Audio Editing Alternative

[Andreilg3]

Hey, I make electronic music and I love everything about Ableton except it's god awful audio editor. When it comes to manually cutting and finding the beggining of a kick for example, of a zero crossing Ableton is just bad. http://i.imgur.com/hiIqUyp.png The blockiness and "smudges" show that it's not intended for such work.

So I was wondering if you guys could recommend a good audio editor. I've read that Adobe Audition, Sound Forge, and Steinberg Wavelab are popular choices but what exactly makes them different than just say, using Pro Tools (which I have access to) for audio editing? Is pro Tools just a slightly better version of Ableton in term's of audio editing and thus doesn't reach the dedicated audio editor standard?

Thanks for your time

[Winterpark]

I use iZotope RX as my editor.... most of what I use an editor for is for cleaning up audio anyway, so it works really well.

[Andreilg3]

I use iZotope RX as my editor.... most of what I use an editor for is for cleaning up audio anyway, so it works really well.

Hm that's not a bad idea, thanks. I still don't really understand why audio editors exist seperate from DAWs (RX2 I do because it has a crazy amount of audio fixing features)

[Electric Blue Studios]

I use Soundforge for an audio editor, works like a charm with Ableton.

[Andreilg3]

I use Soundforge for an audio editor, works like a charm with Ableton.

Other than being more high resolution than ableton, what does it do that Ableton can't? I'm thinking about buying it because of all the good reviews I've seen but it's hard to decide.

[Mage2k]

If you edit your audio with Sampler or Simpler you can enable Snap mode or use short fades to avoid pops.

[Electric Blue Studios]

I use Soundforge for an audio editor, works like a charm with Ableton.

Other than being more high resolution than ableton, what does it do that Ableton can't? I'm thinking about buying it because of all the good reviews I've seen but it's hard to decide.

For precise editing down to the sample, there is no comparison. I highly recommend sound forge, its been amazing since the sonic foundry days.

[Andreilg3]

I use Soundforge for an audio editor, works like a charm with Ableton.

Other than being more high resolution than ableton, what does it do that Ableton can't? I'm thinking about buying it because of all the good reviews I've seen but it's hard to decide.

For precise editing down to the sample, there is no comparison. I highly recommend sound forge, its been amazing since the sonic foundry days.

Ok thanks

[jestermgee]

I'm a fan of wavelab and have been using it since V1.

Before the days of fancy daw editing you needed a wave editor to pre-process samples for your "DAW" or tracker. I still find it much easier to edit on a nice big display with proper colours and zooming controls. Also you just have the controls to edit and manipulate the sample so all your effort is just in perfecting the sample. I use to painstakenly cut and edit loops from songs to remix and DJ before I discovered Ableton. I learned a lot about getting a perfect loop from a not so perfect subject.

[Andreilg3]

I'm a fan of wavelab and have been using it since V1.

Before the days of fancy daw editing you needed a wave editor to pre-process samples for your "DAW" or tracker. I still find it much easier to edit on a nice big display with proper colours and zooming controls. Also you just have the controls to edit and manipulate the sample so all your effort is just in perfecting the sample. I use to painstakenly cut and edit loops from songs to remix and DJ before I discovered Ableton. I learned a lot about getting a perfect loop from a not so perfect subject.

I'm trying to make an edit of an edm track. Assuming you cut off the silence before the song (some songs have that especially CD ones), where do you decide to start the loop? I've seen kicks that start right away with the transient and others that are a subtle rise, and then others where the first kick seems to be shorter than the rest in the song.

[jestermgee]

I always start the loop just before the transient where you can find the zero level. This is where editors are good because you can zoom in easy and have a big display. Just before the transient (like a few ms). If you start right on you can have a click sometimes. Then I just play in loop mode and look AWAY from the screen and try and hear clicks or "stutters" where you can hear the loop point. Then it's just a case of tiny adjustments to get it right.

The trick with a good loop is to have the start and end of your waveform in exactly the same place (zero is easiest). Again, the good thing with an editor is if you have a very "noisy" loop that you cannot get a nice zero point you can do a simple 10ms fade in at the start and end to make it zero.

Then there are those loops where you want the beginning of a breakdown but it has the tail of a hat. This is where you can cut the clean starts and ends of different parts, stick them together and make a clean loop. It's all way quicker than fiddling round in Ableton.

[Andreilg3]

I always start the loop just before the transient where you can find the zero level. This is where editors are good because you can zoom in easy and have a big display. Just before the transient (like a few ms). If you start right on you can have a click sometimes. Then I just play in loop mode and look AWAY from the screen and try and hear clicks or "stutters" where you can hear the loop point. Then it's just a case of tiny adjustments to get it right.

The trick with a good loop is to have the start and end of your waveform in exactly the same place (zero is easiest). Again, the good thing with an editor is if you have a very "noisy" loop that you cannot get a nice zero point you can do a simple 10ms fade in at the start and end to make it zero.

Then there are those loops where you want the beginning of a breakdown but it has the tail of a hat. This is where you can cut the clean starts and ends of different parts, stick them together and make a clean loop. It's all way quicker than fiddling round in Ableton.

Thanks, that's how I go about it as well. However, I've got a track "Jody Wisternoff - Red Stripes that starts off in silence but it has like a -100db noise that's present way before the kick and I imagine is an error, so stuff like that bugs me. But yea I think I'm going to get sound forge, sounds sweet. Is there an option in sound forge to show me all the actual zero crossing points?

[Nokatus]

In case you're on Windows: http://www.wavosaur.com

Just as good as the oldskool Sonic Foundry Sound Forge, without the bloat of the modern one ... I've got the most used functions mapped to macro keys on my keyboard (I do a lot of editing like trimming and start/end fades at, for example, the final stages of a sound design batch) and it works very efficiently. Running on Windows 7 64-bit here.

And oh, it's free.