Everybody has a favorite or default audio editor they are using at their station or studio. The most vocal radio production users are those devoted to Cool Edit/Audition, Pro Tools and - on the budget side of things - Audacity.
But when it comes to cutting and mixing audio programming that runs longer than 1 minute or so, the waters get a little murkier. Unless you are using MIDI or mixing a bazillion tracks, ProTools is overkill. Audacity's multitrack environment is still clunky, and the program has to translate audio files into its own proprietary form to get any work done. And as popular as Cool Edit is, its time is ending as Windows XP is being sunsetted in favor of Win7. Audition is just flat-out expensive compared to its predecessor.
My own requirement is that I can successfully record programs that are up to an hour in length, edit these, then be able to do a multitrack mix to add opening and closing themes, bumps etc.; and not worry about skips, lost audio, files too large to work with and crashing.
I'd like to dangle the following question to the forum in hopes of getting reasonable and rational responses: What DAW or editor - free or paid for - do you find useful at your facility for long-form programs?
Have you worked with any of the following programs or can suggest others:
SAWStudio
Ardour
Traverso
Reaper
Jokosher
Your input is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Back when our video/audio studio centered on the Amiga Computer platform, our number one D.A.W. was Sample Wrench, which since has migrated to the Windows PC and, along with Audacity, that's what we use at KDX.
I don't know, RollingValley, how long "long form programming" is, but my programs are often 1-hour, and there is no problem with these editors.
Of course plenty of RAM and disk space is mandatory.
Also, we don't publish multi-track, but we do use multi-track for mix-downs of voice, music and sound.
Try the demo
http://www.dissidents.com/products.htm
SAW STUDIO, now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
Way back in '94-'96 my boys had a band which gave dad a reason to put together a recording studio. Since I was the geek roadie for my buddy's band when I was a kid and recorded them, it was perfect.
The short story is that I had a Windows 3.11 PC and found a free demo by SAW, the same people. It would do 4 track editing and for its day, worked pretty well.
I used that demo for a very long time (with its limitations) until I saw it on closeout for $99.
Gradually we ramped up the studio to what it is today (MILES ROBERT AUDIO). I upgraded to Cool Edit Pro and when Syntrillium sold it to Adobe, I upgraded to Adobe Audition and then Audition 3.
The boys grew up, the band dried up and dad still has his studio. No plans to go Windows 7 anytime soon so Audition will keep on keepin' on.
I use Adobe Audition for anything audio on The Crow.
From the Id's to recording the shows I do.
I even use it to clean up noisy records.
I've used Goldwave since the 90's. Simple and sweet.
They also have Multiquence, which they call a remarkably flexible multitrack digital audio and video mixing program".
Trials available at goldwave.com. I bought it back in the 90's and have never payed for an upgrade! Not bad for a $50 program!
Scrolling through these testimonials for audio software reminds me what it used to be like.
Recording was bulky and hardware based, with editing being a matter of slicing and patching magnetic tape with razor blades and splicing tape. No matter how you did it, it was expensive.
Now there seems to be a lot of great software, and audio boards seem to be good too. I just use the DSP audio circuit which is part of the Gigabyte motherboard, and have no reason to add a plugin card, except for the extra fun of it.
What kind of audio cards are being used?
I use Adobe Audition 1.5 and have no problem working with program files that are 2 hours plus long. Most of my station's programs are 2 plus hours in length, while others are up to 1 hour long.
The only limit I run into is the automation program (SAM) cannot handle large program files in the players that go beyond 125 minutes.
I just split up the programs that will exceed 125 minutes into two files or more if needed. Problem solved.
RFB
RollingValleyRadio's question came to mind when I had so much trouble editing a three-hour stereo mp3 file at 44.1kHz. Audacity kept crashing even though I kept trying different ways of coming at the problem. Ultimately I cut the file in half and got both halves saved separately, even though the program crashed while doing that. I was able then to edit the first half, but when I tried to work on the second half, each section now being 1.5-hours long, more crashing. The warning told me there was an error in the file. I gave up.
Usually the issue with this is that the editing program itself cannot create a working copy within its file size limitations.
All audio editing programs will convert a file that is compressed into either a raw PCM file or WAV file, then do the editing in there. If your mp3 file for example is 3 hours long at 128Kps 44.1Khz, that mp3 file gets turned into a raw PCM or WAV that will be well over 2 gigs in size! Unless the editing program can work with that big of a file...CRASH!!!
And you discovered the work-around to that by simply splitting up the source file.
RFB
RFB how lucky you saw this situation and gave us the solution to working with larger files.
Per your explanation I moved the Audacity Temporary file to a much larger drive partition and now it is no problem working on super long audio files.
How great. Thank you.
Your welcome. You can change the working temp folder size to overcome the issues with the larger audio files. Fortunately the operating systems can work outside of the old limitations as well has having 32 and 64 bit FAT's. (File Allocation Table)
RFB