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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  • Walt Marsican wrote: "It is really intended for the producer who wants to record and produce". Thanks, I really needed to know this. I only wish to create mp3 recordings of my voice for demos or auditions. This program gives me too much to work with. I tried Audacity and really didn't like it. What other program might someone suggest?
  • I like Adobe Audition. Pricey yes, but also pretty powerful.
    If you're only interested in doing dry voiceovers, you may do just as well with something a lot less expensive. But if you want to create some some production and mix music, sfx, and muliple voice tracks, AA is a great program.
    It comes with several very good plug-ins and can accommodate many more. It has basically 2 screens - an edit screen for recording and editing, and a multi track screen for mixing, plus an additional mix level screen for adjusting volumes and much more.
    AA is maybe too much for the voice artist who just wants a program to record their voice tracks. It is really intended for the producer who wants to record and produce practically any type of audio recording in virtually any file type necessary.
  • i am trying out the Adobe audition 3 program. anyone else using this one? any pointers?
  • i found out that my pc came with the wrong kind of sound card. am now waiting for correct type (on back order).
  • I think hitting pause is the only answer. Does it have a time limit on it?
  • I plan on it! Now I just have to get the rest of my house in order:( But tomorrow my husband and I going to be extras in a movie so the house will have to wait.

    Blessings:)
  • Congratulations on the studio! Enjoy it!
  • The jury is still out on that Karl as soon as I can I will let you know.

    Great news my home studio in my apartment is just about set; all I have to do is hang the curtains. Whoo Hoo Blessings:)
  • Christine, this inquiring mind wants to know if you found a way to continue after stopping in Audacity without starting a second track. If there's a way other than hitting pause, I would love to know it. Thanks.
    Karl
  • Thanks Alexis and Karl I did manage to figure it out after much trial and error. I think for now, I will stay with Audacity and keep learning on that. And yes I will go back and look at those pages.

    Karl I agree I don't want to do anything that might not be right for a business

    Thanks to both of you. Blessings:)
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