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Production: Audacity vs. Adobe

C

ChiefOperator

Folks,

Looking for some guidance, please...... An AM station has installed iMediatouch and needs to add production software. The standard is, of course, Adobe Audition. However, I've been looking at the open source Audacity program (Windows version and free). Does anyone have experience with Audacity? For radio production purposes, is Audacity a suitable replacement of Adobe? Or does Audacity have limitations that make it less desirable?

Any thoughts are appreciated..

Also, slightly off topic, does anyone know of a "scrub wheel" mouse that can replace a basic mouse? Seems the scrub wheel could make production easier....


THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
First off - I've set up several "dub stations" at radio stations using Audacity and there's been no problems. Audacity can write standard formats, even MP3 (with the LAME encoder). Some folks had trouble getting their arms around Audacity's concept of importing/exporting to a "project", but once they got the hang of it things were OK. And you certainly can't beat the price.

Now for the scrubwheel: http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/powermate
 
Rob, thanks for the info on this post as well as the others.

Does Audacity have the same capabilities as Adobe? Can one, basically, do the same thing on either, so that the differences between the two are insignificant?
 
Adobe has numerous types of effects which can be added into your production. Audacity has some but Adobe seems to have more options. I think it ultimately depends on the size of the station and what needs the station has. You can certainly do more than just "get by" with Audacity but if the option is there my preference would still be Adobe.

You could certainly start off with Audacity, use it for a time and see if the need arises for more than what the program is capable of doing. Better than dropping the money on Adobe first.
 
If you're in an unrated or really small market, Audacity may be more than enough to get you by.

To be fair, I'd use whatever your talent is most familiar with. Ask them to demo Audacity at home, see what they think.

If you want to add lots effects and have the flexibility for various external plug-ins...Adobe wins. And it's worth it. Compared what we used to pay for these tools (reel to reel)...Adobe on a quad core is about a 1200-1300 investment. Cheap.
 
Once upon a time, I used audacity while our computer with CEP was out of commission. I was somewhat familiar with it and with CEP, but the CEP interface is much nicer for most applications.

Note that I haven't used AA 2 or AA 3, so I can't comment on those.
 
I put Audacity on smaller workstations, but the big guns need Audition. AA has many more audio manipulation tools built-in. Audacity is a great tool, especially for freeware, but AA is the gold standard.
 
Re: Audacity vs. Adobe

If you haven't looked at Audacity in a while, you might be surprised at the capabilities of the current version. The 1.3.4 Beta version, which I've run trouble-free on a variety of systems - including Vista - allows you to use VST plugins. There are also a lot of plugins of varying quality available. It's also available for Mac and Linux, so it's a very versatile, cross-platform editor.

You may want to check out the current version downloads here.

Adobe is the Big Daddy for those who need its power, but Audacity does a lot, and you can't beat the price.
 
We use Sound Forge--went to it years ago after a shoot-out with Cool Edit, staff preferred what was then SF version 4.5 to then current version of Cool Edit. Audition, of course, is the descendant of Cool Edit.

Haven't looked at Audition recently, nor priced it. $1200 seems pricey. Sound Forge usually runs around $350, may be something to look at on the continuum between free and and a grand or more.
 
TomT said:
Haven't looked at Audition recently, nor priced it. $1200 seems pricey. Sound Forge usually runs around $350, may be something to look at on the continuum between free and and a grand or more.
Click to expand...

$1,200? I think Audition is in the $350 range also.

I am convinced that operator preference for audio editors is like pilot preference for small airplanes. If you learned to fly in a Cessna with the wing on top of the airplane, you are likely to spend the rest of your life complaining about airplanes that sit on top of the wing. IF you learned to fly in a Piper (other than a J-3) or a Beech, then.... well you get the idea.

I started with Cool Edit 96, moved up toe CE2K, and just recently finally made the journey to Audition 2.0. Even though the Customer Service dude at Adobe tried to assure me and convince me that Audition was totally different than Cool Edit, I have since decided he has never used either program himself. AA runs faster and the upgrade would have been worthwhile if the ONLY improvement had been Noise Reduction, now called Restoration. Aggressive noise reduction in Cool Edit could leave you with a hollow, flangy sound. I am amazed what Audition allows without recognizable "hollow sound".
 
If you go back and re-read my post...that's the price of the computer included, Adobe 3.0 runs $349 pretty much anywhere I can find it.

I've seen quad core computers coming down underneath $800, hence the price I stated. And my point, perhaps not made very clearly, is that an Otari reel to reel would run well over $2000...today's digital recording gear is a real bargain. And WAY easier to create with.
 
Adobe "Production Studio"?

I don't know what Adobe "Production Studio" is. I can't find any such product listed on their site. They have several Adobe Creative Suites that incorporated web design packages, video editing, and Adobe Soundbooth in packages that range has high as $2499, but none include Audition.

Adobe Audition Vers. 3 is $349.00 according to the Adobe website.

Adobe Soundbooth CS3 is $199.00. It's "designed for creative professionals who don't have an audio production background". It appears to be a dumbed-down version of Audition.

If you can afford it, I'd suggest that you get a copy of Audition for the real production experts, and put Audacity in the on-air studios for more casual use.
 
I've set up audacity / ubuntu linux in a couple of situations in the last 6 months where the (enter call letters of small station here) had literally no budget and wanted basic editing and had some older hardware, and in another situation where the person had a small home studio and a G4 Mac. I was quite impressed in every case given the older hardware :) As a sidebar, the nice thing in one case about using a linux box was the weekend "power users" and "Oh I know my way around a computer, I have 2 at home, I'm gonna change it around like I want it" folks kinda got stopped with a few permissions changes ;) --My primary job we have cool edit 2.1 licenses and they want to stick with it til further notice apparently.
 
While I'm more a Mac person when it comes to audio I use both platforms depending on where I am.

I use Audition 1.5 on the PC platform. I never got to liking anything past the 1.5 and I had issues on systems running 3.0. I find 1.5 fine for most of the tasks I do on the machines that have it installed.

On the Mac platform I was using an old piece of software called SoundEdit 16, which was quick and easy and flexible. Sadly, this only supported the old MacOS 9 and will not run on Intel-based Macs. Having read some reviews I came across a piece of software called Adobe Soundbooth that was suppose to be touted as "SoundEdit 16 on steroids". Well, it is the biggest piece of garbage I've seen come down the pike from Adobe in years! Great waste of money for a two-track editor.

While I haven't played with it in great detail, it looks like Audacity is a great cross-platform editor that comes very close to the features of my beloved SoundEdit 16. It's pretty sad, as Adobe purchased the assets of Macromedia, the developers of SoundEdit - you figured they would have picked up the ball and ran with it instead of developing some garbage like SoundBooth.

I now hesitate in purchasing any other software from Adobe after burring my hard earned money on nothing more than a lousy two-track editor! I already had Bias' Peak LE - an excellent two-track editor for much less than $100.
 
Everyone here loves Adobe 3.0, but we're running it on dual core and quad core processors with a minimum of 2 or 3 gigs of ram. Wouldn't part with it for the world.
 
Sgeirk said:
Everyone here loves Adobe 3.0, but we're running it on dual core and quad core processors with a minimum of 2 or 3 gigs of ram. Wouldn't part with it for the world.
Click to expand...

Sorry, not EVERYONE loves 3.0. A quick Google search will reveal many other forums where 3.0 is being slammed. And I have to agree.
Adobe took what WAS a great audio editor and bloated it out. I'm with Bill - stick with 1.5.
 
I use Audacity on a 4 or 5 year old laptop and it amazes me how fast it is. I use it to mutli track edit production pieces, edit swears out of music (the reverse effect is AWESOME for this). It always shocks me just how fast Audacity loads, copies/pastes sound, imports, exports, renders effects, everything!

I had a band in studio and I played a song that I had edited swears out using the reverse effect in Audition and the band told me that they didnt even notice I had done that until I pointed it out. Thats a good testament! I cant beleive this program is FREE. I LOVE it and will never ever give it up!
 
3.0 is awesome!! I went from 10 steps when processing down to three thanks to the multiband limiter....which according to our engineer compliments the multiband processing in our Omnia 6s we have running on our FMs. Even on our AMs, which run Optimod 9400s, the spots are punchy and crystal clear! You can make the highs and mids sing with 3.0!! Great production tool.
 
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