audio editing yaaaaarrrrrrr

[zwol]

Today Og make the sound files. For the experiment.

Og get very helpful undergraduate to sit in sound booth at CRL and read stories into microphone. Computer at CRL make one giant .wav file for Og. Og now have to chop up file into many small pieces, remove pauses and bits where undergraduate read out which story is which. Og try to do this with Garage Band.

Garage Band not bad at chopping up one track into many small bits, removing pauses, removing story labels. Mildly annoying way of changing length of segments, severely annoying icons (Og only figure out headphone icon is way to play one track at a time after two hours of messing with per-track volume instead). Og done after three hours.

Og now discover there only one way to export each segment as separate sound file:

1. Drag segments, one at a time, from track display into loop browser. Yes. Loop browser. Hit Return at elaborate dialog box that appear every time Og do this. Wait for computer to do thinky. Tracks not appear in loop browser. But computer save each segment as sound file in secret hiding place of loops.
2. Open up secret hiding place of loops in Finder. (Easiest to use file find to find segment names.)
3. Move all files to place where Og actually want them.

Og consider this last straw, never going to use Garage Band again. Og know people on Og friend list know from Mac. (Og looking at wondergecko.) Og ask people: is better program for chopping up sound files? For cheap?

Comments

[queenpam.livejournal.com]

I've heard good things about audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

[zwol.livejournal.com]

Og poke around on website for a while, sound very promising. Og definitely try that next time.

[queenpam.livejournal.com]

by the way, at first I thought you were misspelling "Ogg" and was very confused ;)

[(Anonymous)]

Heh heh heh.

Is traditional talk like cave man when complain at length about computers. Name "Og" also traditional. Og not know why.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

[kicks LJ for logging him out for no apparent reason]

audacity seconded

[tkil.livejournal.com]

It'll probably drive you nuts with its not-quite-normal UI, but it's cross-platform (which is nice) and I've had great luck doing very simple audio editing with it over the last few years.