technical questions about equipment and software used by voice talent who record at home - moderated by Beau Weaver
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My favorite audio editing tool for Voiceover

Guys,

As I have mentioned frequently, I am a long time hater of Pro Tools. If you are recording multiple channels of music, routing through plug ins and locked to picture, it sure is the right tool. But for recording and editing voiceover tracks, it is a needlessly complex and cumbersome resource hog. And those are it's good points.

I cannot count the calls I have taken from folks who are new to home recording, literally in tears, trying to figure out how to save a simple recording as an mp3 file with Pro Tools. And don't even get me started on how any OS update from Apple usually renders Pro Tools inoperable. And a year to support Leopard? Give me a break. But I digress.

I have done extensive testing of virtually all the audio editors for Mac OSX, including, Logic, Soundtrack Pro, Peak, Adobe Sound Booth, Sound Studio 3, Wave Editor, Amadeus Pro, etc. On the PC platform, I was a long time fan of Sony Sound Forge, but they do not have any plans to port the app to Mac. Peak has it's fans, but it crashes regularly, and support is spotty. I was liking Sound Studio 3 a lot, but there were some bugs, and omissions and the developer did not respond to support requests at all. All of the above programs have their strengths and weaknesses, but for the way I like to work, they were just not quite right.

Anyway, I have been working with a software developer to perfect a suite little app that I just love, and I want to pass it along to you. For my money, the best tool for recording and editing voiceover is: TwistedWave. http://twistedwave.com And, the price is 49 Dollars!*

It loads in about one second. No changing cursors into different tools. It works like a word processor. It saves directly as mp3 files, and will convert between almost all important audio file types. It exports the selected portion of the waveforme as a new file, of any type you specify. Navigation is a dream. You can zoom horizontally in the waveform and zoom in all with the tiny trackball in the Apple Mighty Mouse. It will record the highest resolution audio, sample rate and bit depth your sound card supports. It works with any digital interface that uses Apple Core Audio. For the advanced user, keyboard shortcuts are customizable, and you can create and save customized effects stacks of AU plugins.

I have worked closely with the guy who created the program to make some ease of use tweaks and fine tuning. He has responded to every one of my requests the same day. I think if you spend a little time playing with it, you may fall in love too.

You can download from this link, and try for a 30 day evaluation period for free. A major 1.5 update has just been posted, with additional improvement in development.

I have been using this as my daily editor for some time now and it is a huge time saver. If you are also a musician, or music producer, then Pro Tools is obviously. If all you need to do is record voiceover sessions, quick edit and cleanup and ship off via ftp, then give Twisted Wave a try, and never look back.

Full Disclosure: I am a paid user, and receive no compensation for this recommendation, other than gratitude for a tool so ideally suited for the task at hand.


Beau Weaver

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  • Can somebody please explane to me what Phone Patch is?
  • What I'm running starts with a Shure KSM 27 mic pluged into a Behrenger Eurorack UBB 1002 (Which I use as a preamp), and then to a PreSonus Firebox, and finally to a Dell Studio 540 computer. It seems to work.
  • I'm a real newbie to this biz and even more so to the home office recording side of the biz. I have been using Audacity and have found it really easy to learn and to use. Please tell me why I should not be using it. Obviously in these economic times money is an issue and if I can continue to use this program effectively I would like to do so unlessl I am persuaded to look for something else. Also I have been using a MXL.009 usb mic and audio technica
    head phones.
    I have received reasonably good feedback from auditions. All comments,thoughts and ideas would be greatly appreciated.
  • Hi everyone, I'm a newbie with information overload !!!!!! I want to make sure I invest in the best equipment I can offord
  • Beau, have you ever used Cubase, and, if so, what is your opinion of it as an audio record and edit app?
  • Beau, I'm sure someone has asked this, but what is your signal chain for most sessions?
  • Today I recorded 15secs of "room tone" and what showed up in my audio was a bunch of tiny flat topped marks or indicators of something. Listening was like hearing really lo volume static. Room tone or equip chain noize do you think?
  • I agree with this article wholeheartedly. I am an editor part time. Protools and Avid are meant for industry professionals who grew up on that software and that process. Great if you're into that, but they take forever to edit on. And tons of training. Twisted Wave is meant for computer users who want to be able to figure out a program in less than 5 minutes. That's why it rocks the most. It's built intuitively for anyone to use quickly.

    It's not as awesome as soundforge. I had to use Parallels on my Mac OSX to use soundforge and switching between interfaces took too much time. And if you didn't have the mp3 plugin, you had to convert in another program. Twisted wave is a happy medium and you don't have to pay to convert to MP3s after you buy it. It's so simple, so easy, and I recommend it for those quick auditions and recordings.
  • Hey all. I am looking for some tutorials on mixing VO with bed music. I am rather new to VO, but have been a musician and brass technician for 20 years, so I know how to balance a sound. STILL, I don't trust myself and always want to learn. Anyone know of some good tutorials on the basics? Thanks!
  • Congrats to Lofty! As you're discovering, being a "moron" is often a temporary state of affairs often overcome with information and experience, and this forum certainly has helped me accelerate out of moron-dom...?...whatever.

    Question: anybody have experience with the Apogee Duet? If so, what do you think of it as a studio interface?
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