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Audio Anywhere
by By Timothy Everingham — NOCCC, teveringham@earthlink.net - November 23, 1999 at 21:08:22:
Sonic Foundry is known for its ACID music composing program that is directed towards music professionals, semi-pros, and amateurs with knowledge of music or time to learn. However, the program is not directed toward the person who wants to create simple music and sound clips for presentations, websites, and videos, people who do not have knowledge of music and sound. Sonic Foundry created Audio Anywhere for this purpose. The package contains two programs, Acid Style 1.0 (now 2.0) and Sound Forge XP 4.5. Sound Forge allows you to record and edit individual sound and music files. Acid Style allows the mixing of sound and music files. The manual is written for those who do not have a music background and has tutorials for both programs. The programs are set up for simple point and click or point and drag operation.When you start Acid Style the menu and toolbar are at the top, followed by an editing area laid out as a time line, followed by a file directory below. The program comes with over 800 musical instrument and sound effect files with (guitars, basses, keyboards, drums, special effects, and one shots), so you have something substantial to start working. When you click on one of these files, also known as loops, and have the audio preview option on, it plays the first part of the clip so you can better decide if you want to use it. If you decide to use it, you drag the loop into the editing area to the point on the time line you wish to start it to play. You can have up to eight of these loops; the area is aligned vertically and referred to as tracks. Each track has its name and some individual track controls to the left of the track, including a volume control and tempo. You can control the length of time that the sound is played and can place multiple sections of that loop on the track. Tempo and key can be changed along the time line via markers. You can also record a track while the other tracks are playing if you have a sound card that is capable of simultaneous record and play. Or you can use two sound cards on your computer. (That is right, you can add your own vocals to your music). The recording is added as a track, and it synchronizes well with the playback of the other tracks that were playing back to you at the time. Output is in proprietary, wav, Windows Media, and MP3 formats. Wav and AIF files can be imported into the program and used along with those in the program’s proprietary format. The help files are of good quality and are designed so the beginner can understand and use them. It also has an Undo/Redo feature.
Sound Forge is more of an in-depth sound file editor and recorder. Not only can it cut and paste, but also it can process the sound file with filters and effects. This includes using a graphic equalizer, normalization, fades, pan, chorus, echo, distortion, flange, reverb, and others. Of course for you backward masking and reverse speech searchers, there is reverse. You can record your old records, then reduce the pops and other noise and bring up that faded music in the recording. You can create sounds that make it like it was recorded in a great hall or the sound can move from left to right, which could follow an object’s similar move in a video clip. In fact, the program does allow you to do synchro-nization and attachment of sounds with AVI video clips. You can even enhance your singing voice. You can also change quality settings causing a change in file size, something important for the web. Like Acid Style, it is very point and click/point and drag-oriented. It has the menu and tool bar on top with the editing area below. The sound file is represented as waves in a graphical format. Input is via MP3, NEXT/Sun, SampleVision, Sound Designer, Sounder/Sound Tool, AVI, WAV, RAW, and proprietary formats. Output is via Real Media, Real Networks G2, SampleVision, Sound Designer, Sounder/Sound Tool, AVI, WAV, Windows Media, RAW, and proprietary formats. An Undo/Redo feature is also present.
The package is designed for beginners, but knowledge of music and sound is a great advantage. The beginners can start right away to generate music and sounds, but they will need some time to experiment to create output of high quality. So if you want to use this to generate something for presentations, give yourself some time to work with the two programs to learn some basic things about music and sound. The program can be used for more than the basic things that it is presented for, especially Sound Forge. For more complex musical arrangements some people will eventually want to upgrade to Sound Foundry’s ACID. Overall it is a good package to generate sound/music files for presentations, the web, and video that a beginner can use, yet complex enough so growth in quality and complexity of sound is possible without having to upgrade right away. For most people that are not audiophiles, this package should be sufficient for their needs. Of course playing with sound and producing neat sound effects and excellent music can be addictive. The installation for both programs was simple and straightforward. Online registration via Sonic Foundry’s website www.sonicfoundry.com is available. Software updates are available on the website also.
The list price is $99, but it has been seen it in stores for $49.95. Additional musical instrument and sound effect loops are available from Sonic Foundry. Minimum system requirements are 133 MHz Pentium, Windows 9x or NT 4.0, Windows compatible sound card, CD-ROM drive, 32 Mb RAM, 10 Mb of free hard drive space. These processor and RAM requirements are too low to truly get the most out of this package. Don’t have a very cheap sound card either, but have a 32 bit or higher wave-table synthesis card. Additional information is at the Sonic Foundry website www.sonicfoundry.com. If you need some basic sound and music editing and recording capability, Audio Anywhere is a good choice.
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