WavePad Sound Editor Masters Edition
WAV files are the basic sound recording unit in Windows. Much larger than MP3s and similar portable digital audio formats, WAVs are also easier to edit, thanks to tools like WavePad Sound Editor from NCH, which specializes in audio and multimedia software. It's a compact but powerful and flexible tool for analyzing and editing WAVs or just about any kind of digital audio file. It's especially useful for cleaning up and editing transcribed LP records and other digitized analog audio recordings, but you can also add effects, analyze the sound, and more.
WavePad's interface is essentially a media player with a spectral display, time indicators, and specialized controls for manipulating the audio signal. We browsed to a folder of CD tracks we'd ripped as WAVs and selected one. WavePad displayed the file's audio spectrum in two zoom-capable views, a smaller overview of the entire track above a larger, more detailed graphical display. Playback controls, a timer with hundredths of seconds, and sliders for altering the view, zooming, and other functions ring the main view, while a toolbar gives access to noise reduction tools; speed and pitch settings; echo, reverb, and other effects; plug-ins; and other tools. Clicking the Play button played our audio track, with a moving red line tracking the output on the spectral graph. This made it ultra-simple not only to divide tracks manually but also to identify and remove artifacts like clicks and pops, copy specific passages, and remove lead-in and lead-out tracks. The zoom feature let us expand any section of the spectra for pinpoint editing, such as removing the all-too-audible "pop" and "thunk" as the stylus hits the record groove and the turntable's dust cover comes down at the beginning of a session converting analog LPs to digital music files. WavePad has some interesting and useful extras, too, such as a tone generator, batch converter, and text-to-speech tool.
We've converted many LPs to WAVs, and we've always found that a good WAV editor is just as important as a good recording tool. WavePad proved both easy to use and perfectly competent, even when handling megabyte-size WAV files many times larger than itself.
Editors' note: This is a review of the full version of WavePad Sound Editor 4.52. The trial version is limited to 14 days.
WavePad Sound Editor - Record and edit audio files - Download Video Previews:
Publisher's Description
From NCH Software:
WavePad is music editing program for Windows PCs. WavePad allows you to create and edit voice, music and other sound recordings. You can duplicate sections of recordings and add echo, amplification, noise reduction and other effects. The following is a list of features for WavePad Music Editing Software. We recommend you download and install the software to give these features a try. The download is free.* Recorder supports autotrim and voice activated recording; * Music editing functions include cut, copy, paste, delete, insert, silence, autotrim; * Music restoration features including noise reduction and click pop removal; * Special effects include reduce vocals, distortion, chorus; * Batch processing allows you to apply effects and/or convert your files as a single function; * Set bookmarks along multiple files as you work; * Create and work on multiple sound files at one time and save them as one project; * Supports sample rates from 6000 to 96000Hz, stereo or mono, 8, 16, 24 or 32 bits; * Pre-defined sound quality suggestions when saving files such as CD Quality and Radio Quality; * Tools include spectral analysis (FFT) and speech synthesis (text to speech); * Load music files directly from CD; * Ability to work with multiple music files at the same time in seperate screens; A version of this software is available for free from NCH Software's website. This version is for non-commercial use. About NCH Software: NCH Software is a leader in video, dictation, audio, business and computer utility software for Windows and Mac OS. NCH Software has over 80 products and has been developing them since 1993. NCH has received several awards for excellent software.
What's new in this version: This is a bug fixing release.
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