Audacity

thomasross20

How many of you use this? I'm trying to edit some mp3s I already have and just wondered who already uses it and what you think of it? 

Cheers!

Jalapeno

For audio edit , looping a section and a slower-downer - great.

monquixote

I stopped using it as it had a few nasty bugs that put artifacts in the audio I was editing.

Much better to shell out the small amount of money for Reaper IMO.

Fazer

for basic mp3 trimming i use http://mpesch3.de1.cc/mp3dc.html as it doesnt mess with the encoding

Danny1969

It's one of the few DAW's that can decode a Mogg so I use it all the time. Quite useful for encoding quick mp3s as well using the Lame encoder

But agree with monquixote Reaper is a far better bet and just as free. I've been evaluating it for about 7 years now

Jalapeno

I only ever used it for trimming files, looping and slowing down.

I agree Reaper is awesome value for $60/£45

steamabacus

I use it all the time for basic audio editing on my laptop. No issues at all for me. It's useful for converting file formats too - wav, mp3, FLAC.

For precise surgical sample editing, etc. on my old studio machine (Windows XP) I still use CoolEditPro which I'm very familiar with and gives much finer control compared to Audacity.

DulcetJones

I use it quite a bit, it is easier to use for some things.  I have no sound quality issues so far with it.

thomasross20

Reaper looks awesome. Sort of like Traktion, which I used to use all the time (does nobody use that anymore?). 

For all that I'll be using it I might stick with Audacity. 

Here's what I'm trying to do:

- remove what appears to be digital noise / pop / click and other hideous aberrations that appears in some guitar tracks of mine. Just little niggles. Finding it difficult to remove that jaggy digital noise in particular. These are tracks I recorded years ago and want to clean up.

digitalscream

For editing MP3s or just stuff while I'm practicing, Audacity. If I'm doing anything that needs to be high-quality (and, more importantly, multi-tracked) I use Reaper.

I did top-and-tail our album tracks with Audacity, though, just because it was easier that way.

thecolourbox

Audacity is pretty good for a quick grab and go kind of thing for basic chopping etc, i also use it for my music rounds at a pub quiz i occasionally run, but generally to make the music pub PA friendly ie i make stuff mono,bit of volume normalising etc. Damage limitation in that case :P

Oh and my usb mic doesn't work in cubase so i have to record that into audacity and export

imalone

monquixote said:

I stopped using it as it had a few nasty bugs that put artifacts in the audio I was editing.

Much better to shell out the small amount of money for Reaper IMO.

Any ones in particular? I don't use it that much as it tended to crash at awkward moments, though like people have said it's handy for quick editing.
On Linux I tend to use Ardour. Anyone used Ableton? Got the lite version free with my amp and it seems pretty handy (basic DAW, but also midi instruments).

thomasross20

Yeah I'd be interested to hear about these bugs...!

dilbert

monquixote said:

Much better to shell out the small amount of money for Reaper IMO.

Agree 100%

monquixote

imalone said:

monquixote said:

I stopped using it as it had a few nasty bugs that put artifacts in the audio I was editing.

Much better to shell out the small amount of money for Reaper IMO.

Any ones in particular? I don't use it that much as it tended to crash at awkward moments, though like people have said it's handy for quick editing.
On Linux I tend to use Ardour. Anyone used Ableton? Got the lite version free with my amp and it seems pretty handy (basic DAW, but also midi instruments).

Two things

I used to use Audacity for editing speech as it's quite quick and easy for that. 

I was editing a project that was about an hour long and was de umming etc so it had several hundred edits in it and it suddenly just shit the bed and corrupted the project deleting most of the edits from the project meaning I'd lost several hours of edits. I carried on using it and backing up regularly (It did it again, but I only lost a few minutes as a result).

Finally when I exported it as 16 bit uncompressed it completely ruined the export and produced huge amounts of unpleasant noise. Nothing I could do would get rid of it. Eventually after missing a deadline for some paid work I found out it didn't do it if you exported to 24bit and then downconverted with a different application.

I haven't used it since.

ThePrettyDamned

Just get Reaper and never look back. 60 days free anyway. 

imalone

monquixote said:

imalone said:

monquixote said:

I stopped using it as it had a few nasty bugs that put artifacts in the audio I was editing.

Much better to shell out the small amount of money for Reaper IMO.

Any ones in particular? I don't use it that much as it tended to crash at awkward moments, though like people have said it's handy for quick editing.
On Linux I tend to use Ardour. Anyone used Ableton? Got the lite version free with my amp and it seems pretty handy (basic DAW, but also midi instruments).

Two things

I used to use Audacity for editing speech as it's quite quick and easy for that. 

I was editing a project that was about an hour long and was de umming etc so it had several hundred edits in it and it suddenly just shit the bed and corrupted the project deleting most of the edits from the project meaning I'd lost several hours of edits. I carried on using it and backing up regularly (It did it again, but I only lost a few minutes as a result).

Finally when I exported it as 16 bit uncompressed it completely ruined the export and produced huge amounts of unpleasant noise. Nothing I could do would get rid of it. Eventually after missing a deadline for some paid work I found out it didn't do it if you exported to 24bit and then downconverted with a different application.

I haven't used it since.

Ouch. I have to be honest I don't have enough confidence in it to do that many edits without expecting it to crash long before. Nice quick tool, but never found it particularly stable. Ardour you could probably attack with a hammer, but it's a different beast. If the 16bit export is reproducible I wouldn't mind taking it upstream, I've got 24bit capable stuff to run it on.

Jalapeno

imalone said:

monquixote said:

I stopped using it as it had a few nasty bugs that put artifacts in the audio I was editing.

Much better to shell out the small amount of money for Reaper IMO.

Any ones in particular? I don't use it that much as it tended to crash at awkward moments, though like people have said it's handy for quick editing.
On Linux I tend to use Ardour. Anyone used Ableton? Got the lite version free with my amp and it seems pretty handy (basic DAW, but also midi instruments).

Ableton is great for looping and arranging.  So good at looping in fact that you can waste weeks/day/hours making your own Trance tracks