# sound file editors

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Monday, 21-Jul-2008 5:14:59

OK. This is something that I'm getting interested in doing. The main task I'm interested in is converting cassettes and dare I say reel-to-reel onto digital media. I'd like to be able to edit the files, maybe introduce some noise reduction. I've gotten some opinions on which editors people like, but thought I'd throw out this topic so I get a variety of opinions and experiences with such programs. What do you like and why? which programs are more accessible? which have built-in keyboard shortcuts so no special scripts are required?
Thanks for your contributions in advance.
Lou

## Post 2 by fastfinge (I can't call it a day til I enter the zone BBS) on Monday, 21-Jul-2008 10:42:37

I've done this with about fifty tapes and records. I use CDEX to rip the audio off tape, because it's easy. Hit record, start the tape, and walk away. Then I use Gold Wave to split the tracks and do the batch conversion; the goldwave converter is better than anything else I've found. Gold Wave is not free, however. If you don't want to pay you could try Audacity, but I don't think it has the same number of features as Gold Wave. Both of those options work quite well with jaws.

## Post 3 by Brooke (I just keep on posting!) on Monday, 21-Jul-2008 11:09:34

I use both GoldWave and Sound Forge. I like Sound Forge better, but I think GoldWave has more keyboard shortcuts and is easier to use. I know Audacity is free, but I've never used it.

## Post 4 by KC8PNL (The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.) on Monday, 21-Jul-2008 14:10:18

Hello Lou.
By far the cheapest solution that is available with the most features is GoldWave, but sound forge seems a bit more intuitive and is easier to learn for somene who is familiar with the basic editing commands comonly found in word processors. For example, to select the entire length of an audio file to apply an effect to it, you simply press control A to select all just like you would in MSWord or any other word processor. Cut, copy, paste, and undo also all follow the same standard commands in SF. I don't find that the newer versions of SF work as well with jaws without additional scripts, but the few issues I have encountered have been solved with scripts accept for 1. That 1 issue is critical though, and that is stability. GoldWave, on the other hand, does not use some of the standard keyboard commands, but is far more stable, and although scripts are available for goldwave, they aren't necissary. As far as audacity goes, I have no experience with this program. Another program that is free that works ok with audio editing is WavePad which you can find on the nch swiftsound page. I don't have the exact address handy, but googling wavepad will certainly yield your finding it quickly.

## Post 5 by flcomputergeek (Its my opinion, take it or leave it. ) on Tuesday, 22-Jul-2008 10:42:20

Wavepad is good and can be used without scripts. but I recently got gold wave and am really happy with it. both programs use numerous keyboard commands and work with multiple screen readers (there are scripts available for jaws that enhance goldwave's effectiveness with jaws).

## Post 6 by fastfinge (I can't call it a day til I enter the zone BBS) on Tuesday, 22-Jul-2008 11:41:03

I was moved, by this discussion and another one I had last night, to play with audacity 1.3 beta. Please note, while reading this, that my background is journalism and computer programming; I can't even play an instrument. Other than ripping my tapes to mp3, I have no experience working with, recording, or doing anything else with audio of any kind. However, based on the documentation and help at the audacity wiki, I was able to start recording, moving, inserting, deleting, and shifting audio within ten minutes of installing the program. The keyboard shortcuts are completely standard (control+a to select all, control+shift+a to unselect all, [ to select from the playback position to the start of the file, ] to select from the playback position to the end of the file, etc). All of the interface I saw, including noise reduction, track properties, the chain editor and chain applier, the file export dialog, the export properties dialog, the metadata editor, and the file open dialog were utterly standard and completely accessible with jaws. The two places I had problems were in the built in help and the advanced mixing options dialog. The built in help flat does not work. However, all of the help text is available on the internet, linked from the audacity homepage, so you don't need to use built in help at all. The advanced mixing dialog may have been accessible, or it may not have been accessible. The problem I had with it is that it has no documentation, and I'm not exactly sure what options I'm setting, or what they're supposed to do. Each track seems to have a slider, but the sliders only seem to have three positions when you're exporting to flac. But if you're exporting to wav, you only seem to get one slider, no matter how many tracks you have. The idea of tracks is the only other problem spot I had while working with audacity. If you're expecting something like Gold Wave or Sound Forge, the idea that you can have more than one recording per file, and all of those recordings doing completely seperat things, takes some getting used to. For example, you could open a file of music; audacity will decompress the song, and put you in the "track table" with that track highlighted and selected. Then, you can go to the track menu on the menu bar, create a new audio track, and record something on that second track you just created. While you're recording on the new track, you'll hear the music in the other track playing at the same time. Something else to remember about tracks is that highlighted and selected are, confusingly, 2 different things. To toggle if a track is selected or not, highlight the track (with the up or down arrows) and press enter on it. When you do something like apply noise reduction, audacity will perform that opperation on all selected tracks, not just on the track your cursor is on! If you're trying to record narration over music, this is *not* what you want! You first need to make sure your music track is not selected so nothing will happen to it while you're playing with your narration. Another thing to think about is that all tracks are, in fact, mono. Audacity can combine two mono tracks into a "stereo track" for you, using track one as the left and track 2 as the right. But all this really seems to do is make the interface a little cleaner; you can still split up the combined track and work with just the left half or just the right half if you want. If you don't think of this, you're going to split up your track and then apply an effect to only one side and everything will get completely screwed up. As well, if you have two music tracks (left and right) and two narration tracks (left and right), if you're not careful, when you go to export your project you're going to wind up with a 4-channel thing that will only play propperly on surround sound systems, I assume. I never tested this, but I do know that I wound up with a 4-channel flac file where two of my tracks seemed to have gone completely missing. But maybe I screwed up in some other way.

## Post 7 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Wednesday, 23-Jul-2008 9:48:14

That was a really wonderful summary of audacity with one correction that I offer. You can record a stereo track. Go to the tracks menu and you will find ad stereo track. I use audacity on the mac and PC and correspond with the developer Regularly. They have a great focus on accessibility and as was pointed out in the last post there are keyboard commands for almost everything. I use the Blue SnowBall mike with audacity and the quality is excellent. One of the features I really find useful is the ability to select audio and then here what it would sound like if I deleted the selection without actually doing so. goldwave offers this functionality but you need to go to the view menu to do this. IN Audacity you just press the letter c and you get to preview the audio with the selection deleted. As you modify the parameters of selected audio you can continue to listen to what will happen before it does. I find this amazingly helpful especially when editing music. I never mastered goldwave but lot's of people love it. I can't seem to find the free version of wavepad but did try the 30 day demo and although it's interesting I didn't get a good grasp on it. The 1.3 beta in my opinion is the most stable I have ever used and I am looking forward to the release.

## Post 8 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Wednesday, 23-Jul-2008 15:35:12

Thanks to all for your posts. I'll look at all this and make a choice soon before my reels dry out.
Lou

## Post 9 by Ukulele<3 (Try me... You know you want to.) on Thursday, 24-Jul-2008 11:06:43

Wow. I've used audacity for a while now but can't figure out how to select parts of a track I've recorded to edit it. Is it possible for you to post a link on where I can find help using audacity with jaws? I'd like to be able to use this program for more than just to record. Thanks very much.
Michelle

## Post 10 by fastfinge (I can't call it a day til I enter the zone BBS) on Thursday, 24-Jul-2008 18:06:38

You can find information about selecting using the keyboard on This help page. Scroll down until you get to the heading about the keyboard.

## Post 11 by Ukulele<3 (Try me... You know you want to.) on Thursday, 24-Jul-2008 21:31:08

Thanks so much. I'll definitely check it out!