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Topic: Audio editors aside from Audacity? (Read 4567 times) previous topic - next topic
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Audio editors aside from Audacity?

I was wondering if there's an audio editor that can do everything Audacity can do (eg. normalize, reverse, etc.) except it is not like Audacity that if you import an MP3, edit it then export it as an MP3, you are thus losing quality twice..  Perhaps non-destructive editing.
sin(α) = v sound/v object = Mach No.

Audio editors aside from Audacity?

Reply #1 –
http://mpesch3.de1.cc/mp3dc.html

Most audio editing software works on wav file, or more precisely, pcm data.  To edit mp3 data, an editor must know how to deal with frames and buffers so you need one dedicated to mp3's like mp3directcut.  IMHO, it's best to track down your source as wav or flac.
"You can fight without ever winning, but never win without a fight."  Neil Peart  'Resist'

Audio editors aside from Audacity?

Reply #3 –
I don't know that you can go much beyond cut and paste* before you start stepping on things the original encoder did for efficiency.  Then the editor would have to figure out how to work around that.  Unless you are only making fancy edits in small regions and are willing to accept transcoding style degradation in those spots while preserving the majority of the file.

*edit: as posted earlier, even with this, the editor has to know about what chunks the encoder uses.

Audio editors aside from Audacity?

Reply #4 –
Just in case it isn’t clear, the message is, if you need to do editor things much beyond break the file into several smaller files, or patch several smaller files into one larger files (i.e.“normalize, reverse, etc”) you have to use a real editor and that means decoding to PCM before editing.

Audio editors aside from Audacity?

Reply #5 –
In addition to frame-based editing, you can adjust the level of MP3 (and AAC) files losslessly by changing the global gain value that is stored in each frame.  That value is used by the decoder to adjust the level of its PCM output, so the encoded audio data is unaltered.

The one caveat is that you are limited to 1.5 dB steps, but considering the alternative of re-encoding, it's a pretty minor limitation.

The aforementioned MP3DirectCut can do this type of editing to MP3s (it even has a normalizing feature, although, as stated, you're limited to 1.5 dB precision), and while I haven't tried it, it appears that the program that Billytheonion linked to, Fission, can do the same to AACs, as well.
"Not sure what the question is, but the answer is probably no."

Audio editors aside from Audacity?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: AndyH-ha on
Just in case it isn’t clear, the message is, if you need to do editor things much beyond break the file into several smaller files, or patch several smaller files into one larger files (i.e.“normalize, reverse, etc”) you have to use a real editor and that means decoding to PCM before editing.


Maybe this is the only way to go  Thanks, guys!
sin(α) = v sound/v object = Mach No.