Wavosaur is a free audio editor for Windows that just hit version 1.0. It’s really good stuff: not only is it free, but the whole app is tiny (488kb), it’s designed to fit on a portable USB key, it hosts VSTs, and it’s an elegant waveform editor reminiscent of early versions of SoundForge. Even if you’ve got a wave editor of choice, might be worth sticking this on your USB key when you’re on the go — especially since it supports Windows 98, XP, and Vista. And it doesn’t have an installer or touch the Registry.

I just gave it a spin on my Vista install, and really enjoy it — clean interface, lots of features.

Basic features:

• Multiple file editing
• All the editing and processing you need (convert channels, normalize, cut and paste, trim, fade in / out, the usual)
• Pitch shift, vocal removal (karaoke, whoo!), loop points and markers
• ASIO, VST support
• Support for MP3, Akai, Amiga, and many other file formats
• Analysis features (2D, 3D)

Hmmm, look out — some more popular wave editors might get a run for their money. Thanks to Art from Russia for the tip!

Wavosaur Site

If you’ve been on the search for a simple, straightforward audio editor for Mac and Windows, Adobe has officially thrown its hat into the ring with Soundbooth CS3.

Soundbooth Now Shipping [Hart's Audition, from the Adobe audio product chief]
New Soundbooth User-to-User Forum

Of course, to the rest of the world, the big news is that Adobe’s full Production Premium and Master Collection suites are shipping. But Soundbooth is one program that could make sense to buy alone, as a basic audio editor. It sets itself apart both by being cross-platform and by being geared for beginners and people wanting a simple, streamlined tool. And the killer feature: there’s a lasso tool you can use directly on the audio spectrum. I’ve been using that to isolate sounds in field recordings that would otherwise be impossible to grab.

I hope to have an in-depth look at the finished tool soon, so no conclusions about the shipping software yet, but in the meantime, see our preview from the beta.

Just as the Macworld review was going to “press” (or appearing online, anyway) Soundtrack Pro 2.01 arrived. New in this version:

Delay Designer: This effect now allows custom delay taps, with optional sync to project tempo.

Combine clips into multichannel clip: This is nice: drag up to 24 source clips to the timeline, and you automatically get a combined multichannel clip, which should be handy for surround and stereo multichannel alike.

Various fixes for performance / stability / etc.

But there’s one release note that caught my eye: Soundtrack Pro 2 does not support iTunes Plus files. Now, that’s curious, given iTunes Plus files are supposedly “DRM-free” and stored in a format Soundtrack Pro 2 does support (AAC). In fact, I’d kind of call this, well, DRM. I can even think of cases where you might want to trim a track you bought from iTunes, like removing an intro. Not a big deal by any means, mind you, but — odd.

Hmmm…

Soundtrack Pro 2 supports AAC files.

QuickTime can open iTMS Plus files. (If you do want to edit the file, by the way, you can slice out an intro of that iTMS Plus file right in QuickTime Player, making this all the odder.)

Soundtrack Pro 2 can’t. The only reason seems to be that Apple disabled the ability to do that. That sure sounds like Digital Rights Management to me (albeit in a very specific and bizarre case).

If anyone knows a reason why I might be wrong here, please do speak up. (Just tried it for myself with an ITMS Plus track, and Soundtrack Pro in fact reported that it couldn’t open the file.)

Updated: Or it could just be a bug. “DRM” as a theory still doesn’t make sense. The author of Sound Studio notes an AAC bug that’s a likely culprit. It’d be ironic that Apple’s own developers couldn’t work around an Apple API problem — but I can’t actually pretend to be surprised, either, especially as this particular functionality wouldn’t be a very high priority for support in Soundtrack Pro. Thanks, Lucius. (See comments.) And, yeah, that makes a heck of a lot more sense than selective DRM that takes effect only in a single pro app and nowhere else on the system. We’ll call it DPB: Digital Playback Bug.

I should also note that Felt Tip Software’s Sound Studio is an excellent, eminently affordable wave editor for Mac. I used it in the early days of OS X when nothing else ran. Since then, it’s become a very mature piece of software — well worth the cash over, say, suffering through Audacity for free. (Sorry, Audacity.) So if you feel left out by the fact that Soundtrack Pro is only available within Final Cut Studio, you should add Sound Studio to your list of tools to consider as an alternative, as well.

Soundtrack Pro 2 from Apple offers some major new improvements over the first release of the “Pro” audio editor from Apple. Multichannel editing now works properly, with the ability to nudge by frames and move clip envelopes together with clips, and there are some brilliant new features for conforming audio projects to video and a “Lift and Stamp” tool for applying audio attributes from one clip (including matching EQ and copying effects) to another.

Macworld.com has just published my complete review of the software:

Pros: Vastly improved multichannel editing and file import and export; Conform feature makes Final Cut integration more elegant; efficient surround panning; improved recording; convenient Lift and Stamp audio.

Cons: Automation requires AppleScript; rigid and sometimes sluggish interface; available only as part of the Final Cut Studio suite.

Soundtrack Pro 2: Improved editing and new features help you sync audio with video

Soundtrack vs. Final Cut Studio vs. Logic

The bad news, of course, is that the only way to get Soundtrack Pro 2 is to either buy Final Cut Studio or upgrade to the whole Final Cut Studio.

Finding the perfect audio editor has eluded many Mac users of late. CDM’s resident pro game composer and sound designer W. Brent Latta has given a newcomer a try — and perhaps found the right app for his workflow.

I have a confession to make: I haven’t had a good-quality 2-track audio editor installed on my Mac in several years. You might wonder how I’ve been doing all of my waveform editing during that time…and I might be wondering the same thing.

Back when I was still using OS 9, I ran Peak as my primary editor - it was fast, relatively simple, and, well, one of the only games in town (SoundEdit 16 and Sound Designer II were both discontinued at the time). Under OS X, I never upgraded Peak. It had become too bloated, too complex, and I honestly couldn’t justify spending money on the upgrade with the level of editing I was doing. But as my needs grew, I continued to search for something that ‘flowed’ with my workflow. So I tried demos of other apps - Audacity never worked right with my audio interface, Soundbooth was too rudimentary, Soundtrack was nice until Apple killed the app-only option and bundled it into Final Cut studio, and DSP Quattro, while very capable, just never really resonated with my way of working. I had nearly given up - and was settled on continuing to use Logic Pro and Wave Burner for all of my edits. Deep down I still hoped there was something out there that might, someday, do exactly what I needed, without putting a lot of other stuff in my way. Enter Audiofile Engineering’s Wave Editor.

Aside from commercial alternatives, the preferred open source audio editor tool is Audacity. Early releases of Audacity were unquestionably rough around the edges, in terms of both stability and features, but thanks to the efforts of the open source community, the software is steadily improving.

Version 1.2.5, released this week, is the new stable version, with Intel Mac support, bug fixes, and now FLAC audio support. (Seems the FLAC support alone is worth keeping it on your hard drive, even if you prefer other tools.)

The 1.3.2 beta is where things start to get more interesting:

1. New selection bar and improved selection tools
2. Dockable toolbars
3. New “Repair” effect, other improved effects
4. Auto-save and automatic crash recovery

Audacity Homepage
New 1.3 Features

Adobe seems to have baffled the Mac community by announcing that its upcoming audio utility Soundbooth, profiled here earlier this week, would run on Intel Macs but not PowerPC Macs. MacInTouch immediately cried foul, and suddenly the Mac world, having spent the past year yelling at Adobe for not releasing Intel-native code, has begun yelling at Adobe for releasing code only for Intel.

The first response came over the weekend from Adobe’s John Nack on his personal blog, waxing largely philosophical about why it made sense to support the newer Intel Macs instead of the PowerPC platform Apple themselves had abandoned. Now, I’ll be the first to concede Mac users can be hotheaded, but I think the better response would be to cut straight to the technical reasons why Adobe’s developers made this choice. Mac users assume, because they’ve been told so repeatedly by Apple, that creating universal applications is a “checkbox-clicking affair.” You can see a comment to that effect in the extensive discussion Mr. Nack triggered on his site.

Adobe audio product manager Hart Shafer chimes in today with the simpler technical answer: