least one, although preferably tw, pieces of software.
The reason 2 pieces is preferable is that your evaluation can then compare the features and usability of the 2 pieces.
The first piece of software is Wave Repair which Chris has secured a special Audio Courses licence for;
http://www.audiocourses.com/postt494.html
The second piece of software should be an audio editor of your choice - many of you have Goldwave already so this may be an easy option.
I have posted a link to other pieces of software in the Chill Out area;
http://www.audiocourses.com/postp1564.html#1564
So, what should you be looking at?
Usability
- this is important in terms of efficiency and productivity. An engineer would prefer software that is intuitive and easy to use with all major functions quickly and easily reached.
Capabilities
- this encompasses the features of the software as well as the restrictions. Things to look at here may include supported file types and editing modes. This was touched on in the workshop. You should use your initiative to cover the areas that you feel are relevant to the pc-based engineer.
Requirements
- What kind of PC specs are required and does the program run smoothly with no crashes etc
Please post your evaluations in this thread, as well as any questions.
Good Luck.
ben m
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ben@audiocourses.com |
Tue Sep 23, 2003 3:35 am |
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julesf
Joined: 31 Aug 2003
Posts: 58
Location: Southampton, UK |
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Project week 4
Sample editor software review
Wave Repair Vs the onboard Cubase VST 5/32 Wave editor.
Let the battle commence!
Due to the heavy work load this week I am going to give a brief review of "Wave Repair" and compare it to the editor in Cubase VST 5/32 which is the one that I usually use.
I found the download and install very easy and straightforward with no fuss. This is quite refreshing, as you never can be quite sure what will happen when you click on that "Install" icon. The initial look of the main panel is at first quite confusing due to the large array of short cut icons, however flick through the associated menus manually and things look much clearer. The very explicit descriptions of the various functions from the drop downs make selection of the right tool for the job very quick and easy. I loaded in my "Classical edit" project from week 3 as I knew that there was a nasty click there that I could not re-draw using the cubase editor. Here I spotted immediately the lack of MP3 support, which is a bit of a shame but not a showstopper. I found the marker system very good and you can mark on the fly by hitting the spacebar at any time, a useful feature. However the lack of a scrub facility such as the one in Cubase I really missed. This for me is the easiest way of detecting and marking a problem area. I first tried to redraw the spiked samples but found that this was not possible as there appears to be no way to do this. Then I tried to locate the spike and erase it, I like the way that you can zoom right in to the waveform and you guy's that use some of the other editors are probably used to this, but you don't get that sort of zooming on the Cubase editor. Having zoomed right in on the waveform I could not spot the problem and was unable to remove it, it would seem that you can only do this by fade out or silencing the guilty samples. Next the De-clicker tool, well we don't have one of these in Cubase but I have used one before called Dart CD recorder, Ok it's not pro but I have had some success with it in the past. These de-clickers are Ok to a point and this is the best one that I have seen, however after using it for about an hour I could not remove that nasty click at the beginning of the project and gave up. 8O I like the normalise which I have in Cubase and other software and this one worked well. The compressor is easy to use and subtle as is the Equaliser. After a while a kind of felt that I could be happy to use this software as my mastering stage. The mixer section is quite interesting and the voice reduction system that has little use to most of us actually removed my voice completely (bonus some might say after Sunday)  . It seems to work best on a dry vocal that is dead centre in the mix. I guess that this is because it works on phase cancelling and any stereo reverb or effect on the vocal wont cancel. Noise reduction and other tools all seem to work, as you would expect.
Summary.
I found Wave Repair to be a very flexible, useful tool with excellent stability on the PC platform. Some of the tools are more powerful than others, but all are up to a pretty high standard. The software is well thought out and nicely laid out making it easy and fairly quick to use.
Cubase allows you to steer editing to a third party editor instead of the packaged one, the question is would I substitute Wave Repair for my Cubase editor? Well no I wouldn't, there are good and bad features in each but the lack of "scrub" which I use all of the time would be a big negative for me. Perhaps this is a feature that the programmers could consider in future versions. I think may be more work could be done to the de-clicker if this is possible but these are not perfect tools for all situations as a rule. I would use Wave Repair for my mastering stage as I am using the editor bundled with Nero Burning Rom which is definitely worth a look but does not include a de-clicker at all. Using Wave Repair has wetted my appetite quite a bit and made me wonder if I should be now looking to shell out some proper money for a more professional editor with mastering tools. But if you are starting, out or don't have an editor or wave clean up software then wave Repair could be exactly what you need.
Disclaimer
If I have made mistakes regarding the tools in wave repair and it is capable of doing something that I have said it is not, then I apologise and please correct me. I challenge any of the cohort to take my classical edit from the FTP site and remove that click without deteriorating the sound quality in any way. I have uploaded a new mix that sounds better and has taken on board some of Chris's comments.
Julesf 
Last edited by julesf on Mon Sep 29, 2003 3:38 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Sun Sep 28, 2003 9:32 pm |
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AUdIoCoUrSeS
Joined: 31 Oct 2002
Posts: 2014
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| Clean and Punchy |
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Julesf
Good stuff your mp3 is of much higher quality at the start, good job. You got a clip in there though on the left channel at 17.700 on the "M" of Mozart. Could be the software you use not picking this up, which is another great reason for investing in a quality product. I still rate Sound Forge higher than anything else. (no gimmicks, quality algorithms).
Still need to loose that silence (at start) on anything for radio. 
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It's all in the ears. - Learn the concepts not the software.
Audio Courses is a way into the music business for you
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Sun Sep 28, 2003 11:04 pm |
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