Macromedia SoundEdit 16 Information
© Rich Young, 1997
RYoung097@aol.com
Macromedia SoundEdit 16 is the basic Macintosh multimedia sound editing
program. The Mac has been the home of digital sound, so there are many more
advanced programs like SoundDesigner, DeckII, Alchemy and above. Sound Designer
set the standard and thus has great 3rd party plug-in support from companies
like Waves and Jupiter. Waves also produces plug-ins for Premiere, plus
WaveConverter (Mac/Win), an inexpensive batch utility that uses the same
high quality algorithms as their Sound Designer products. SoundEdit 16 uses
the Macromedia Xtras format; DeckII can use the Adobe Premiere plug-ins.
Premiere also has sound editing features. DeckII and Session have cool newer-style
interfaces and support real-time Quicktime scrubbing so syncing sound to
movies can be done with precision and speed.
For our purposes SoundEdit is just fine. We'll quickly run through how to
resample CD quality files for multimedia delivery. The main thing to remember
is to mix first -- downsampling and compression are the last steps.
1. Open a sound or QT file with SoundEdit. If you open a QT movie double-click
edit to open the sound track. You can double-click the picture thumbnails
to disable them.
2. If your file is stereo and you're delivering mono choose Effects>Mix
3. Select all (command + a) and choose Effects>Normalize to amplify the
sound without distorting it. Use 98% or a little less and WAIT! SoundEdit
help with examples & explanations can be found under the Apple Guide
menu. Check out the Loop Tuner Xtra to easily make seamless loops.
4. Choose Modify>Sound Format to change the file's resolution and size
(tip: double-click on resolution box in bottom left of file). Select 22.050kh
sample rate for PowerPC and SoundBlaster compatibility. Then check boost
highs; select bit depth of 8; check dither; let's not compress; hit OK.
5. Find a quieter passage and compare it to the original. The new file has
lower resolution and will sound duller and perhaps have noise artifacts.
6. Now let's take a 16-bit/44kz file and compress it with IMA. BTW, for
IMA & mu-law (.au Sun/Internet files) compression should be done on
16-bit files -- IMA delivers 16-bit while mu-law usually is delivered in
8-bit. Choose Modify>Sound Format.
For smaller files with lower quality reduce the sample rate; click on the
compression pop-up & choose IMA; hit OK.
7. Find a quieter passage and compare it to the original; then check file
sizes. IMA delivers near CD quality for the same cost/speed (25% of original
size ) as 8-bit/22khz. IMA will occasionally produce artifacts in very quiet
passages, but it ideal for music. IMA requires QuickTime for decompression
on both the Mac & PC (the implementation of the format is different
on Windows).
8. SoundEdit now includes SoundEdit Automator, a batch conversion utility
that runs SoundEdit with AppleScript! It is easy to use -- just drag
& drop into the icon or click add under source files. Double-click on
the Location folder icon and set destination (I would not overwrite). Make
the delivery decisions that you made in the sound format dialogs above and
take a break.
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For more information, see Multimedia Sound and Music Studio by Jeff Essex (1996, Random House). See also, Principles of Digital Audio by Ken Pohlmann (1996, SAMS).