Music editing apps

[Guy Rowland]

I grew up with Cool Edit Pro, which morphed into Adobe Audition, which morphed into Adobe Audition @£240pa. I have an old CS5.5 license, but that's 32 bit only. I tried Steinberg's Wavelab Elements several years ago and didn't get on with it, then a couple of years back got on slightly better with Acon Acoustica's standard edition. Either can do mastering chores fine.

On a whim I updated Wavelab Elements from 9 to 12 as a) it was peanuts and b) it seemed it had improved a lot. It has, but on basic music editing chores, I find both editors mystifyingly clumsy compared to ye olde Cool Edit Pro.

Let's say I want to repeat 4 bars of a chorus by copy / pasting a section. Here's how I'd want do it in an ideal world.

1. Find the start of the part I want to repeat.

2. Hit the spacebar to play, and then drag the selection tool at the same time unti I hit the end of the part I want to repeat, whereupon I release the mouse key. Now I (roughly and quickly) have the right selection.

3. Audition by looping. These 4 bars should be seamless as I loop. Ideally I just want to PLAY ACROSS THE LOOP TRANSITION - were this 16 bars it gets very tedious very quickly to wait to play through it all in real time.

4. If the loop is a bit janky, zoom tight in on SELECTION START. By eye, find the most promising point.

5. Zoom tight in on SELECTION END, and do the same thing.

6. Re-audition across the loop to make sure it is now smooth.

7. Cntrl C copy the selection.

8. Move the cursor to the end of the selection, then Cntrl V to paste the selection. Done.

I can do almost all of this in Audition, whereas it's near impossible in both Wavelab and Acoustica. The ability to tight zoom in to selection / start end is missing. In neither can you paste to the end of the selection. Acoustica you can fast forward at least through a loop, with Wavelab it shoots past the selection points.

Wavelab (even Elements) has a dizzying array of meters, scopes and grams, plus lots of clever features. But both fail on the absolute basics. Selection, navigation, auditioning loops and cut / copy / paste were all things that could be done 20 years ago. Am I missing anything? Or is there another solid audio editor that can do this kind of basic stuff with ease?

[Luciano Storti]

I could not agree more, Guy. Add to this that most (all?) don't allow for multi-tracks, and editing/splicing things becomes a major chore instead of the quick job in should be in the digital realm. I miss Bias Peak.

[Lawrence]

Do you use Command/k in Cubase, Guy?

[Guy Rowland]

I could not agree more, Guy. Add to this that most (all?) don't allow for multi-tracks, and editing/splicing things becomes a major chore instead of the quick job in should be in the digital realm. I miss Bias Peak.

Wavelab does have Montage mode - I'm still getting to grips with basic audio as it's what I need most from this kind of editor, but I have a feeling Montage is going to be better than basic mode.

[Guy Rowland]

Do you use Command/k in Cubase, Guy?

Range repeat is not really relevant to this scenario. Everything in Cubase is bars / beats so of course range repeat works great. An audio editor is without any kind of count or grid, so you have to use different tools.

AFAIK neither Cubase or Pro Tools - my two main DAWs - are very good at this free-run scenario either. It's a specific toolset you need for audio editing single files.

[Guy Rowland]

I forgot another major Wavelab gripe - AFAIK there's no way to select a part of the audio and apply a VST effect. All the other DAWs can do this, including Acoustica.

I thought Wavelab would have migrated Cubase's plugin manager, but sadly not. It's vendor and / or category hierarchy. There is a basic favourites folder at least. This is an area where Acoustica is also not great - there's no favourites or customisation, but there is at least a Recently Used which is a lot better than nothing.

[Piet De Ridder]

(...) I miss Bias Peak.

Me too. I've since settled on Acon Acoustica and, before that, DSP Quattro, and while both of these can more than do the job and are in many ways more advanced than Bias Peak was, I'll never get either 'in my fingers' the way I had Bias Peak in my fingers. When discussing virtual pianos, a word that often comes up, is 'playability', particularly the quality of being able to connect with the instrument. Well, to my mind, Bias Peak, as a tool, was much more 'playable' than either DSP Quattro or Acon Acoustica or any other similar software I've tried since.

__

[Lawrence]

Do you use Command/k in Cubase, Guy?

Range repeat is not really relevant to this scenario. Everything in Cubase is bars / beats so of course range repeat works great. An audio editor is without any kind of count or grid, so you have to use different tools.

AFAIK neither Cubase or Pro Tools - my two main DAWs - are very good at this free-run scenario either. It's a specific toolset you need for audio editing single files.

I’ve never owned a dedicated audio editor though I know many have, so can you tell me the uses for it that can’t be accomplished easily in a decent DAW?

[Guy Rowland]

Bias Peak completely passed me by, but it sounds fabulous.

I’ve never owned a dedicated audio editor though I know many have, so can you tell me the uses for it that can’t be accomplished easily in a decent DAW?

An audio editor should be designed from the ground up to work as quickly and efficiently as possible to do anything you might want to do with a single audio file and combine with others. It's not for music-making, it is for editing and mastering. Very often I open and close an editor in little more than a couple of minutes, chore accomplished - the speed of the launch and exit is also important (Acoustica is good here, Wavelab clumsy, Cubase or PT both lamentable).

The goal I outlined in the OP can be achieved by every single audio editor and DAW on the planet - somehow. The issue is - how? I love Piet's phrase "in my fingers", that fluid way that a really well designed an executed way a tool can be an extension of you.

Where all my DAWs fall down is in the real basics of selection and audition. Look at those steps in the OP, the need to be able to audition the loop points of a selection. How about a dedicated keystroke that can do that? 1.5 secs either side of that loop point. Another tool next to it would play 1.5 seconds at either end of the selection - what you will get if you delete it, in other words. How about a tool that can put the start and end of a selection next to each other, to visually see that edit zoomed-in? I don't know of any DAW on the marketplace that can do this.

These really are the basics that could have been done 25 years ago. A modern audio editor should have other genuinely useful tricks as well. It should have stem separation built in to its multitrack view. It's a thing of joy to be able to make seamless edits by separating out those key stems. AFAIK none of the dedicated audio editors can do this (maybe Audition can now?). Some kind of AI analysis on a file could also be extremely handy - suggest a grid / marker based on extracted tempo and song structure. If this was quick and seamless, it could genuinely make the job much easier. Good on-board time-stretching would also be helpful to combine two tracks, match their beats.

I remember Merging Pyramix fondly for its slick editing features, although it had huge problems of its own. I just took a look and there is now an Elements version for about $100. It's Windows-only and a fully featured albeit audio-only DAW, not an audio editor, with all the baggage that this implies.

[mickeyl]

For macOS, I have been using TwistedWave for years. Unfortunately they changed their pricing model to a subscription now, but it was a cute little workhorse which did the things it advertised very well.

[Lawrence]

Thanks for the explanation, Guy.

[wst3]

I could not live without a good audio editor.

CoolEditPro was really good, I was less impressed with Audition, it tried to be too many things. My first choice, however, was Sound Forge. The fastest editing environment ever! At least for me. These days I use Wavelab Pro 12, and I am slowly becoming comfortable with it. Slowly to be sure. I tried a Sound Forge demo recently and it remains familiar, but the history does not give the impression that it will still be around later. Sad!

[Guy Rowland]

I could not live without a good audio editor.

CoolEditPro was really good, I was less impressed with Audition, it tried to be too many things. My first choice, however, was Sound Forge. The fastest editing environment ever! At least for me. These days I use Wavelab Pro 12, and I am slowly becoming comfortable with it. Slowly to be sure. I tried a Sound Forge demo recently and it remains familiar, but the history does not give the impression that it will still be around later. Sad!

Bill, what are the steps you'd use to do something like that described the OP in Wavelab?

[wst3]

Bill, what are the steps you'd use to do something like that described the OP in Wavelab?

I do that a lot, but of course now that you asked I have to go downstairs and take notes, but it isn't all that difficult, and the results are uniformly good.

I will do that this evening.

[esoundcheck]

Rowland, off the top of my head the basic steps are:

1. Zoom in and locate the section I want to repeat
2. Drag to select it
3. Hit play to listen
4. Use the punch tool to fine tune the edges if needed
5. Ctrl/Cmd-C to copy
6. Move cursor to paste location
7. Ctrl/Cmd-V to paste

Hope that helps! I'll have to do it for real later when I'm in the studio to double check I have all the steps right.

[Guy Rowland]

Looking forward to your steps, Bill! I agree it's surprisingly difficult to break it down without actually doing it.

Rowland, off the top of my head the basic steps are:

1. Zoom in and locate the section I want to repeat
2. Drag to select it
3. Hit play to listen
4. Use the punch tool to fine tune the edges if needed
5. Ctrl/Cmd-C to copy
6. Move cursor to paste location
7. Ctrl/Cmd-V to paste

Hope that helps! I'll have to do it for real later when I'm in the studio to double check I have all the steps right.

Hi esoundcheck - which DAW / editor is this? Interested on how the punch tool works because it's all in (4) from your description. Also I find (6) can be difficult - there's often no way to do this precisely. Ideally there would be a Cursor to Start / End Of Selection button.

[Ashermusic]

In Logic Pro I simply select the bars/beats/division/ticks. or minutes/seconds/frames and press the key command for Set Locators by Selection to create a Cycle, move the playhead to the desired position and then the key command for Copy Section from Locators.

Or if I want it to repeat, select the bars/beats/division/ticks. or minutes/seconds/frames and press the key command for Set Locators by Selection and then Repeat Section between Locators.

[Guy Rowland]

Jay, do you ever do this when there's no beats/bar grid ie on a dumb WAV? If so, how do you manually find / select / audition the loop points?

[Ashermusic]

Jay, do you ever do this when there's no beats/bar grid ie on a dumb WAV? If so, how do you manually find / select / audition the loop points?

Since all the audio I edit is either in a song or a picture cue there is always a temporal reference for me if I simply draw over the section with the Marquee tool and choose to Set Locators by Selection.

But I am not editing sound fx or dialogue.