You don't need to be an audiophile or into sound engineering to feel the need to use Audio editing software. You can use it for simply cleaning up your tracks, converting bit-depth of your tracks, and getting rid of the annoying pop clicks in the song. Basically, these applications offer a lot more for you to enjoy your music better. Check out how and which applications will let you get the best of your music buds.
Audacity
Publisher: Open Source
File Size: 3MB
Download Link: 1
Audacity is a great tool to have, of course it does have its fair share of drawbacks. But one of the best things about Audacity is that it's free. It's convenient for simple editing or even multi track mixing. To begin with, you can control the bit-depth of your tracks by clicking on Quality and choose between the bit rates depending on what you need to with the edited files. One of the most useful tools that Audacity provides, especially if you're looking to clean your tracks, would be the Draw tool. Through this you can simply zoom into the waveform and alter/re-draw the waveform data to take care of the distortions or pop clicks in your tracks. This level of editing control can usually be found in pro tools.
Audacity is also a good application to for editing sound. Its claim-to-fame here would be the unlimited undo options, so you can always back-trace your steps to start building again. When compared with other freeware audio editing tools, I would always like to mention the number of effects and filters that Audacity offers. For instance, Amplify, bass boost, high pass filter, Echo, delay, click removal etc. One of the reasons why I like Audacity is that it allows you to load VST plugins. This is usually available in professional applications like Dexter Audio editor etc.
You can even align your tracks by using Audacity. You can simply import your tracks and mix them together, with a varying amount of control over them all. Also while importing, you can choose the Import Raw data option to open an uncompressed file format. With a wide range of file support it will surely read almost everything there is. Also while starting a new project you can choose between the sample rate that you wish to use. If you have a fast computer and enough disk space you can select the 32-bit float samples while editing, and is more flexible. 16-bit takes up the least space and is equivalent to audio CD quality. You can even change the pitch without altering the tempo.
Wave Pad
Publisher: NCH Swift Sound
File Size: 387 KB
Download Link: 1
If you have experimented with audio editing software in the past, it's quite likely that you have had your share with Wave Pad. What I like about Wave Pad is that it's a no-frills editing tool, and is very light. It's a full featured sound editor, which allows you to edit your music in a very simple manner. Very recently I used Wave Pad to save some of my old music on cassettes. These songs had a noticeable amount of artifacts; things like white noise, weird snipping sounds, basically a whole lot of glitches. Using Wave Pad I managed to remove a considerable amount of white noise and vocal distortion. If you are looking for an application mainly for this purpose, then Wave Pad comes real handy. Its audio restoration features, although not as broad-based as Audacity, are still worth giving this Wave Pad all the credit for being here in the list. If you believe me on this one, do try out Wave Pad for click pop removal.
Wave Pad allows you to not only record audio but also improve your existing tracks, and at the same time also give you a broad platform to add audio effects. You can amplify, normalize, use reverb, echo and also use it for sample rate conversion. Apart from your regular MP3 and WAV tracks, Wave Pad also supports other file formats like vox, gsm, real audio, au, aif, ogg and even flac. If you want to play around with your tracks, you can even select portions of your songs and add a wide variety of filters and effects. Although the list of effects provided with WavePad isn't as exhaustive as Audacity. It still allows you to have a great amount of control over the effects. One thing missing from WavePad is the preview option before adding the effect. This means you will have to undo the effect if you don't like the way it's done.
WavePad also includes its own CD ripping tool, plus it also works as a decent encoding application. While using WavePad is quite easy, I suggest you read up the help topics if you ever get stuck while doing something. A lot of people I know have shrugged it off saying it's difficult to manage, although in reality WavePad works in a peculiar way. WavePad also supports batch processing with up to 32000 files allowing you to apply effects or convert your files as a single function. This is a very organized and easy to use application, and in the near future when faster broadband connections become a reality in India, we'll see a lot of these coming to use with things like broadcasting your own radio station. In fact, apart from editing sound files to make it broadcast friendly, through Wave Pad you can also make use of its BroadWave Streaming Audio Server.
Wavosaur
Publisher: Open Source
File Size: 183 KB
Download Link: 1
Wavosaur is a basic application and doesn't offer as much as the other two do, but it's a real boon for users who are not comfortable with too many options and are just looking at elementary editing tools. Why I like it is because it's a lightweight editing application that also comes with VST support. Not only this, it also covers support for multitrack audio files, effects and even creating loops. You can work with your files in batch with things like removing silence. One of the most useful bit about this software is the vocal removal preset that goes through music files and removes vocals. This is the simplest way I can suggest to make your own Karaoke tracks, all in a batch. Also it's a standalone executable, so you don't need to install it every time you need to use it on different computers. It comes in a folder that can be easily carried in a let's say a portable drive or a pen drive. Brilliant!!
I use this file mainly if I need to work on all my files in a batch for normalizing and/or amplifying. The way it works will make you want to use Wavosaur more regularly, and it makes for a brilliant companion to worked with other more serious freeware applications like WavePad or Audacity. You can always use the latter two for more serious bit of effects. On a more serious note you can use Wavasaur to resample and bit depth conversion. In fact, if you are keen to go below 16bit, you can even choose 8bit. Wavosaur can import, save and edit loop points & markers informations in wav files. It can even be used to export files as text for using in software such as Matlab, Excel or PSpice.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Top 3 Audio Editing Software
Top 3 Codec Packs
Digital media has come a long way since the early days, when all one had to wonder about was the MP3 format. Today we have to deal with innumerable audio/video formats. The scenario has gotten so bad, that there are 6 versions of one common codec which offer virtually the same functionality i.e. codecs based on the MP4 format. If that was not bad enough, developers often come out with new “version numbers” of an existing codec that will break functionality with older products and cause all sorts of other problems such as garbled video and missing audio.
To combat this, a new breed of software programs commonly called “codec packs” came up. These programs often bundle all the required codec’s into a single installer and combine it with existing media player software. Though this takes the guesswork out of which codec is needed to play a file, it gives arise to another problem. Most users who install these Codec packs are cluttering their systems with software libraries, they will never need. In some cases, these codec packs have actually been known to compromise system stability or cause lockups/slowdowns.
Thankfully all is not lost. A few enthusiasts recognizing these problems came up with well designed installers that only integrate codecs that you will actually require. At the same time many companies who have commercial products in this space, have started offering individual codecs for free of charge use.
Keeping this in mind we have selected 3 different bundles for our feature. The first pack offers just a basic set of codecs for the casual movie watcher. The second pack is a little more comprehensive and offers a wider selection of codecs. It is aimed at the user who regularly watches movies and recreational videos. Our final selection is a mega collection pack. It comes with everything you will ever need and more.
Here is our list:
DivX Codec Pack
Publisher: Divx
File Size:23751 kb
Download Link: 1
This one really needs no introduction. No other codec/format has had such a world-wide impact (outside MP3) on AV players, PMPs, mobile phones and a host of other devices, like DiVx has. So much so, that it is often credited as having ushered in the digital media as a legitimate alternative to TVs, given birth to a whole new era of piracy and led to the creation of DRM and organizations like the MPAA (in America). Furthermore its success has led to industry heavy-weights developing their own competitors in the form of Microsoft’s WMV format, RealVideo from Real Networks and Apple’s QuickTime.
Now in its 6th generation, the current DiVx free package offers support for full HD playback and easy encoding. It offers a free version which is fully backward compliant and can play other MP4 formats too (This is possible by enabling it from within the Directshow Tab). Furthermore it allows dvd authoring now and is fully capable of generating custom menus and author tabs.
Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP)
Publisher : Combined Community Codec Pack
File Size: 6066 Kb
Download link: 1
As content download has become more popular over the years, it has led to the creation of a new
generation of fans who not only appreciate Japanese anime content but take existing works such as Hellsing or Naruto and translate them into the English Language allowing a whole legion of fans to enjoy these works. This practice is simply called “fansubbing”
The CCCP pack was created by people who are active in the “fansubbing” community. It was designed to eliminate a lot of the problems that other codec packs caused by disabling unneeded codecs, be light-weight and flexible by offering a selection of the most commonly used formats and generally be usable by people even with limited technical knowledge.
K-Lite Full Codec Pack
Publisher: Codec info
File Size: 12518
Download link: 1
The grand-daddy of them all, K-Lite codec pack is one of the oldest and generally well-known packs. It offers the largest collection of decoders and as compared to the other packs featured here also comes with a selection of encoders and image resolution “tweakers”. The full codec pack also utilizes Media player classic and is optimized around it.
This pack fills out a variety of roles as it is aimed at the multimedia enthusiast and for people who are either looking into getting into their own encoding or power users who like to customize the viewing quality of a certain codec by means of the various customization programs. It is around this codec pack that freeware encoders such as Virtual Dub have sprung up.
