Audio Mixing Software

Hmm, not sure if I should be posting this here, but it does relate to a machinima movie I'm trying to make so here goes ..

I need to edit a six minute J-Pop single down to three minutes so that it fits the storyboard of my movie, but audacity just isn't good enough for what I have in mind. I know exactly which segments need to be cut, and which segments from elsewhere in the track could be sampled to create a transition across my cuts, but I also need to mask a few sounds ... and that presents a bit of a problem. Think Photoshop, but masking and smoothing sounds instead of graphics. Is that even possible? Does my dream 'Audioshop' exist?

I'm hoping for something intuitive which isn't too difficult to learn, and if the price is high - that really doesn't matter (um .. within reason). I don't really want to be spending a month learning how to use a piece of software when I should be getting on with my movie. =)

I've used Goldwave* as the "vi" version of audio production when I need to do something quick and simple. The UI isn't great, but the price is hard to beat.

I just noticed their Multisequence product which looks more tailored to your project. I have no experience with it.

*http://www.goldwave.com/

Thanks Malachi! The regular audio editor looks the better option right now because it really is just an audio task. I'll be applying individual clips to the audio in a video editor later on.

I'll take a look at this right now.

Walker..you might want to check this out..
http://www.acoustica.com/dj-twist-burn/

I use the acoustice Mixcraft 3 for multitracking my keyboard composition..they are good programs and have a free trial download to let you try before you buy.
The "Twist and Burn" sounds like it would work for you..and they are reasonably priced.
Hope this helps.

Adobe Audition is pretty good. Well, it's broadcast industry standard, so I'm guessing its quite well liked.

Consider trying n-Track (), which is $50 ($75 for use with 24-bit soundcards, but that's not the case here). You can download it and try it out for free; unregistered you hear a few tones every 30 seconds or so, and some features are disabled and axplain that in a popup.

It was made for audio editing, and video was added later. I haven't used the video capability, but it works great for audio and MIDI.

Woah. I feel such a fool for overlooking that. I was thinking a suite which uses a Photoshop-like toolset would be really great (editing, masking & combining *layers* of audio, as opposed to graphics, for example). Not sure if that's the case here, but if it's as powerful and intuitive as other Adobe products, I'm sure it'll be perfect.

n-Track Studio also looks pretty cool. I'm downloading that as I type. Thanks guys. =)

Audacity is free, and it's decent.

Cool Edit Pro is now Adobe Audition (already mentioned): http://www.adobe.com/special/products/audition/syntrillium.html

Reason is a really fun program: http://www.propellerheads.se/

Sound Forge is decent: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/soundforgefamily.asp

Fruity Loops is great: http://www.fruity-loops.com/

Cakewalk is OK: http://www.dcmusicstore.com/Cakewalk-Kinetic-software-loop-and-beat-creation

Acid Pro is groovy: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/acidfamily.asp

THOSE ARE ALL THE ONES I'VE USED AND THOUGHT WERE GOOD...

Yeah. I couldn't work out from the original posts why Audacity isn't suitable. My experience is that it will do the "editing, masking & combining *layers* of audio" that's wanted.

Using Import Audio, Time Shift Tool and the Envelope Tool should cover most of it.

http://www.yourmachines.org/tutorials/audacity.html

Well, I couldn't figure out how to do that.

Having said that, Adobe Audition is absolutely unbelievable.

Perhaps not surprising that I'm picking it up so quickly because I used Syntrillium's CoolEdit many years ago and can see a lot of it in the edit interface. Sheesh, the tracker is amazing. I've just made five mixes of the song I was working on, added in my own voice on one of them, and now I have a completely different movie in mind too. Win win.

/decided to grab Lynda.com's Adobe Audition course because there's clearly a lot more power to be unlocked here that I don't know about. =)

Can Audacity play the video along with the audio? If so, it should suit just fine.

I find that any of the math-intensive algorithms in Audacity sound terrible, even when compared with (free) CoolEdit96 (which much later became Adobe Audition, and is definitely quality software). For example, pitch shifting and de-noising based on sample -- FAR better results with the same input file with CoolEdit. The audible artifacts in Audacity rendered it useless for my purposes.

But you don't need any of the fancy algorithms here, just arranging things.

BTW, in audio software "layers" are called "tracks". Ergo, any "multi-tracking" software has the layers you were thinking of. Audition supports multiple tracks, but last time I checked (several years ago), you couldn't apply plugins on a track -- you had to actually render the track using the plugin. Totally unsuitable for home recording, for example, where you want to constantly tweak and apply the effects nondestructively each time you listen. But again, you don't need that here. And they probably added that feature since 2004 or whenever.

He he, I'm guessing you know it doesn't, but it depends on your workflow whether this is that important at the music mixing stage.

I would have suggested Ardour, but I don't think Linux is being used

All said and done it's what an individual is happy with and Walker found his sweet spot, so it's all good

Actually, I should also have mentioned that Adobe Premiere Elements might be worth a look. Although it's a video editing application, it does have an incredible amount of high-end effects and options for video (green/blue screen keys etc) and I would imagine a fair amount of audio enhancement options too. To be honest, I've never really looked at the audio options on it too much, after using Audition for work.

Whilst Elements probably won't have as much depth as Audition, it may still have a lot more capabilities than a lot of other software.

Nice to hear someone saying that they could get to grips with Audition after being accustomed to CoolEdit...most of the time I always hear "I still prefer CoolEdit, why'd they have to go and change it" etc etc...bloody radio jocks.