Adobe releases Soundbooth beta for audio amateurs, early impressions
posted Thursday, October 26, 2006 11:55:02 AM by Jeff
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Computers
Like a lot of self-named dorks, I do a podcast. I'd like to think that I have some excuse, seeing as how I used to be in radio and TV, but it's a bug that doesn't easily go away.
There are a lot of little tweaks that you can do to clean up the sound too, before you put it out there. Adobe's beta of Soundbooth intends to help you with that. I downloaded the beta and looked around. They warn you that a lot of formats aren't yet supported, so it's a little crippled in its current form.
First off, the user interface is surprisingly straight forward. You can select sections of audio (displayed as waveform) as you would text, and cut it as you'd expect. When you select a section of audio, it makes a little slider that allows you to adjust the level of that section. That is very, very cool. I've often recorded a podcast and wanted to boost a section for one person talking, and this allows it to happen in two clicks based on the visual representation of the sound.
There are also buttons right on the bottom that allow you to fade, adjust the overall level and normalize. These are some of the most common tasks you'll ever do, so it makes sense to put them right out there.
The app is super simple, and very elegant. I know that it's not supposed to compete with its bigger cousin Audition, but it would be nice if the app would let you multi-track music in at least.
If the many formats it promises are delivered in the final version, it will be a nice program to have if it's inexpensive. I've used Audacity in Windows and it's too simple. GarageBand on the Mac is really cool, but the editing is a little goofy, level adjustment isn't straight forward, and forcing you to export as AAC just because you declared a project a "podcast" is incredibly stupid.
I want to watch this one closely. Lots of potential for the application.
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