I just need to edit some audio. What software should I use? You hear this question all the time, and there s rarely a good, simple answer.
(Yes, there s the open source program Audacity, but it s got major functionality missing, a kludgy interface that s hard on beginners, and some stability issues. It s hardly the best open source has to offer.) Adobe is working on a solution for Mac and Windows they re calling Soundbooth.
Audition is a terrific editor, but it s also overkill for lots of people just like most audio editors on the market. Enter Soundbooth:
This sums up the goals: While Adobe Audition is designed to give audio professionals in music, film, video, and radio a flexible audio production toolkit that can handle a broad range of audio engineering tasks, Adobe Soundbooth is focused on creative professionals without audio expertise, or those who prefer an application focused on making short work of the most common tasks they handle every day.
In other words, it s Audition for graphic artists.
There are clearly some features missing, but for basic work it s already quite usable. Here s a look at what it can do currently:
The basic interface is almost identical to Adobe Audition and the other Adobe media apps. That s a good thing: while Apple has claimed that its pro apps work the same way, you ll notice that Motion, Final Cut, Soundtrack, and Logic are all quite different.
Adobe has nailed the consistency and, for me at least, the interface is very usable and attractive. Most importantly, the scroll wheel zooms a long-time favorite feature from Cool Edit.
Noise, clicks pops, and rumble features already let you handle most restoration tasks, even in this early beta. Audition has more extensive options, but that s the point: the controls are very simple and easy to follow, as opposed to the potentially overwhelming options in Audition.
Drag a fade left and right to adjust its length, and up and down to adjust its curve. You ll wonder why all audio editors (including Adobe Audition) don t work this way.
Some audio editors spectral views are read-only, without edit capability, but Soundbooth borrows the editing tools from Adobe s Audition.
Click Remove a Sound from Tasks, and you can directly edit the sound in the spectral view. You can marquee or lasso frequencies as if working in a graphics tool, for fine-tuning removal of certain frequencies or certain sounds. If you ve ever struggled to remove a pop in the standard waveform view in most audio editors, you ll be right at home.
This feature alone should make Soundbooth a must-download if you don t already have Audition. Soundbooth even has an auto-heal function in its sound removal settings. If Adobe would just add a paint on feature as in the graphical Mac-only sound app MetaSynth, I d be in heaven.
(Note: the best tool in Audition, the lasso tool, isn t yet implemented in this beta, but it looks as though Soundbooth s lasso will work exactly the same as its counterpart feature in Audition.)
Effects in this release are bare-bones: delay, chorus/flanger (something you probably would never need in this kind of app), compressor, and vocal enhancer (not actually sure what that last one does, but it has gender and music settings so I m guessing EQ). I expect we ll see the effects fleshed out in future versions.
(Now this is curious: the fx button looks like the Flash logo. Does Adobe know something they re not telling us, or is that just coincidence?)
One curious feature is Soundbooth s automatic composition settings, which seem to take a cue from the music-faking capabilities of rival A/V software giant .
I was unable to test this feature because the sample files weren t downloading correctly from Adobe Labs overtaxed server. The features look well-implemented; the more fundamental problems I have are that a) automatically-generated music never sounds like anything other than automatically-generated music, b) creatives are always trying to get out of hiring composers and musicians even when they have sizable budgets darned cheapskates, and c) this is drawing attention from other features. With more interactive loop-based music creation in tools like Acid and GarageBand, and Sony s own Cinescore, it seems like Adobe should concentrate on Soundbooth as an excellent starter-level audio editor a niche that isn t filled by other products and would fit a wider audience.
I hope that in the coming months, Soundbooth gets more-robust editing tools. I don t yet see tools for cross-fading when you make cuts, or other slicing and editing tools. Adobe could make these as intuitive as they made the fade in and fade out features, and this functionality would be useful to everyone, not just pros.
More effects are clearer needed, as well who needs a flanger, when more useful EQ settings would accomplish more? And Soundbooth would benefit from more presets, especially for features like the compressor, which regularly baffle the beginner Adobe is trying to court. But this is an early beta, so I don t expect to see everything just yet.
I just hope Adobe spends time on those features and not on dumping a lot of useless automatic music generation content into Soundbooth instead.
Where things get interesting is the way in which Soundbooth could do things other audio editors don t. Already in this beta, Soundbooth includes video import capability and markers.
What s so great about that? Try XML export to Flash cues you can use in a Flash file. Adobe says you can use cues to trigger animations.
Flash integration could also let animators use Soundbooth as their recording tool for animation. I d like to see more Flash integration, like being able to jump to Soundbooth markers from within Flash using the XML marker export, and being able to import Flash files for scoring in Soundbooth. (And, of course, Adobe should add these features to Audition, as well, for people who do need its pro features.
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Adobe also has an opportunity to focus on the way people actually use audio apps, including recording. You can already add markers while recording (huge timesaver). Now, for the beginner/consumer market, Adobe should add the ability to record audio from other Mac and Windows applications.
Trust me, Adobe: the zillion users of Skype, people doing software training, and anyone who wants to capture app audio will thank you.
I already think Soundbooth is a gorgeous app with a lot of potential. It s easily worth downloading, because the nature of audio editors is that you don t have to save project files when you re done.
In other words, you have a terrific free audio tool you can use until the beta expires early next year. At the very least, Soundbooth should fill a gap in the market for a basic, cross-platform audio editor, especially if Adobe prices it aggressively upon release. They have an opportunity to correct the mistakes Apple made with Soundtrack, namely, release a great audio tool, fail to evangelize it as such, then discontinue the standalone version in favor of a bundle with a video product.
(CDM s readers were by those moves.) At best, Soundbooth could be a killer tool via integration with Flash and other features we haven t seen yet.
Soundbooth isn t going to take much away from the far more powerful tools in Audition, which can do end-to-end production, integrate with Premiere, and produce CDs and multitrack and surround work.
But if these features are a glimpse of the next upgrade of Audition, both apps are headed in a good direction. And it s very nice to see Adobe going cross-platform again.
I look forward to watching Soundbooth s progress over the coming months and seeing if it lives up to its potential.
Stay tuned. Whiteline, I agree. Snap selection to zero crossing (or some other way of fixing zero crossing after edit) is just as key if they re aiming this at beginners, because beginners are going to say, hey, why am I getting that pop?
I actually like the current version of Audition better than Sound Forge, just because of its extra capabilities, but I agree both great editors.
As for Logic, I m hoping Logic 8 will bundle Soundtrack. Integrated audio editors are never that great, but bundling Soundtrack should be a no brainer.
Not that many Logic owners are going to run out and buy Final Cut Studio just for a wave editor. peak used to be awesome, but the latest version is totally unusable, at least on my intel mac.
it s super buggy and unstable.
i have to use sound studio, which is really basic, but gets the job done. Peter wrote: Adobe should add the ability to record audio from other Mac and Windows applications.
Peter, Peter, Peter: I know that you know JACK!
The idea that you add this type of functionality to each and every program that might benefit from it is silly. JACK is here for OS X already, and it runs on Windows too in an unreleased version. With JACK, *any* Mac or Windows app can exchange audio data in any configuration with any other Mac or Windows app (assuming the apps don t abuse the CoreAudio or ASIO spec).
Please don t advocate adding such stuff to individual apps - its a system architecture issue, not a per-app issue. It would also be nice if all those people who *might* pay for this app instead paid 50% of that to Audacity and thus helped get that application up to the standards you all would like it get to. ehem.
. ahem..
ah?
did I miss something here or is there really no mp3 file import/output support?
without this this program is usless.
period. if you need another program to export/import mp3 files, the simplified workflow is worth absolute ziltch. The term beta software usualy implies a feature compleate release which needs debuging - hence my rather hasty remark.
though in this day and age beta software can mean everything from feature incompleate buggy alpha code to production grade released product, depending on the company, market and climet.
I haven t played with it enough to form an opinion (other then ugh! no mp3, it s useless for my current project!
). You re completely right, and beta is becoming meaningless. I had to double-check I didn t dub that, but in fact, Adobe calls this a beta.
It s really more accurately a product preview, which they explain in the FAQ.
Compare, for instance, Adobe Labs Flash 9 Player, which is feature complete and already quite solid and reliable, and even suggested for use in serious work even given its beta status.
My sense with Soundbooth is that we ll see some very significant changes.
Perhaps Adobe will be nice enough to even give us another preview. But beta , it s really not.
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