Official Luthiers Forum!

Good morning:
I am the happy recipient of a Zoom recorder for Christmas. Now, I was hoping some of you could recommend which Windows software is the best to manipulate the files I am getting from the H2. These files should really spice up my soon to be website! (Which I hope the website guy finishes SOMEDAY... sigh )

Happy Holidays everyone!
Mikey

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The Biggest Little City, Nevada
www.hammondguitars.com
I love building guitars!

Back when I was using windows computers, sound forge was the best for 2 track audio type post work. It also costs more than your recorder and is now owned by Sony which may have ruined it.

You might try the $50 sound forge lite version and see how that works for you. It looks like it's got everything you need in there.

The other option is to look at open source things like Audacity.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

Here's a free recording software program:

http://www.mymusictools.com/audio_edito ... _26294.htm

There's a lot of recording software on the market and there are plenty of free programs. I've never used
this one but have a friend who likes it well enough.

Audacity is my go-to program for sound editing. Mainly because it's free. Not super powerful, but covers the usual functions of normalizing volume, trimming the ends, and encoding to mp3/ogg/etc. http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Hi there!
first, what do you mean manipulate? basic editing (cuting, trimming, EQing,...) or something fancier, like manipulating pitch, or spectral filtering or other FFT-related stuff (sorry for the jargon)? as in all things, it´s hard to know what´s best for you... if it´s basic functions you need, IMVHO, any audio editor will suffice.
If you want to go the freeware route, than you should check both audacity and wavosaur. they´re both free, lightweight and can host VSTs (audio plugins that will perform tasks the host software isn´t apt to) if you choose to use them. they are immensely more powerful than they seem at first. the only problem is - understandably - lack of support from the devs
sincerely, you should have what you need with either. wavosaur is even lighter than audacity, but audacity is opensource. between the two, i favour wavosaur, because i can just have it on a flash drive and take it anyware and it just seems to cope better with my VST plugins and instruments.

if you choose to go payware, on windows, i would say wavelab or soundforge, but that will set you back lots of $$$ and would only be worth it if you are planning on making some cash out of your work with them. the cheaper version of soundforge ( http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/audiostudio ) will not add anything substantial to the two freeware stuff, but you could check if it´s your cup of tea. acoustica ( http://www.acondigital.com/us_Acoustica1.html ) offers an inexpensive and very professional solution that will give you the benefit of professional support for 40 bucks. my personal favourite, though, is BIAS sound soap, but that one is mac only, and expensive.

HTH,
Miguel.

edit: i take to much time to type this stuff, it all has been answered in the meantime... sorry if i´m restating the obvious. Cheers!

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

I don't know what your sound hardware is, but if you have Audigy products, like Soundblaster, or whatever the latest is, there should be software with it, or at least down-loadable. I have Adobe Audition, which is Adobe's answer to Pro Tools. It is a very good program, but is also pretty expensive. I got it because I had the opportunity to get it cheap, because I owned a prior version of a great product called Cool Edit, which was bought out by Adobe. Either way, though Audacity will work fine for almost everything you'd likely do.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I do basic sound editing and Audacity works well for me. I would say go for something free until you learn enough about it to run into limitations then you should know enough to make a better-informed decision and buy something.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I'm quite partial to a program called Reaper by Cockos. It's cheap (50-60$), very full featured, open source and very frequently updated, and it has an active forum with people who are both helpful and knowledgable (like here!)... Oh, and you can download an uncrippled trial version for free.

sorry for the nitpicking, but didn´t the original poster asked for sound editing software? audition and reaper, although doable, are DAWs, best for multitrack recording / sequencing than editing stereo / mono audio files, where they´d be severely bloated. apart from that, both are great programs. Reaper, in particular, is a very generous and always evolving package to which i´m rather partial as well.

again, sorry for taking this a bit sideways,

cheers,
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes