Of course, not every person in everyday life is engaged in audio processing. Many people think that this is not necessary. But let's look at the situation from the other side. Has it ever happened that the same standard ringtones present on your mobile phone do not suit you for some reason, you want to ring your own melody, but you don’t know how to use audio slicing, and for downloading a favorite track or for online processing need to pay? This is where the understanding comes that it would be nice to master some kind of program for editing audio files.
But what would you advise a novice user so that he can learn the basics, and then move on to more complex applications, in which the possibilities for editing audio files or recording audio are practically unlimited? Let's try to consider several popular categories of such software, explaining only the general principles of their use, and not going into all the technical aspects.
Programs for working with audio files: types of applications and their capabilities
To begin with, a few words about the basic principles of functioning of all applications that allow you to edit audio and perform additional processing in the form of superimposing various effects, applying information, mastering and post-processing.
As it turns out, any program for audio files of the most common formats uses the most common representation of sound in the form of a wave, which is fully consistent with the basic tenets of physics. Thus, it is necessary to edit the sound file in the corresponding application by changing this form.
As for the choice of the editing application itself, conditionally all programs for working with audio files can be divided into several main categories:
- pure audio editors;
- music sequencers;
- virtual studios.
The first type is special applications that allow you to work exclusively with audio formats, and are not designed for anything else. The second category is designed to record sound through a linear input or microphone, and to process sound, and to add effects, and to create parts from the built-in set of instruments, and to use recording from electronic instruments, for example, via the MIDI interface. The third type of software is the most powerful, but it has a fairly high complexity in work, and is designed mainly for professional sound engineers.
The simplest audio editors
Now let's go directly to the audio editors. For a novice user who is unfamiliar with all the intricacies of sound processing, the best choice will be the simplest applications like domestic development called "AudioMASTER".
In this program, everything is quite simple, so that you do not need to have special knowledge in performing all operations. The program cuts the audio file as quickly and efficiently as possible. You just need to mark the start and end position in the original track.
Programs for processing audio files of professional and semi-professional level
When you learn the basics, you can move on to higher-level applications. Among the programs for working with audio files in this category, the following packages are especially noteworthy:
- Audacity
- Cool Edit Pro (current Adobe Audition).
- Sony Sound Forge.
- Acoustica Mixcraft.
- ACID Pro.
- WaveLab
All these applications are almost equivalent to each other, have a similar interface, sets of editing tools and additional effects, and also allow multi-track recording and audio processing. In principle, for starters, you can simply open a file, select unnecessary fragments, delete them and leave only the one that needs to be processed.
For accurate cropping, it is best to stretch the timeline horizontally. Then you can apply effects or perform normalization, and then listen to the final result. Also, if necessary, you can perform a pitch shift, change the tempo, cut the vocal part, set a higher sampling rate or sound depth, convert the file when saving to another format, etc.
Sequencer Features
Sequencers (called DAWs) like FL Studio, Cubase, Nuendo, Cakewalk Sonar and their analogs cannot be attributed to pure programs for working with audio files. Nevertheless, you can add sound tracks, record audio from a microphone, electronic synthesizer or live instrument. In any such application, there are enough tools that were mentioned in the description of the capabilities of audio editors. Some tools look even more interesting.
For example, in the same FL Studio editor, when a WAV file is added to a track, the sound tempo is automatically pulled up to the set general value. In addition, it has special plugins for recording vocals (Edison), for creating slices of drum loops (Fruity Slicer), etc., not to mention the use of third-party plug-ins.
Virtual Recording Studios
Finally, programs for working with audio files related to entire virtual studios, which can be called almost complete analogues of real recording studios, are quite difficult to master, and without special knowledge and skills, to deal with them at first will be quite problematic. And if you want to become an upscale sound engineer, you will have to work hard. At the same time, it would be nice to have a musical education, and good hearing, and technical skills in working with recording equipment, knowledge of mixing (mixing) and mastering.
As for the software, for a start you can master the Cockos Reaper application, and then move on to the most outstanding software product of our time - Pro Tools.
It is this package, which is believed to be a cut above all the well-known software products mentioned above. True, the step sequencer is provided, although it is usually not used, and the main purpose is just to record live instruments and vocals with subsequent processing of the material.
Mobile applications
However, in order to learn the simplest operations, it is completely optional to resort to the help of professional and semi-professional programs. Alternatively, you can download and install some simple mobile application and master the same operations of cutting an audio file into parts with superimposing effects in it. Today, such programs can be found in abundance in the same official repositories of Google Play and the AppStore.