[flossie]

Hi everyone,

http://www.ithinkapps.com/

Product: mp3TrueEdit™

My daughter's friend has a dad that has written a piece of audio editing software.  You can trial it for free for two weeks, no obligation to buy just click on the link.  I have had a look and it looks really good but only got the website address today so i will let you know what i think.  To be honest I knew he was into IT and had written some software but didn't realise it would be one that was so interesting!!!

I think its usp is that when editing, you do not lose sound quality, although feel free to correct me about that.  He is not very experienced in marketing and I want to help him in suggesting who his target market is.  So if anyone has any ideas that would be very welcome.

Apparently the software is really useful in a business setting, enhancing dictaphone recordings etc.  Also I think for band recordings it could come in useful too.  It can enhance the sound of your recordings and you can fade in and out and raise or lower volume levels too.

Anyway, please give it a go and let's have your feedback!!!

Love

Flossie

[Schavuitje]

Ok... So if I trial it an in essence become a guinea pig, giving feedback that is useful to your friend and which will rnablehim to refine his product.
Would that get me the full version for free after the two weeks? 

[tone]

While I take my hat off to anyone who goes to the effort of developing a piece of software, I don't see what this program offers that I can't already get from audacity which is a free, open source application, and does an awful lot more besides...

[flossie]

  Schavuitje !!! He doesn't know I've posted a link to his product but who knows!!!

Tone, I think that it's as Tinam says - when you convert a sound file it can 'knock the stuffing' out of the quality of the sound and I think from what I can gather that is the beauty of this particular product it doesn't degenerate the sound quality.  I am really not very well versed on anything technical and still haven't got to grips with recording on my DAW but I will investigate...!

Flossie

[candle]

Thanks Flossie for spreading the news about my new MP3 audio editor.

I hope you all don’t mind me joining your forum but I do have a keen interest in music and have more recently taken up learning to sing after years of thinking that I could not sing at all.

It is because of my interest in music and recording that I have written a quick and easy way to edit MP3 files.  After attending a few choir and band rehearsals I found that it is really valuable to record a whole rehearsal (without having to stop and start the recordings) and then quickly edit or split into tracks what was recorded and share with those involved.  My software also allows you to fade-in and fade-out, split into tracks and add ID3 tags and also normalize the final result so that no distortion is generated in the final audio.

Yes tone, you are right, you can do the same with Audacity and I am a keen user of Audacity too but there is one problem with that tool.  If your original recording is done in MP3, either using a dedicated MP3 recorder or software such as mine, then you are forced to either lose quality by exporting back to MP3 or you are forced to use a larger uncompressed or lossless file format for your final export such as Audio CD, WAV or FLAC.  Maybe this may or may not be a big thing depending on the original quality of your recording, the processing that needs to be done, and the final intended purpose but you 'will' lose quality if you end up re-encoding to MP3.  So it is my hope is that people will find my software a useful addition to their toolbox of audio applications.

I don’t see mp3TrueEdit as a replacement for a fully featured DAW such as Audacity but more of a complementary product, especially if your original audio recording or download is in MP3 format.  Two examples of this would be: a) quickly finding and extracting a section of a MP3 audio so that it can then be imported into Audacity or another DAW, greatly saving import times and intermediate disk space.  b) After exporting several songs from an editing session to MP3, splitting the resultant MP3 into different tracks, tagging them and checking the normalization.

As a thank you for all your feedback and in the hope that you will all try out some of these suggestions I am sending a free activation code to those that have posted on this topic so far.

Best regards

Peter (candle)

[Schavuitje]

That sounds very interesting.

I'm very new to the technical side of music. If only there was a magic button that took care of that side for

me so I could just write and play  :p Unfortunately as I have to do everything myself as do a lot of others on these forums, I struggle to get the best

sound. I really like the sound of not losing quality when editing files. I haven't got audacity so this sounds like it could

be very useful indeed.

Greetings Lee.

[candle]

You may want to check out our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/ithinkapps it currently has one introductory video but we hope to add more soon.

Best regards

Peter

[Ramshackles]

Hi Peter,
Welcome to the forum
Your product looks interesting, but Im struggling to understand what your software offers that any current DAW (free or otherwise) doesnt? All the functionality shown in the video is available in all DAW software...

I dont understand how you 'preserve mp3' quality or how other DAW's do not erode mp3 quality? The standard for most (all) DAW's is to generally record in a lossless format (wav, aiff) and only export the stereo mix to mp3 when all editing/processing is completed. Assuming we use mp3 files only, I dont see how not uncompressing the file preserves audio quality and how uncompressing does not?

You're two points mentioned in the above post are also easily done in a DAW...introducing mp3TrueEdit seems like just introducing another stage of loading & clicking that is unnecessary??


Sorry for all the questions, but Im just trying to understand where this would fit in/what I would use it for....

[candle]

Thanks for your comments Ramshackles,

I think the first thing to explain is that mp3TrueEdit is not a fully featured DAW and may not ever be a fully featured DAW as such.  It is however very easy to use and able to quickly load and edit MP3 files and gives you all the familiar cut/copy/paste/crop and undo commands that you would expect together with normalization fade-in and fade-out etc.  Again as you say any DAW will allow you to do that.  What it has however, is an inner knowledge of the MP3 file format that it allows it to do these cut/copy/paste and volume change operations without having to de-compress and re-compresses the MP3 file’s audio.  It also does this in such a way as to avoid introducing audible errors or glitches at the edit points where other mp3 cutters/joiners/splitters/trimmers may fail to do this.

Back to your questions:

>I dont understand how you 'preserve mp3' quality or how other DAW's do not ... ?

and

>The standard for most (all) DAW's is to generally record in a lossless format (wav, aiff) and only export the stereo mix to mp3 when all editing/processing is completed

If your workflow is to record in uncompressed audio as you say and perform all your edits in a DAW and then only export to MP3 when the editing is completed, then you are correct, your DAW will not lose any quality during the editing phase and the only quality loss will be in converting to MP3 format, which is the sacrifice that is made with any ‘lossy compression’ format, in order to gain a greater reduction in file size.

However, recording in uncompressed format may not be so practical in every situation due to the massive increase in disk space required for recording and editing.  Maybe your excellent band is having a rehearsal or even a jam session and you come up with a really good rift or melody or idea for a new song.  Wouldn’t it be good to have that recorded somehow?  However, if you were to record everything in an uncompressed format then you could soon fill up your hard drive.  However, if you chose to record rehearsals, practice sessions etc. in MP3 format then you probably would have space for those recordings and with mp3TrueEdit you could quickly load and find the audio that you are looking for and export any section you wanted to share with others ‘keeping’ the quality of the original ‘MP3’ recording.

So to summarise, when you generate MP3 files you will always lose some quality compared to uncompressed audio.  If you are recording as uncompressed audio, editing with a DAW and then exporting the final edits to MP3 then you are using the optimal workflow for creating MP3 files.  However, if you initially record or download or even RIP to MP3 then you can quickly load and edit and export back to MP3 using mp3TrueEdit without losing any ‘more’ quality since there is no need to re-compress back to MP3 format again.

I hope this helps, please let me know if anything is still unclear.

Best regards

Peter

[candle]

Hi Guys,

I’ve just found this very interesting wiki article from the authors/contributors of Audacity themselves.
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/MP3#Re-encoding_to_MP3

I think it ties in nicely with what I have been saying.

Also if you have managed to try out my mp3TrueEdit app for Windows or Mac then please do let me know how you got on as feedback and suggestions are always welcome.

Best regards

Peter

[Ramshackles]

It really seems like a novel concept, but I cant say I would have a use for it and I think it would be hard to find interest in the 'pro audio' world (i.e. people making music at home or a studio). Thats not to say it doesnt have a place somewhere cause I think it could.
The reason being is that it relies on the fact that people are using mp3's throughout the whole process (not just as the final export). The reason for doing that is, as you say, because lossless formats take up a lot of space.
The problem is, that nowadays, they donttake up a lot of space. A terabyte harddrive is pretty standard with new desktop computers and reasonably cheap to pick up if you dont have one (I paid £60 for mine).

If we take a 24 bit/44.1Khz wav file, it takes up around 15 megabytes/min. If we consider a song of 4 minutes length, comprising of 20 tracks, - which isnt a small song at all - the total space needed to store that song is about 1.2GB.
That translates to over 800 songs for a single terabyte harddrive.

Now, consider the worst case scenario in that you are limited to using a laptop for, e.g. as you say recording a jam session or some quick location recording. Some of the cheapest laptops still have 320GB harddrives, I cant seem to find one with less. That equates to ~250 of these 20 track songs.
I generally dont even complete 20 full songs before I start compressing/moving/deleting old ones.

Now, dont get me wrong, I think its a very novel and original concept, I'm surprised no-one has come up with 'true editing' of mp3 files yet and it could definitely have a place somewhere. I'm not sure that the recording world is really it...

[candle]

Thanks Ramshackles,

It’s really good to hear your thoughts on this and you have made some really good points.

As you suggest my product may not be used that much in direct ‘pro audio’ production scenarios but I am trying to make my product appeal to a wide audience and ‘pro audio’ users who often make a number of hardware and software purchases may well consider my application a useful tool to them in some situations.

You have a good point about hard drive capacities going up and the cost coming down but a lot of new laptops now have solid state drives which are more expensive per gigabyte.  Also as you say for a 4 minute track you may not need too much space but for someone loading a 2 hour MP3 recording into Audacity or another tool especially from a USB external drive then you could be waiting some time.

My software is not designed to compete with multi-track recording and editing DAW applications but in some cases it may be a useful companion application if your original recording was made in MP3 format – possibly using something like the Tascam DR-05 (http://www.dv247.com/studio-equipment/tascam-dr-05-portable-digital-recorder--86474).

Again this depends on the intended use but for someone recording acoustic events, meetings, talks, lectures or possibly field recording then I am hoping that my application will prove useful.  You could find yourself saving a lot of time and drive space by quickly locating sections or tracks of audio that you are interested in and then exporting them as original quality MP3 tracks to your DAW rather than loading a long MP3 recording into your DAW directly.

Best regards

Peter