Recording/Editing Software
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Recording/Editing Software
I use Audacity, but I know this is a very basic option. Any other programs commonly used?
Re: Recording/Editing Software
Personally, I think Audacity rules, once you know how to use it. It's very powerful freeware.
Some tips:
1. If you're working from found-sound samples or other stuff to make a mash-up sound (for example, you find some neat cannon noise, some metallic clunks, and some electrical howling you want to combine into a weapon noise) run each part through the Low Pass filter, doing some experiments with the range to remove hiss without losing too much of the audio range. Depending on the quality of the sound, sometimes you'll just have to lose a lot to get rid of audible hiss and crackle. However, keep in mind that sounds that don't need to be super-clean can have some noise and listeners won't generally notice, if it's intermittent. What people notice right away is continuous hiss.
2. You cannot avoid losing some fidelity every time you use a filter. Sound editing is an inherently destructive process, so be willing and able to redo after doing experiments. Sometimes, you just have to redo. Audacity has reasonable Undo functionality, but sometimes you will just have to start over again.
3. Be careful about clipping! When doing final edits, keep the final volume low- at the very least, normalize it. But when combining sounds via Quick Mix, be aware that unless you lower the volume of both samples first, you will almost certainly lose the high range of volume changes as Audacity will auto-correct clipping unless you turn that off (not recommended).
4. Keep in mind the basics of audio- changing speed automatically changes pitch proportionally. This is very handy to use, to raise and lower pitch, but if you go to a slower speed, you may end up with a very nifty sound that is several hundred kilobytes in length, or longer- which is a fairly hefty CPU load (although it's better in 0.79+ Spring).
5. The filters for various analog effects are tricky, and you need to adjust their settings to achieve the desired effect, but are very powerful. Be prepared to play with them a lot, and if you're not sure what the numbers mean, look it up- there are a lot of resources on the Internet about what "wet / dry" means, etc.
6. Never overlook that Audacity can produce square / sine wave tones and white noise. These are both useful, although the tone generator's output usually needs to be adjusted.
7. Audacity allows you to perform certain types of edits using the Envelope Tool. This is very handy for rebalancing volume after a mix stage, etc.
8. Make sure your settings are right in the Edit-->Preferences window, they aren't by default correct for Spring. On the File Formats page, set to WAV (Microsoft 16-bit PCM). On the Quality tab, set to 44kHz or 22kHz. 22kHz is small, which is good, 44kHz is close to perfect, for most listeners, but comes with a price, in terms of size.
9. Always, always always edit until the size is reasonable. Seriously- don't inflict 5MB sounds on end-users. That may run OK on your super-computer with a very nice soundcard with a lot of dedicated RAM, but it will severely impact performance on a lot of onboard sound chips, and a lot of people use onboard sound.
10. Spring can run stereo WAVs. Linux users tend to crash when presented with stereo PCM WAV. This may have been fixed when the sound system was upgraded, but I doubt it, they were using the current sound code before Windows users were. I don't know what causes this problem, but be aware that stereo, while cool, isn't strictly necessary, can be faked somewhat accurately through software (play the sound's two stereo tracks as seperate mono tracks, but use Lua to offset a bit and fake the channels, for example).
11. For the final pro touches... use the magnifier, get to the front and back of the sounds, and Fade In / Fade Out. This can be a very short time, you don't need lengthy fades. But it prevents audio popping and other bad things. I also use the magnifier to slice samples down as short as possible- if it's a choice between a full-second where half a second is extra detail that will get lost in a battle, I usually lose that half-second, because it makes a difference in terms of the end-user's overall play smoothness.
Some tips:
1. If you're working from found-sound samples or other stuff to make a mash-up sound (for example, you find some neat cannon noise, some metallic clunks, and some electrical howling you want to combine into a weapon noise) run each part through the Low Pass filter, doing some experiments with the range to remove hiss without losing too much of the audio range. Depending on the quality of the sound, sometimes you'll just have to lose a lot to get rid of audible hiss and crackle. However, keep in mind that sounds that don't need to be super-clean can have some noise and listeners won't generally notice, if it's intermittent. What people notice right away is continuous hiss.
2. You cannot avoid losing some fidelity every time you use a filter. Sound editing is an inherently destructive process, so be willing and able to redo after doing experiments. Sometimes, you just have to redo. Audacity has reasonable Undo functionality, but sometimes you will just have to start over again.
3. Be careful about clipping! When doing final edits, keep the final volume low- at the very least, normalize it. But when combining sounds via Quick Mix, be aware that unless you lower the volume of both samples first, you will almost certainly lose the high range of volume changes as Audacity will auto-correct clipping unless you turn that off (not recommended).
4. Keep in mind the basics of audio- changing speed automatically changes pitch proportionally. This is very handy to use, to raise and lower pitch, but if you go to a slower speed, you may end up with a very nifty sound that is several hundred kilobytes in length, or longer- which is a fairly hefty CPU load (although it's better in 0.79+ Spring).
5. The filters for various analog effects are tricky, and you need to adjust their settings to achieve the desired effect, but are very powerful. Be prepared to play with them a lot, and if you're not sure what the numbers mean, look it up- there are a lot of resources on the Internet about what "wet / dry" means, etc.
6. Never overlook that Audacity can produce square / sine wave tones and white noise. These are both useful, although the tone generator's output usually needs to be adjusted.
7. Audacity allows you to perform certain types of edits using the Envelope Tool. This is very handy for rebalancing volume after a mix stage, etc.
8. Make sure your settings are right in the Edit-->Preferences window, they aren't by default correct for Spring. On the File Formats page, set to WAV (Microsoft 16-bit PCM). On the Quality tab, set to 44kHz or 22kHz. 22kHz is small, which is good, 44kHz is close to perfect, for most listeners, but comes with a price, in terms of size.
9. Always, always always edit until the size is reasonable. Seriously- don't inflict 5MB sounds on end-users. That may run OK on your super-computer with a very nice soundcard with a lot of dedicated RAM, but it will severely impact performance on a lot of onboard sound chips, and a lot of people use onboard sound.
10. Spring can run stereo WAVs. Linux users tend to crash when presented with stereo PCM WAV. This may have been fixed when the sound system was upgraded, but I doubt it, they were using the current sound code before Windows users were. I don't know what causes this problem, but be aware that stereo, while cool, isn't strictly necessary, can be faked somewhat accurately through software (play the sound's two stereo tracks as seperate mono tracks, but use Lua to offset a bit and fake the channels, for example).
11. For the final pro touches... use the magnifier, get to the front and back of the sounds, and Fade In / Fade Out. This can be a very short time, you don't need lengthy fades. But it prevents audio popping and other bad things. I also use the magnifier to slice samples down as short as possible- if it's a choice between a full-second where half a second is extra detail that will get lost in a battle, I usually lose that half-second, because it makes a difference in terms of the end-user's overall play smoothness.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Recording/Editing Software
Goldwave
Acid
Bome's Mouse Keyboard
With these 3 tools you can do jsut about anything you like.
Acid
Bome's Mouse Keyboard
With these 3 tools you can do jsut about anything you like.
Re: Recording/Editing Software
I have a full proffesional recording studio in my home, I use ableton live 8, Logic Pro 8 and Pro Tools, Id advise ableton to anyone who wants to get into sound creation and manipulation. I have a 10k Rig a 32 channel mixing desk and a 15k power amp. this is what I use now and Its amazing.
Re: Recording/Editing Software
Audacity is not freeware, its free and open source software. Big difference. Otherwise I'd agree with Argh, it's a pretty good tool.
Re: Recording/Editing Software
Explain to me how that is not a subset of freeware.
Re: Recording/Editing Software
Free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-distribution aren't mutually exclusive. I was just pointing out that there's no cost for a high-quality tool.
I tried a lot of other stuff before I started using it, both free and not-free, and it's one of the best tools for working with audio I've used- I mean, meh, you can use it as a synthesizer, work with found-sound and samples, work with a practically unlimited number of tracks to do mashups, and it has a nice, clean workflow that's easy to learn, if you understand anything at all about sound. Oh, and it can load a heck of a lot of plugins, too, if you want to play with synths and waveform analysis tools, cleanup tools, various analog emulators, etc. The only thing you really can't do with it all that well is work with MIDI.
I tried a lot of other stuff before I started using it, both free and not-free, and it's one of the best tools for working with audio I've used- I mean, meh, you can use it as a synthesizer, work with found-sound and samples, work with a practically unlimited number of tracks to do mashups, and it has a nice, clean workflow that's easy to learn, if you understand anything at all about sound. Oh, and it can load a heck of a lot of plugins, too, if you want to play with synths and waveform analysis tools, cleanup tools, various analog emulators, etc. The only thing you really can't do with it all that well is work with MIDI.
Re: Recording/Editing Software
I didn't mean to derail this thread, but since you two are asking:
First, Argh, I suspect you mean "Free-as-in-Speech and Free-as-in-Distribution" - otherwise you'd be saying gratis-free twice.
Lurker, I guess it depends on how you define freeware. But I can shell out 20 bucks to buy Ubuntu if I want (certainly free and open software - even if a large package), and thats a publisher endorsed sale.
Sure I can legally get it for free as well - but it still seems to muddy the term somewhat to me (I've never heard of buying freeware...).
So from that (+anecdotal evidence below) calling libre-free software freeware is at best pretty ambigous, and in my view furthermore doesn't do the difference between the two justice.
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Extra reading material:
Not an argument, but quotes from wikipedia (which usually does not run entirely counter to common understanding):
"The term shareware is used in contrast to [...] and freeware, which refers to copyrighted software for which the author solicits no payment (though he or she may request donations)." Shareware.
History of Term freeware:
The term freeware was coined by Andrew Fluegelman [...] Fluegelman actually distributed PC-Talk via a process now referred to as shareware. Current use of the term freeware does not necessarily match the original concept by Andrew Fluegelman. Underline by me
The same article does go on to state that "Accordingly, freeware may or may not be free and open source software", so given, it's obvious the term is used in that encompassing definition (as the two of you argue) as well.
First, Argh, I suspect you mean "Free-as-in-Speech and Free-as-in-Distribution" - otherwise you'd be saying gratis-free twice.
Lurker, I guess it depends on how you define freeware. But I can shell out 20 bucks to buy Ubuntu if I want (certainly free and open software - even if a large package), and thats a publisher endorsed sale.
Sure I can legally get it for free as well - but it still seems to muddy the term somewhat to me (I've never heard of buying freeware...).
So from that (+anecdotal evidence below) calling libre-free software freeware is at best pretty ambigous, and in my view furthermore doesn't do the difference between the two justice.
---------
Extra reading material:
Not an argument, but quotes from wikipedia (which usually does not run entirely counter to common understanding):
"The term shareware is used in contrast to [...] and freeware, which refers to copyrighted software for which the author solicits no payment (though he or she may request donations)." Shareware.
History of Term freeware:
The term freeware was coined by Andrew Fluegelman [...] Fluegelman actually distributed PC-Talk via a process now referred to as shareware. Current use of the term freeware does not necessarily match the original concept by Andrew Fluegelman. Underline by me
The same article does go on to state that "Accordingly, freeware may or may not be free and open source software", so given, it's obvious the term is used in that encompassing definition (as the two of you argue) as well.
Re: Recording/Editing Software
Reaper: free infinite trial
I just downloaded a demo of fruity loops..i mean FLstudio9 it's sort of nice for making sound effects.
I just downloaded a demo of fruity loops..i mean FLstudio9 it's sort of nice for making sound effects.
Re: Recording/Editing Software
Imho (from screwing around with guitar recordings at a noobish level) Ableton is win, Audacity is a great free alternative, if you are not fond of flying the jolly roger 
.
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Re: Recording/Editing Software
reaper is different to audacity, as its more a music creator like fruity loops than an editor like audacity. Virtual instruments etc.
But as oksnoop2 said, its "free" (after 30 days it shows a window you must watch for a few seconds when starting, no other limit) and they are also many plugins...which is good and bad because you do not know what to download.
I also found it harder to do basic stuff like creating white noise, speed up etc. than with audiacity.
But as oksnoop2 said, its "free" (after 30 days it shows a window you must watch for a few seconds when starting, no other limit) and they are also many plugins...which is good and bad because you do not know what to download.
I also found it harder to do basic stuff like creating white noise, speed up etc. than with audiacity.