[Veltliner]

I record sounds and dialogues with a digital sound recorder.

I'd like to edit them, isolating particular sounds or sound effects I need.

Which application would be best suited to do that? Is there any decent freeware available to do so?

Can you also edit songs from a CD this way ( e.g. edit out a minute and a half applause at the beginning of a CD).

[CharlesS]

Audacity is the best freeware application you will find for this. There are a number of pretty good shareware apps out there as well.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Audacity is the best freeware application you will find for this. There are a number of pretty good shareware apps out there as well.

Thanks!

By the way: my sound recorder produces WAV files, with the option of converting them to AIFF.

Both are uncompressed formats.

But I don't know about WAV, but know AIFF.

1. Do you lose quality by converting?

2. Does it make sense?

[CharlesS]

WAV and AIFF are both uncompressed formats. They're functionally equivalent, and converting between them won't hurt the quality at all, although there's very little reason to do it (unless some program only reads one or the other. I think Audacity does both WAV and AIFF, though). WAV and AIFF do pretty much the same thing.

[zro]

If all you're doing is cropping them, you can do that with iTunes by setting the start and stop time in the track info window. You'll then need to re-encode them to make a new file that is just that bit of audio.

[CharlesS]

Frankly, I think just doing it with Audacity is easier.

[Thinine]

Fission is a good shareware option to do this.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by zro 

If all you're doing is cropping them, you can do that with iTunes by setting the start and stop time in the track info window. You'll then need to re-encode them to make a new file that is just that bit of audio.

I have done that, but it doesn't give you enough control to set the edit point correctly.

[analogika]

Actually, you can set the edit point to within a hundredth of a second - the entry field does two places behind the decimal point.

[CharlesS]

Yeah, but with an audio editor like Audacity you can actually look at the sound wave itself, zoom way in on it, and see visually the exact spot where you want to cut it off.

[analogika]

True.

OTOH, a learning curve is a learning curve, and sufficient is sufficient.

[CharlesS]

True. However, I think that the iTunes method has more of a learning curve. The way to do this with iTunes is confusing, kludgey, and not intuitive at all. It feels like you're working around the app to make it do something it was never intended to do, which actually is exactly what you're doing. With iTunes, you have to import the file into iTunes, duplicate it, experiment with playing and stopping the file until you get the number of minutes and seconds where you want to split the track, write down those numbers, find the "Start Time" and "Stop Time" options in the obscure nether regions of iTunes' Info window, set them appropriately for your two files, convert both files to another format, and then delete the original files. I dare anyone to figure that out on their own without someone telling him/her about it (I sure wouldn't have discovered this method on my own).

With an audio editor, it's a lot more intuitive - just select the bit you want, copy, paste into a new file, export to MP3/WAV/whatever. All metaphors which most people will recognize from other programs. Audacity even has an "Export Selection" menu item so you can cut down the number of steps even further - select, export, you're done.

[zro]

I'm not recommending iTunes, just putting it out there that it is possible.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

WAV and AIFF are both uncompressed formats. They're functionally equivalent, and converting between them won't hurt the quality at all, although there's very little reason to do it (unless some program only reads one or the other. I think Audacity does both WAV and AIFF, though). WAV and AIFF do pretty much the same thing.

I just found out the original file format is WMA.

Is this also uncompressed?

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Actually, you can set the edit point to within a hundredth of a second - the entry field does two places behind the decimal point.

But it's hard to get to the right spot. If I want to cut right after a certain note, or sound, I need the ability to set an index mark.

[Veltliner]

I just downloaded Audacity.

I have never used Garage Band so far, but I wonder how the sound editing abilities of these two applications compare...

[DCJ001]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

I just downloaded Audacity.

I have never used Garage Band so far, but I wonder how the sound editing abilities of these two applications compare...

I predict a CharlesS response.

[CharlesS]

^ What was that for?

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

I just found out the original file format is WMA.

Is this also uncompressed?

Oh... that's bad. WMA is not only compressed, but proprietary. It will not be handled by Audacity, iTunes, or any other apps you are likely to be using. If it is unprotected, you may be able to convert it to AIFF using EasyWMA (EasyWMA 2.7.7 - MacUpdate), but if it is copy-protected you may be stuck.

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

I just downloaded Audacity.

I have never used Garage Band so far, but I wonder how the sound editing abilities of these two applications compare...

GarageBand is more of a multitrack mixer than an audio editing app. It can do basic stuff like splitting an audio track, but Audacity is going to have a lot more audio editing features.

[analogika]

If you have the QuickTime plug-in from Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime® components installed (free), you *might* be able to directly edit the WMA and export it.

[CharlesS]

Huh, Perian does WMA? I didn't know that. Does it do a better job than Flip4Mac?

I tried it with Flip4Mac, which I have installed - I still can't get iTunes to import the files, but I am able to get other applications that use QuickTime to open .wma and convert it without any watermarking (I tried Amadeus Pro and QTAmateur). Unfortunately, Audacity doesn't use QuickTime, being a cross-platform app, won't be able to open the .wma, but if you used QTAmateur with either Perian or Flip4Mac installed to convert it to AIFF first, it could work. It probably won't work if the file is copy-protected, though.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

^ What was that for?


Oh... that's bad. WMA is not only compressed, but proprietary. It will not be handled by Audacity, iTunes, or any other apps you are likely to be using. If it is unprotected, you may be able to convert it to AIFF using EasyWMA (EasyWMA 2.7.7 - MacUpdate), but if it is copy-protected you may be stuck.


GarageBand is more of a multitrack mixer than an audio editing app. It can do basic stuff like splitting an audio track, but Audacity is going to have a lot more audio editing features.

Actually, the provided Olympus css player software could do a conversion to aiff.

But I guess that some applications do it better than others, and I'll add your conversion software to my software collection, thank you CharlesS.

Audacity opened the converted aiff files, no problem.

It'll take me some time to wade through all of Audacity's features, but it's truly interesting application, and I love seeing the sound in images, so I can better see where to cut.

[Veltliner]

I just wonder what the hell Olympus was thinking to let its DS2 digital recorder record in wma?

When I looked for a voice recorder I checked download capability to the mac (which many voice recorders don't offer)...

Well, now I know at least why those recordings never sound truly clean, even though the reproduction when using a Sennheiser mic is pretty good.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

Actually, the provided Olympus css player software could do a conversion to aiff.

But I guess that some applications do it better than others, and I'll add your conversion software to my software collection, thank you CharlesS.

Hehe, I didn't write any of that WMA converting software. I was just trying to point out some solutions for you. I didn't know that the Olympus software was able to convert the WMA files to AIFF.

Have fun with your audio editing.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Have fun with your audio editing.

Thanks. I will.

[timmerk]

I like the shareware app: Sound Studio 3

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by timmerk 

I like the shareware app: Sound Studio 3

Looks good. But it also looks like it costs 79$.

[Marc Speth]

Well, I have been using Sound Studio for about two years, and a couple months ago I had a friend ask about a freeware audio editor. That's when I found Audacity.

When I tried out Audacity myself my first reaction was "Yuck! it works but it's clunky and makes you jump through hoops to get anything done." I also didn't like the way it displays the audio and controls. But to be fair, for a free program it does pretty darned good.

It just boils down to "you get what you pay for." For the price, Audacity works just fine. But once you try out Sound Studio (you can download a free demo to test drive) and use it for an hour or so you'll see what your missing with Audacity.

And when you combine Sound Studio with Flip4Mac there is no conversion of WMA needed. Sound Studio just loads the file and lets you get to work on it seamlessly. And then when you are ready to save your edit you can either save it as WMA again or you can do a 'save as' to save it in any of a dozen formats including AIFF, AIFC, OGG, MP3 etc.

So besides being a very nice audio editor that can do everything you've discussed, it also functions as a format converter. What more could you ask?

I highly recommend that you download the demo of Sound Studio (it sounds like you have the web address, but just in case you don't Freeverse: Apps: Sound Studio 3 ) and try it out. You'll see the difference and probably agree that it's well worth the price they are asking.

[CharlesS]

For something that's a little cheaper than Sound Studio, there's Amadeus Pro. I have this one, and it seems to work pretty well, although Sound Studio looks like it'd probably be better. It does open all the formats QuickTime supports though, including WMA if you have Flip4Mac installed.