2-track Editor for Post

[dreissk]

I've been using Sound Forge ever since the Sonic Foundry days and it's only gotten worse over the years. I use for editing dialogue lines and sound effects but now it's so buggy/crashy that it's become unusable for me.

Anyone else out there in post or games that can recommend a new 2-track editor that they like? I searched for other threads first but only found results talking about 2-track editors with music as the focus. The focus here would be on fast editing large groups of files: quick topping and tailing, fast volume/EQ changes, click/pop removal on VO lines, batch processing, etc.

Thanks in advance.

[minister]

2-track? I would only think a Mastering Engineer would want that.

Look at Reaper, Nuendo, Pro Tools for doing that kind of work.

[dreissk]

I've used a 2-track editor for years to do final edits for sound effect and voice deliverables in film, cartoons, and TV. They are also extremely common in the gaming field for lightning fast editing. I'm not looking for multitrack recommendations; they definitely serve a different purpose than what I'm looking for.

I've ruled out Peak and Audition since their workflow isn't what I'm looking for.
I also got recommendations for wavosaur and wavelab and am going to check both of those out tomorrow at work.

Anyone else know of any?

[eoats]

I hear you, wish I had a great solution for us. It's great to quickly trim and render sound files while ProTools is in the background. Or not having to wait for it to load just to hear something.

I use Audacity sometimes, but it got too slow to open (gotta figure out how to have it not look up & load so many plugins).

iZotope RX will do stand alone operations, but too slow to open.

So I use Quicktime Pro to listen & trim files.
I set all my .wav files to open with Quicktime too, so double clicking will open them in Quicktime and I can listen and set in & out "Trim to Selection" & save as...

Looking forward to anyone else's solution.

[dreissk]

Interesting, I haven't thought of using quicktime. The two things I really need is the ability to open a folder of files 10-several hundred where I can top, tail, volume adjust, EQ adjust, fade, etc., save and close and have the next file pop up ready to go. I can't do that with a multitrack since I have to worry about exactly that: tracks. Being able to just have the next file fill up the screen is key.

The other main reason why I won't do it in PT or any other multitrack is naming. Names are very important; especially in games. If I throw up a fade or cut a piece of silence out of the middle of a file in PT, the name will change, or, in the case of a fade, I have to consolidate the file and again the name changes, causing another step of work and another chance for error. This isn't so in Sound Forge. Just a shame what they did to that excellent program since version 4.5.

Unfortunately, as minister, in a way, points out, there isn't much of a market for a great 2-track editor. He has a ton of experience in post and he never even touches one, hence his response. Why would he need to? He doesn't have to deliver properly named and mastered files to the re-recording mixer. I haven't had to either for the films I've worked on (with the exception of one) but there is great value in a reliable 2-track file mangler.

[eoats]

A product you might check out is Library Monkey Pro.
It can trim a file and replace the original. Also will do some plugins.

Library Monkey Pro -- Audio File Manager, Editor and Batch Processor

I've been using their sound Grinder for years.

[Bill@AudioVision]

Kevin,
I too have had Sound Forge since the early days and have to agree with you on all fronts. Even though I have 196 tracks of CC-1 Fairlight, I have to have a good two-channel editor. It's my "2-track 1/4" machine". Sound Forge has gotten buggy, but I think it may be more related to drivers and other issues with the PC. I have installed it on 2 machines - first one is using a Lynx AES-16 card and is rock solid UNLESS you change external clock sample rate while the program is open. You just can't do that, even with no files open.
The second machine had been giving me nothing but problems, it's in my office and is running though the onboard audio. I tracked it down to both an audio driver issue and, if you can believe it, a driver issue with an HP printer.
Uninstalled Sound Forge, uninstalled printer, updated audio drivers, updated printer driver, reinstalled SF, reinstalled printer... everyone seems happy. SF does crash close (blue screen) every time it concludes a batch process using files across the network, but all files generated are good.
I don't know if you'll get anywhere with Sony tech support, I haven't tried contacting them lately, but I did have an issue a couple years ago with SF9 generating corrupted Dolby AC-3 files. Their only response "We are aware of the problem, and will issue an update" I guess that update is SF10, which I have no plans to install. It's against my religion to spend money on a bug fix.
There are certain chores I need to do that NOTHING else can do - like cut a 2 hour long voice message file in 2300 files, EQ, compress, sample rate convert, rename according to the main files' cut list, and save as a ADPCM file for a phone IVR system... and do that in about 90 seconds.
Try that with your Protools rig...

[minister]

Long time ago I used PEAK. Even Peak TDM. And I used it on some games. And yes, I use to open a batch of files, top 'n tail, Normalize (or whatever) and close. So I get the work flow.

If I had to use a 2-track, I'd look at Wavelab or Waveburner.

BUT, in PT (and I am sure Nuendo and other decent DAW's) you can still do all that...but yes, it changes the name. It adds -01 or whatever. But there are good ways to deal with it. In PT, you can Auto Rename (make sure your sorting in the bin is right) for sequential stuff. If the file is already named, then process it and export it. Then, in MAC OS X, use Automator to remove unwanted (or add wanted) characters. It is a breeze and super fast!!!! (Same engine that Sample Manager uses). Or use, "A Better File Rename". If the files are not named, use Quickkeys. These tools are very valuable in game work, files for phones, interactives, etc. I don't miss using PEAK at all!!

For batch converting, processing, etc, look at Sample Manager. $79!!!!!

As for not having editors name files, are you kidding me?????? First thing you learn here when you become an editor is how we name files. TV and Film, all sound files are named, even the DX files.

Keep looking around. Yes, for me, I settled into a PT flow and I can fly on it. You just need to learn the tools.

[dr.sound]

Originally Posted by Bill@AudioVision

Kevin,
There are certain chores I need to do that NOTHING else can do - like cut a 2 hour long voice message file in 2300 files, EQ, compress, sample rate convert, rename according to the main files' cut list, and save as a ADPCM file for a phone IVR system... and do that in about 90 seconds.
Try that with your Protools rig...

So Bill, do you charge your client for 90 seconds or......

[dreissk]

I'll look into the driver front of things. Part of the problem is that I tend to move too fast for Sound Forge (I've just had WAY too much practice) and I sometimes cause crashes. I was forced to move up to SF 10 at work and it's only gotten worse. Definitely stick with 9.

As far as PT renaming things. Yes, I realize there are ways to remove the -01 but it's still an extra step and still an extra place for possible error. I can't risk it when I'm dealing with 13000+ lines of dialogue or 4000-5000 sound effects. I won't let my team take that risk; I've seen it backfire too many times. PT is great for design and mixing, but I won't touch it for batching my files or for dialogue editing. I've done entire games using only PT and there are just better and less risky ways of working with files. When I used PT for projects in this way, I came up with a very similar workflow as the one you are suggesting. I just found a better way (for me and my team) to do things and it's the continual demise of Sound Forge that is making things difficult for me.

[philper]

You could try to go back to Sound Forge 7 (2 trk only), very solid on a Lynx One here, since you know it. Otherwise any of the other pro DAWs will work fine, great even.... I use Sound Studio, Audacity etc for quick edits on location etc, but for lots and lots of edits I'd look further.

Philip Perkins

[Bill@AudioVision]

Originally Posted by dr.sound

So Bill, do you charge your client for 90 seconds or......

Yeah, my rate jumps to $1800/hr..

Kevin, I forgot about AWE from Minnetonka. Could that work for you?
I haven't used it, but I remember looking at it when I was having Sound Forge problems awhile back. It is Mac based, so that may not work for you.
-Bill

[dreissk]

Thanks Bill,
I'll look at that one too. Quickly looked at the website and it doesn't look like it lets me get into the file to do manual edits. I'll check out the tutorial videos they have posted. A couple people here at work (and on this post) are talking about wavelab so I'll definitely check that out as well.
Thanks again.

[nathand]

I use WaveLab 6.

[kronos78]

Wavelab 6 is the way to go. And 7 is right around the corner.

I used to use Sound Forge exclusively since the late nineties for all my editing needs and decided I just needed something more pro. Wavelab has everything you could ever need and then more. Check it out.

[dogandpony]

I use Peak but am not totally thrilled with it. I've tried Wave Editor from Audiofile Engineering, interesting workflow and worth a look.

Audiofile Engineering

Their program called Sample Manager might also be something you could use. Wavelab 7 looks great too.

John.

[Muser]

ADRStudio 3.0

[Radiogal]

I use Digital Performer, Logic Pro, Samplitude and Wavelab on a daily basis for different purposes.
For your needs I´d prefere Wavelab for editing and mastering.

Skip ProTools as PT only bounces in real time!!!
That is a real PITA for editing and converting.
No one would pay you these silly extra hours for real time bouncing with PT.

I often need to convert audiofiles. This is done very quickly in Wavelab.

Wavelab is fast, it´s very stable!, sounding great, very intuitive, bounces very fast AND -an important feature-: it is accepting all formats and can convert to any format. (PT does NOT).
Wavelab has three entry/price levels, Wavelab essential 6, Wavelab studio 6 and Wavelab 6.
Wavelab Studio 6 allows 8 tracks. I use this version myself for editing radioshows and PPQ mastering CD:s.

Wavelab 7 will be released for MAC within the next few months.

[stuartprovine]

I dig a little program called Twisted Wave. It's been great so far, and it's cheap.

[gmarinov]

Audition?

[kk@jamsync.com]

Originally Posted by minister

2-track? I would only think a Mastering Engineer would want that.

Look at Reaper, Nuendo, Pro Tools for doing that kind of work.

Reaper is certainly economical, but no mastering engineer worth the money would use a DAW with these SRC results:

SRC Comparisons

This is an excellent site. One of the people who developed it is the DSP developer at Izotope; another is the mastering engineer at Infinite Wave.

[kk@jamsync.com]

Originally Posted by Radiogal

I use Digital Performer, Logic Pro, Samplitude and Wavelab on a daily basis for different purposes.
For your needs I´d prefere Wavelab for editing and mastering.

Skip ProTools as PT only bounces in real time!!!
That is a real PITA for editing and converting.
No one would pay you these silly extra hours for real time bouncing with PT.
.

Oh puhleeze! You wouldn't use bouncing in PT for this; you'd export after doing stuff in AudioSuite. Learn the program first before you slam it. Edit, consolidate, export. Very easy.

As for SRC, if you're doing SRC in Logic Pro, you're really not getting great SRC results. Check out the site I mentioned above.

The only problems PT has are out of audio range.

[Radiogal]

Originally Posted by kk@jamsync.com

Oh puhleeze! You wouldn't use bouncing in PT for this; you'd export after doing stuff in AudioSuite. Learn the program first before you slam it. Edit, consolidate, export. Very easy.

As for SRC, if you're doing SRC in Logic Pro, you're really not getting great SRC results. Check out the site I mentioned above.

The only problems PT has are out of audio range.

Yeah, sure, Audio Suite, would work for a stereo track. What about 3,4 tracks or more in a project? You´ll need to bounce sooner or later.. unfortunately in PT this means IN REAL TIME! Consolidate tracks/regions will only do a kinda merge for one track at the time. It doesn´t mix them together.

Plz, don´t slam my fingers bout PT. I´ve been using PT since Mix 24.
I don´t own it myself anymore as it doesn´t suite my workflow.
I own all the others earlier mentioned DAWs instead and they serve me well.

With that said, in some of my worksituations outside my studio I still do use PT.
But when needing to convert plenty of different kind of audio files and bounce 1-2 hour projects of radio shows, it´s REALLY NO FUN using PT.
That´s where Wavelab does a much faster and better job.

Don´t take my pro-Wavelab experience personally.
This is all about the tools and applications, not the people using it.

PS. I´m not using Logic nor DP for this task either..

[gmarinov]

As far as two-track (i'd rather call them flat file) sound editors go, I think comparing Pro Tools and Logic (and other DAWs) is missing the point. Sound Forge is great and so is Audition (i personally find it a bit bloated and prefer the old CoolEdit Pro).

On the Mac "non-daw" sound editors suck or are too expensive to consider. But! WaveLab and Audition are coming.

In the hands of an experienced person, and especially for radio, editing things in a non-daw sound editor makes Pro Tools, Logic, Nuendo, et al, overkill and often a very slow process.

[dreissk]

Since I started this conversation I wanted to take a moment and say thank you to everyone who contributed. For the time being I'm going to give Wavelab a shot. Hopefully that will get me off of the crashing train that is Sound Forge. Thanks again!

[eoats]

very interesting!

It makes me curious about the SRC in other programs I use.

Originally Posted by kk@jamsync.com

Reaper is certainly economical, but no mastering engineer worth the money would use a DAW with these SRC results:

SRC Comparisons

This is an excellent site. One of the people who developed it is the DSP developer at Izotope; another is the mastering engineer at Infinite Wave.

[kk@jamsync.com]

Originally Posted by Radiogal

Yeah, sure, Audio Suite, would work for a stereo track. What about 3,4 tracks or more in a project? You´ll need to bounce sooner or later.. unfortunately in PT this means IN REAL TIME! Consolidate tracks/regions will only do a kinda merge for one track at the time. It doesn´t mix them together.

Plz, don´t slam my fingers bout PT. I´ve been using PT since Mix 24.
I don´t own it myself anymore as it doesn´t suite my workflow.
I own all the others earlier mentioned DAWs instead and they serve me well.

With that said, in some of my worksituations outside my studio I still do use PT.
But when needing to convert plenty of different kind of audio files and bounce 1-2 hour projects of radio shows, it´s REALLY NO FUN using PT.
That´s where Wavelab does a much faster and better job.

Don´t take my pro-Wavelab experience personally.
This is all about the tools and applications, not the people using it.

PS. I´m not using Logic nor DP for this task either..

I'll see your ProTools|24 Mix and raise you SD for the Emulator plus custom ROM chips for the Drumulator in the 80's (i.e. I knew PT before it was PT)(do they play poker in Sweden?)

No, with multitrack, you would be mixing and most people who know PT don't use bounce. Who would mix multiple tracks to stereo without listening? I wouldn't... If you set up the mix buss properly and monitor an audio track in record, there's no need to bounce...EVER.

I'm no PT zealot...I have most of the software mentioned in this thread, and I've beta tested about two-thirds of it. Wavelab is fine.I wouldn't use Wavelab 5 for SRC (scary!), but Wavelab 6 Crystal Resampler is peachy keen. I like Steinberg (they're great people) and one of our three mix rooms is just for Nuendo. I still wouldn't advocate mixing tracks w/o listening to them.

But the OP asked for two-track sw, and in PT, you don't have to bounce. It's just not true, no matter how many times you say it. In fact, if they removed BTD from PT most pros would not miss it. It's often a bad accident waiting to happen.

[Airon]

Originally Posted by Bill@AudioVision

Kevin,
I too have had Sound Forge since the early days and have to agree with you on all fronts. Even though I have 196 tracks of CC-1 Fairlight, I have to have a good two-channel editor. It's my "2-track 1/4" machine". Sound Forge has gotten buggy, but I think it may be more related to drivers and other issues with the PC. I have installed it on 2 machines - first one is using a Lynx AES-16 card and is rock solid UNLESS you change external clock sample rate while the program is open. You just can't do that, even with no files open.
The second machine had been giving me nothing but problems, it's in my office and is running though the onboard audio. I tracked it down to both an audio driver issue and, if you can believe it, a driver issue with an HP printer.
Uninstalled Sound Forge, uninstalled printer, updated audio drivers, updated printer driver, reinstalled SF, reinstalled printer... everyone seems happy. SF does crash close (blue screen) every time it concludes a batch process using files across the network, but all files generated are good.
I don't know if you'll get anywhere with Sony tech support, I haven't tried contacting them lately, but I did have an issue a couple years ago with SF9 generating corrupted Dolby AC-3 files. Their only response "We are aware of the problem, and will issue an update" I guess that update is SF10, which I have no plans to install. It's against my religion to spend money on a bug fix.
There are certain chores I need to do that NOTHING else can do - like cut a 2 hour long voice message file in 2300 files, EQ, compress, sample rate convert, rename according to the main files' cut list, and save as a ADPCM file for a phone IVR system... and do that in about 90 seconds.
Try that with your Protools rig...

I used to use Soundforge as well and had been using it since v3 or so, though it really peaked at v4.5, and then Sony came. Nevertheless for simple and since v5 or so non-destructive cutting it's ok. If you need AC3 export, the current v10 is great.

Most of my file editing, effects compositing and export is now done with Reaper on a Windows 7 PC together with a companion program, which essentially renders out range markers with the name you give to those markers. In Reaper they're called Regions, but they're actually range markers.

I cut up and process all my 722 field recordings with it. I generate all my effect composits, even single-effect submixes via the stem rendering feature with Reaper.

Reaper has a batch render facility, and a batch converter. Both can be found in the File menu.

The companion program(free!) is called Autorender and can be obtained here: autorender - Project Hosting on Google Code

Reaper can be obtained at REAPER | Audio Production Without Limits . Grab this supremely useful Reaper extension, which is open source and as excellent as Reaper itself here: SWS Extension . Don't forget to grab the manual for Reaper and the extension.

You'll be sailing through your renders in no time. Reaper can render out ADPCM files too btw.

[philper]

Originally Posted by Airon

I used to use Soundforge as well and had been using it since v3 or so, though it really peaked at v4.5, and then Sony came. Nevertheless for simple and since v5 or so non-destructive cutting it's ok. If you need AC3 export, the current v10 is great.

Most of my file editing, effects compositing and export is now done with Reaper on a Windows 7 PC together with a companion program, which essentially renders out range markers with the name you give to those markers. In Reaper they're called Regions, but they're actually range markers.

I cut up and process all my 722 field recordings with it. I generate all my effect composits, even single-effect submixes via the stem rendering feature with Reaper.

Reaper has a batch render facility, and a batch converter. Both can be found in the File menu.

The companion program(free!) is called Autorender and can be obtained here: autorender - Project Hosting on Google Code

Reaper can be obtained at REAPER | Audio Production Without Limits . Grab this supremely useful Reaper extension, which is open source and as excellent as Reaper itself here: SWS Extension . Don't forget to grab the manual for Reaper and the extension.

You'll be sailing through your renders in no time. Reaper can render out ADPCM files too btw.

I'm really sorry to hear that Sound Forge has gotten so buggy. I've used SF 7 on a PC for many years as a "utility" editor--quick and dirty, combine mono into stereo files etc etc, even, at one time, using it a lot to record in VO (w/ Lynx One). It's worked very well. Both the Lunx and SF 7 won't be able to make the jump to a new PC, so I guess I'll look at WaveLab then.

Philip Perkins

[gmarinov]

Not a short read by any means but I decided to document my first 45 minutes with REAPER, in the context of quick sound editing, with strong emphasis on workflow and interface. I think we're all aware of its capabilities..

I can only hope it will be a fun read for your coffee break. I deliberately tossed copious amounts of stupidity and expectations at it.