News :: 15MR: AVS Audio Editor
Hello all and welcome to today’s 15-Minute Review. Today’s application of review is AVS Audio Editor by Online Media Technology—An audio file editor with a hefty set of filters already in place.
As Giveaway of the Day states:
“AVS Audio Editor is feature-rich audio production software. A powerful support of all key audio formats makes AVS Audio Editor a complete tool for an advanced audio management. AVS Audio Editor will be interesting for professionals and amateurs, it is very easy to use, it enables you to perform a lot of operations without any difficulties.”
Quick Pros
- Layout easy to work with
- Respectable set of filters already built-in
- Visual audio analysis settings great for finding issues with audiofiles
- Very quick – Threaded (Meaning: Multi-CPU capable)
Quick Cons
- Program’s window leave ‘debris’ when switching to another window
- No frequency filters
- Lacking some common tools for ‘mixing’
Expansion
This application has a lot going for it. With an easy-to-use inteface without clutter, it keeps you focussed on the sound and less the tools. This is important when you are working with sound; If you’re wading through an interface trying to find something, you can lose your thoughts and such quickly. With the layout, I found myself working on my voice clips very quickly. To keep with the speed aspect, I noticed that processing was very quick and snappy, and when in the Task Manager I found why; Threaded support was running me on both cores of my CPU, something you tend to only find on modern high-end audio software right now. To top it off, all of the filters are right there in reach on the left side waiting for you to use them, but left there in an unobtrusive gray button.
Besides the standard waveform display, there are two other methods of display; Spectral and envelope. These, when you learn to read them, can be very useful for picking up where frequencies lay and where you have flow changes. Very handy indeed when you’re having popping issues or volume issues.
While the filters are extensive, they still aren’t as full as one might like them. One for sure I am missing; frequency filters; The ability to effect or plain remove a certain frequency set (band-stop filter). While there is the notch filter, it is not quite the same; Notch filters are geared specifically towards removing sounds like feedback. As well, even though the product detail states there are features to ‘mix’, the features are likely to go unnoticed or unused often just because the application is missing some of the first-step mix tools, such as BPM detectors. Not a big problem though, as since again this application is clearly geared towards the prepping of the files and not the sequencing of them.
One odd bug is when switching to another window, it leaves itself over the new window unless the new window does a refresh on entry. It is weird; Does it to everything up I had this morning. A bit of an annoyance, especially when you don’t have scroll bars to ‘wheel’ the debris off the screen.
Final Verdict
While this application has some random issues and isn’t an all-in-one program, when I do mixing I don’t want an all-in-one because of the clutter involved in an application that does such and the fact that the power of the application isn’t near the sum of the parts. This application is a great file prep application for those who are mixing, especially with the spectral analysis and envelope displays. While it is missing the filters for removing elements of a song, to the program’s benefit many high-end applications are missing this aspect for some reason. This application will be hanging around for the summertime when I get into mixing again for sure, and I think for anyone who touches audio files, this would make a nice addition to their collection while free. What is nice is if you do pay for this application, you get this and everything else AVS makes, which makes this a great ‘bundle’ for those who are looking for a lot of audio-video software on the cheap. $29.00 for 1 year subscription to everything, $59.00 for lifetime does make this a nice deal.
Posted by BladedThoth on Friday, February 23, 2007
