Anyone know any good audio editors for mixes?

[benyamean]

My hard drive died a lil bit ago, and I lost Wavelab. I fucked around with Audacity, not a fan. I tried Nero, not too straight forward. I looked to see where to buy Wavelab locally and didn't have much luck. I only need it for editing mixes (normalizing etc.) I am not bothered paying for it either (within reason lol).

Thanks,

Ben

[-evil-duerr-]

i use soundforge 6.0 .. i believe it was the last version before sony bought the rights to the product and tainted the future versions. works like a charm. simple to use. sounds great. great for editing mixtapes.

[ebbomega]

I really want to try out Reload (by Propellerhead). The preliminary reviews for it are quite good.

Soundforge has withstood the test of time and is pretty much the industry standard, and everything audacity wishes it was.

[dj_soo]

Originally Posted by ebbomega

I really want to try out Reload (by Propellerhead). The preliminary reviews for it are quite good.

Soundforge has withstood the test of time and is pretty much the industry standard, and everything audacity wishes it was.

um, there's a major difference between a professional piece of programming and an open-source solution distributed for free.

you do sort of get what you pay for.

[ebbomega]

^ I agree. I'm basically saying that Soundforge is what Audacity tries to be but gets nowhere near.

The thing about FOSS is that it needs to get to a certain point before it really can be a valid replacement. But once it hits that point, it raises the standard for all other commercial players in the field. Just look at how Firefox pushed Microsoft to finally have standards compatibility and not break the internet. That took like 7 years of development and a TON of commercial support before it became a standard. And the linux kernel is starting to take the embedded market by storm.

There are still a ton of projects that are nowhere near their commercial counterparts, and who knows if they ever will be - Amarok (at least since v2 it's gone severely downhill), GIMP, Audacity, Pidgin, etc.

[dabbler]

soundforge all the way, but only an option if you are on a PC (I think)

[benyamean]

Right on, thanks for the info guys. I used to use Soundforge as well at my friends house a while back, definately easy and straightforward to use.

[benyamean]

Btw I don't need this for recording, I use a zoom for that. I am just using it to normalize etc.

[inside]

using a limiter sounds better to pump up/level your mix.....

[dabbler]

^ rarely does it work better. manually leveling the mix throughout, based on the actual perceived volume works the best, and allows you the most flexibility to get it as loud as possible for every tune - without having sections distorted for clipping against a limiter

[inside]

Originally Posted by dabbler

^ rarely does it work better. manually leveling the mix throughout, based on the actual perceived volume works the best, and allows you the most flexibility to get it as loud as possible for every tune - without having sections distorted for clipping against a limiter

if you set up the limiter correctly it prevents clipping, but if the threshold is too agressive you flatten the dynamic range and will raise the noise floor causing unwanted distortion.

it does work better than using the normaliz preset in Sound Forge.

[ebbomega]

^ Using presets rarely works as good as manually tweaking in any case.

[dabbler]

by definition a limiter will either clip your file / or do the exact same thing as normalizing. there is nothing in between!? :/

[rawb]

tape deck and some rca's

[-evil-duerr-]

Originally Posted by dabbler

^ rarely does it work better. manually leveling the mix throughout, based on the actual perceived volume works the best, and allows you the most flexibility to get it as loud as possible for every tune - without having sections distorted for clipping against a limiter

word dabbler knows whatsup... someone told me a good way to do it is load the mix up into a DAW program like cubase,ableton etc and draw in event automation for the volume to compensate for large level discrepancies. If you rely on a limiter to fix the major level differences you're gonna end up with some nasty distortion which really doesn't sound any better then inconsistent volume. you're just trading one bad sound for another bad sound that way.

[dabbler]

normally when I master a mix, either mine or a friends - i spend about 12 hours for a one hour mix, going over every last second of the mix several times. increasing the volume of quiet breakdowns, fixing L/R mix in tracks that were mastered poorly or played with a bad needle. fixing the spikes that happen when two tracks are being played at the same time full frequency, etc etc. I would suggest this is the best way, but definitely the hardest.

[dabbler]

basically the issue to fix is - every track is different. every track is played at a different volume level in a mix because of many reasons. and in the middle of a mix of two songs - every 1-4 bars needs to be mastered differently. every beat if the DJ was having issues during the mix (like bringing the new tune in too suddenly, and correcting by pulling it back out a bit) all of these things can be smoothed out with care and attention. NONE of them can be smoothed out by a limiter, compressor or normalizing.

[inside]

Originally Posted by dabbler

normally when I master a mix, either mine or a friends - i spend about 12 hours for a one hour mix, going over every last second of the mix several times. increasing the volume of quiet breakdowns, fixing L/R mix in tracks that were mastered poorly or played with a bad needle. fixing the spikes that happen when two tracks are being played at the same time full frequency, etc etc. I would suggest this is the best way, but definitely the hardest.

that's intence.

[dabbler]

definitely, but if you listen to my recent mixes (9.5 is the best example) or look at the wave file in soundforge, you will see what I mean. but it's really not for the faint of heart/lazy

[inside]

Originally Posted by dabbler

definitely, but if you listen to my recent mixes (9.5 is the best example) or look at the wave file in soundforge, you will see what I mean. but it's really not for the faint of heart/lazy

At the same time it does have to do with what kind of tracks your playing. In your case there can be a huge difference in levels/dynamics (old school jungle/newer tech&liquid).

I find that playing newer stuff, all have the same perception of loudness/level makes it easier to get away with just using a limiter to pump up/level the mix.