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Volume Number: 23
Issue Number: 01
Column Tag: KoolTools

Sound Studio 3

By Marianne Shilpa Jacobie, MacTech Staff Writer

Sound Studio 3 from Freeverse is an easy-to-use Mac OS X application for recording and editing audio digitally. It can be used to digitize tapes and vinyl records, record live performances, create mixes with crossfades, tweak the levels, apply digital effects, and save in all major audio file formats. Sound Studio 3 can also be used to record professional sounding Podcasts, and other audio dialog. Other typical applications of Sound Studio 3 are lectures, voice-notes, sermons, and performances.

Recording features of Sound Studio 3 include multi-track support that enables layering stereo sounds and saving in interleaved format, Audio Unit plug-in effect support, saving in MPEG-4 AAC (advanced audio coding) m4a format, saving in MP3 when the LAME framework is installed, Automator support, 24-bit / 96 kHz sample quality, in stereo or mono, low latency monitoring using Core Audio, and automatic recording starting and stopping based on timers or audio levels. Freeverse recommends iMic from Griffin Technology for use with Sound Studio 3.

Sound Studio 3 comes with some advanced editing functions such as sample-accurate edits, markers (cue points) with text labels, time ruler with units for video and film and copy-and-paste editing.

This product also comes loaded with a cool effects portfolio. It features support for Audio Units, pitch adjustment, reverse audio, and Tone, FM, and noise generators. The "dynamics" group of effects includes compressor, expander, and noise gate. Equalization features include graphic EQ, low pass filter, and high pass filter. Volume effects comprise, amplify, fade in/out/special, and normalize features. Finally, there are the ever-present delay effects, including chorus, flanger, echo, and reverb.

Sound Studio 3 incorporates basic audio repair features. Available functions are interpolation, silence, DC offset, and swap channels. These functions can also be used to repair clicks and pops Ð typically found on older recordings or material brought in from vinyl.

Sound Studio: Editing Window

Sound Studio 3 supports a variety of file formats such as AIFF (.aif) and AIFF-C (.aifc) with compression including IMA 4:1, AAC and MP3 (importing only), Sound Designer II, Wave (.wav, PCM only), and Tab-delimited text (export only). Sound Studio 3 requires Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later and PowerPC G3 500 MHz or faster with 512 MB RAM. It also requires a minimum of 1 GB hard drive space for storing audio data.

Our conclusion? This is an easy-to-use, but powerful application that gives you the ability to do intricate sound editing yielding professional results. It certainly fills a need for basic editing when ProToos or Logic would be overkill. Sound Studio 3 is priced at $79.95, and available from http://www.freeverse.com/soundstudio/.