technical questions about equipment and software used by voice talent who record at home - moderated by Beau Weaver
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
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
You need to be a member of VOICEOVER UNIVERSE to add comments!
Comments are closed.
Comments
Alexis, I have a TLM 103 and have also worked on S sounds. But I get rid of them differently.
I make training videos, so I record dry, then do everything in post production. I use Waves plugins including their DeEsser. It is nice because you can fine tune the specific area for your particular voice.
However, I do not know how to do it on a mixer. I am not a mixer guru.
My dad spends a lot of time having to de-ess his recordings, He has worked on mic technique which has helped but is there something he can do to scoop out some of the harsh s and z sounds
The sales person at Sam Ash said he needed a Presounus pre amp. Thankfully they did not have any in stock or he would have got it right there.
Can any of you nice tech savvy folks tell us what settings might work using the pre amps on our Mackie Onix mixer? (We are mostly using a Neumann TLM 103 mic which we were told is kind of harsh on the ss sounds).
Please write it in simple terms that even my dad can understand :)
Thank you
Jeepers. Give this a shot also.
Wavepad, by NCH Software. Trial is 30-day free. You then have option of paing for master version (its not a bank breaker at all), or keeping the basic version for free.
Its awesome. I use it. Beats the crap out of any of the other free ones.
Very intuitive, responds to same shortcut commands you'd use on your PC.
Visually, its spot on. No brain shortfusing here!
http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/index.html?ns=true&gclid=CL7qmbbG...
Thanks Darla,
I have f igured it out another way! I went online to Soundforge and downloadaed the Free trial and then plugged in the information from my software-serial # etc...--it works beautifully now.
Where there's a will there's a way, eh?Hope all is well with you. Have a great day!
Jennifer,
I am sorry that this didn't work for you. I will check with my IT guy to see how to fix it. I don't remember what i did to work around it because I try to record only on one computer. maybe someone else has an idea, if they have used this...okay...ideas anyone???
Hello everyone! (Hi Ron!)
I use AVS (
Darla you are right about it not going smoothly!! It was going beautifully until I tried to open it from my portable hard drive onto my dell Inspiron mini. Kept getting the message "Application has failed to start because its side by side configuration is incorrect". Any ideas? Did this happen to you? I've been looking for ideas on line nothing yet seems to work. Dont ya love computers???
-
10
-
11
-
12
-
13
-
14
of 78 Next