Downloaded Adobe SoundBooth from Adobe Labs yesterday. I was eager to install and start using it, but, sleep had caught hold of me and shaken me to..umm..sleep! Even the eagerness couldnt shake it off..anways..lets talk about sleep another time. Its all about SoundBooth
First up - The installer is kinda rough. Its all still getting cooked, so you will see a lot of "Blah X is going to come here". I didnt really mind what the installer did, coz, I wanted to get on with using the application. One thing though - unlike other Adobe installers, this one is actually a Zip file that you download from the Labs site and then extract to install. 58MB download (approx) and 138MB on HDD (approx).
Having used Adobe Audition and Sound Forge, you are used to what to expect of editing apps. So, I was right away looking for Markers, noise reduction, normalization, fade in/out...and..I found them all in the proper places and didnt have to go hunting around - User Friendly!!!
[Update : You cant compare SoundBooth to SoundForge or Audition. They are really professional editing tools. SB is more like a normal guy's tool to do the small things easily!]
The grey interface resembles Audition a lot, which makes it quite easy for audition users who want to..ahem.."feel at home". You can brighten up the interface from the Preferences and customize the look and feel to an extent :)
You dont have too much to play with. About 4 effects, the faders, markers and a lot of recording. Ok, I spoke too soon.. there is a whole Task Panel that I am discovering. The Task Panel contains options that allow you to Clean up Audio, Create Music and Remove a Sound.
Clean up Audio - You can remove noise (similar to Noise Gate in Sound Forge 8) and similarly remove Clicks & Pops and Rumble sounds. All Fantastic and very useful in my day to day Audio processing life!
Create Music - You can browse and select SoundBooth Score templates, set it to time and modify a lot of properties that helps you fit the score into whatever you have recorded. I wish this would also allow us to import other sound filetypes. I could be singing with Bon Jovi :D. More experimenting to be done with this.
Remove a Sound - I havent tried it yet. Will update this later!
So I took a test drive and played around with..ahem..the voice of the nightingale..ahem..moi. Recoreded some Whistling, about 2 lines of "Lips like Morphine" (sung by me!) and all the natural sounds around me - of the fan spinning etc.. I first tried the Normalize and it was quick. I also used the Voice Enhancer. The "I want a girl with.." line was very clear..certainly could notice the difference in the enhancement. Every effect you apply, the change is noticable. I know I wont be using the Chorous effect or the Compression for my production anytime soon, but I think it would be worth a more detailed try as time goes on.
One feature I liked and didnt like - If you are playing a sound and when you change to another app (tabbing away from SoundBooth), the Sound pauses. You will need to Play the sound again when you tab back. Its good and bad :) :(
My Wishlist:
1. Settings for Normalization allowing users to set the dB rates they want.
2. Support for other filetypes in the Create Music panel :)
3. Well..the MP3 and FLV support which they are planning to add into the future versions :)
More experiments tomorrow :)
I should say that it fits into what I do so perfectly! I am not an audio processing expert, but, need to do it as my work demands it. I dont deal with MP3s and FLVs, so I dont really mind them not being supported. Its just for the "non work playtime" that I want them added to the Export filetype list.
Some Screenshots:
GUI - (not default layout)
http://www.flashofscarlet.com/downloads/SB/UI.jpg
GUI - Cleanup Audio
http://www.flashofscarlet.com/downloads/SB/UI3.jpg
GUI - Create Music
http://www.flashofscarlet.com/downloads/SB/UI2.jpg
[Update : These are just my initial reactions. I still need to do a really thorough experiment/test with it and see how it goes. I plan to do this over the weekend. So expect a big test result in my next post. Also, I'm trying out Audacity : http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/ . I've read great reviews about it and plan to use it instead of getting a copy of Plus! Analog Recorder for my upcoming Audio cassette to Digital Format conversion home project. Expect a this vs that too]
More info on SoundBooth and other product sneak peeks that were presented at MAX:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/dehaan/archives/2006/10/day_3_sneak_pee.cfm
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