WavePad Sound Editor – a Fantastic Audio Recorder/Editor for Mac
This doesn’t happen to me very often, but today as I was browsing through listings of new and updated software for the Mac, I found exactly the program I’ve been looking for! The name of the program is WavePad Sound Editor.
A few years ago, I purchased a license for a program called SoundStudio. I needed a program that would allow me to record and lightly edit music, for a project involving converting old reel-to-reel recordings into the digital realm. For that purpose, and others over the years, SoundStudio worked great. Unfortunately, the program has been updated a couple times, sold to a new company, and although my old version still works fine, it’s beginning to show its age, and I’m not willing to pay the fifty dollars being asked for it currently.
I don’t need an audio recorder/editor very often (and at the moment I don’t need one at all), but when I do, I’m looking for something that allows me to record music and convert it to different formats (AIFF files for burning to an audio CD, MP3 for saving on the computer or a portable device, and FLAC for archiving). In case I record too much dead space, I want to be able to edit it, and in case the different recordings aren’t all at the same volume, I want to be able to fix that. I also want to be able to perform a lot of actions, all at once, to a bunch of different files.
And, if possible, I’d like this audio editor to be fairly inexpensive (since my audio work is all done for my own projects and enjoyment), or – in a perfect world – completely free! And wouldn’t you know it, WavePad Sound Editor meets every single one of my requirements.
First of all, WavePad Sound Editor is insanely easy to use. Simply start it up and select which input you’d like to use (if you plan on recording), or just open up an audio file, if you’re going to be doing some editing. Once you’ve recorded what you need (or have opened your file), WavePad Sound Editor offers a bunch of editing functions, including cut, copy, paste, delete, insert (audio or silence), autotrim and more. You can split an audio file into two pieces, or have WavePad Sound Editor pick on its own where to split a file. This is particularly useful if you’ve recorded a record or cassette, and want WavePad Sound Editor to break it up into songs. All it does is look for silence, and cut at that point.
There are also numerous effects included in WavePad Sound Editor, including the ability to amplify a particularly soft part of your recording, normalize it (so the louds aren’t so loud and the softs not quite so quiet), and equalize it (to really bring out the bass or boost the treble). Also included are options for an envelope filter, reverb, echo, reverse, as well as converting the sample rate, spped and pitch.
Included out-of-the-box, so to speak, is support for a ton of different audio formats, including standard WAV and AIFF for uncompressed audio, MP3, Vox, GSM, Real Audio, AU, FLAC and OGG.
As mentioned, WavePad Sound Editor also supports batch processing. According tot he documentation, it actually supports up to 32,000 files at once, so you can convert all your audio files to different formats, apply filters and effects, and not have to do it one at a time.
As I said earlier, I’ve been looking for a good, inexpensive audio editor for some time, and so stumbling across WavePad Sound Editor was a surprise, but a happy one. It is mentioned that WavePad Sound Editor has been released for free in hopes that you’ll want to purchase the upgraded version, but for my use (light that it is), the free version was exactly what I need. If you’d like to try out WavePad Sound Editor, head over to its website and download it. The file size may be small, but the features are big!
