I seem to find myself avoiding the whole undertaking of officially editing my field recordings. Sure I’ve played around a little, but I don’t seem to be committing.
Currently my excuse is finding the right bit of software that I feel comfortable with for editing, and I’ve tried a BUNCH. Seriously, there is a lot of software out there that can be used to edit audio, however finding something that will be right for me is completely different.
I won’t even bother with Adobe Audition, because I don’t use Adobe products anymore; I just can’t justify their huge subscription price tag. And it needs to be said that I spent a few good years of my life perfecting Photoshop for my artist endeavours. But when I discovered Affinity Photo, I was all in and haven’t looked back.
Now the reason I’m mentioning Audition is because as per most cases its Adobe that is everyone’s first port of call. Like always I dove deep into research mode to see what other sound recordists use, and it seems to be the number one choice.
So I set off on this huge undertaking; researching Audition alternatives that are not subscription based. Needless to say I’ve downloaded a bunch of software trials. What I did discover is that iZotope RX will definitely be a part of my arsenal, but I’m putting off purchase until it goes on sale. This is another issue I’ve come across, being Australian and purchasing US software is often very pricy. The US price seems quite reasonable but once you convert it into AU it’s just too much, especially when starting out. So hence the wait for sale prices.
With all the software searching I did come to the conclusion I feel most at home within a DAW (digital audio workstation) when editing audio.
I played around with dedicated audio editing software like Audacity, Ocenaudio and Acoustica, and while they are good software in their own right, they just didn’t make anything easy or simply didn’t do what I wanted.
One of the biggest requirements I want is cross fading; when you cut out an unwanted sound from the audio, you want to be able to blend the desired sound back together. Now I know Audacity is a pretty powerful piece of free software, but I find it too complicated and unique in its complications that I just couldn’t work with it. Also being a Mac user, it’s just way to similar to Windows software. I really thought Acoustica was going to take the cake, because of it’s awesome features. It looked like I wouldn’t even need iZotope RX, but simple things like chopping audio, cross fading, joining back together really were a nightmare or not possible.
So I moved away from software more dedicated to audio editing and started downloading trials to DAW’s. Of course I had to check out pricing first because there was no point testing something that I couldn’t afford. I did try GarageBand but a lack of crossfading and other little things made me move on from that one real quick.
My big issue with downloading DAW’s on my Mac is that as a music producer as well, I didn’t want to go all oooooh and ahhhhhhh when I’m working so hard to keep my music mobile and ONLY on my iPad.
I did get lost there for a little while thinking Cubase would be the best option because it could work nicer with Cubasis 3 imports if I ever want to get more features out of my DAW. But I eventually managed to slap myself over the head and say “Alexa, you will not do any music creation on your Mac, no matter how cool it looks”, and that was that.
Taking that thought out of the mix, I decided I don’t know if I like Cubase enough to buy it, until I realised, I had a Lite copy from purchasing a Zoom H1n. Having taken the purchase button off the list I thought maybe this would be perfect, but for some reason I’ve just had all kinds of glitches with it, unlike the full trial version. At the end of the day I found myself wanting to jump up and down on it until it screamed like I was!
So I put it to the side, actually a little happy because I do hate all the hoops you have to go through just to register and download the darn thing.
So I decided to try Reaper, a DAW that come very highly recommended when you’re on a budget. I downloaded, installed and found myself staring at something that made me feel a little like when I tried Audacity. Although a lot nicer than Audacity, and more of the style of DAW I’m used to, but still very foreign. Either way it’s still sitting on my Mac waiting for me to decide if I’m going to go all out and get to really know it. Because at the end of the day it does do everything I needed, and for an ok price, although that pesky US to AU conversion does make it a little less so.
So why when I found something that ticked all the boxes did I keep searching?
Maybe I’m super fussy, but I suppose I want software that I really enjoy looking at and using and being in, and if I had my ultimate wish, I’d be trialling Logic Pro. Me and Logic go way back, like 10 years, it was the first DAW I ever used, and it was the moment that I realised that I could and wanted to make music. Either way, I’m not 100% sure that Logic would be perfect for the job I’m looking for, and if I did have it, how tempting would it be to make music and not edit audio like I’m supposed to be doing. Plus I can’t really justify the price tag for something I’m only using for audio editing.
Taking a breath, or maybe a sigh, and moving on from Logic Pro I’ve just got my hands on Ableton Live Lite, because it came with the Launchpad. Now over the last year I’ve been watching a lot of tutorials on sound design and most of those people are teaching using Ableton, so I’ve gotten a little familiar with it, but never seriously considered it because of how super expensive it is. But having a Lite version would be more then plenty for my purpose. The next step is actually loading up some audio and seeing how I go with it, and if I’d actually enjoy using it.
I still can’t help but wonder if all this software exploring is just an excuse though, like I’m avoiding the actual doing because I’m really overthinking it.
So if I actually sit down and edit one of my field recordings, what exactly should I do? For example, what is good enough to keep, what isn’t, what parts of the recording would be unwanted or wanted, how do I get rid of wind rumble without losing the full dynamic of the sound and the list goes one.
I’ve not found much at all about what people do postproduction with their sounds, I know some do a lot of posts and others not so much, but none really walk you through their full process and decisions. So I feel like I’m going in completely blind, and I’m going to have to really play around to figure it out, and I’m not always good at that playing around thing, not that I can’t do it, but that I feel like that wouldn’t be good enough.
If I intend to sell these recordings at some point, I want them to be top quality, but what defines ‘top quality’. I know I’ve listened to some recordings that are classed as top shelf that I feel has had WAY too much post work and really doesn’t sound nice at all, and then I’ve listened to something classed as subpar and I think it sounds wonderful.
How do you know what is good or bad when there is only opinion?
I know, I know, I just have to trust myself and the process, and do what I love, not worry about how it will be judged, because you can’t please everyone.
I do this because I love it, and I make what I love, if I start doing it for everyone else, I won’t love it anymore. So I suppose I have to trust that if I make what I love, those who will love it will find it, and those who don’t will move on.
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