Once upon a time, it was a Mac world, digital audio-wise. If you had loads of cash and Pro Tools you probably already were a studio. Pity the poor Windows "enthusiast" who tried to touch true quality. Audio editing and recording on a PC has come into its own since then. Hugely capable editing, recording, and processing programs like Sound Forge, Cakewalk and SAW Pro have put professional-quality capabilities in the hands of the masses.
May 24, 1999
Cool Edit Pro is one of the earlier Windows applications that aimed at the evolving PC-based project studio market in the early 90s. It's still one of the best values on the market today. An integrated waveform editing and audio multi-tracking environment, it will admirably serve even demanding professional needs while remaining accessible to the project studio recordist or multimedia author.
CoolEdit has two modes - the Single Waveform View is for recording, editing and processing - the MultiTrack Mixer View for - well - tracking and mixing. It's simple to toggle back and forth between the two views (as you'll often find yourself doing) with a button in the upper left corner.
The Single Waveform View features an elaborate and fully configurable toolbar set - every function you need is iconed (or you can use traditional menus). Edit functions include standard cut, paste, and loop paste, zero crossings and beat mapping, snapping, tempo editing, sample rate adjustment and sample conversion. You can edit stereo channels together or independently.
The View group toggles between the default waveform and a colorful spectral view (good for seeing which frequency components are dominant in your sample). You can set options for grid and boundary lines, cue bars, level meters and the time windows. The time window can be configured to display SMPTE, bars, beats or samples. There are also helpful and detailed dialog boxes for entering file info and sampler specs.
The Transform group is where the fun starts - and CoolEdit provides a full range of the most useful sound processing functions plus a few extras not found elsewhere. Inversion, reversal, silence; normalization, amplification and envelope processing; compression and limiting; a full range of reverbs, delays, choruses, flangers, phasers, and echoes; distortion, time and pitch-stretching - all these effects are fully configurable and customizable. The EQs - graphic and parametric - are powerful and flexible. CoolEdit also furnishes some neat "scientific" filters (if you're dying to apply a "Butterworth" or "Chernekov" filter to your guitar solo, here's the chance). There's also a "quick" filter for on-the-fly adjustments.
Noise reduction is similarly powerful and useful, with menus for click and pop removal and hiss reduction that actually work. You can build whole libraries of noise reduction "profiles" that you'll end up using again and again. For example, if you're recording some guitar through a noisy amp, pause before you start playing and sample some of the line noise: invoke noise reduction, create a "noise profile" file. Shuddup and play yer guitar, then apply the noise profile. Bam! - the sample's cleaned up, without a trace of degradation or squashing - only the line buzz is gone.
CoolEdit also features a nice "convolution" function - essentially you use one waveform to "model" the sound of another. Select a waveform - say, an airplane taking off - create an "impulse file" from it, then apply it to any other waveform, say a long saxophone bleat. Alternatively, you could cull a particular reverb profile from one sample - a monk chanting in a cathedral, for example - and apply it to others at will.
CoolEdit also generates a variety of tones and noise - telephone tones, white, brown and pink noise. You can also generate musical phrases from selected samples-* pick, say, a voice saying "Hi! - draw out a series of notes and time-values on a little staff view. Play it back - you'll hear a voice singing "Hi!" to whatever tune you wrote out. It's a fun little function that maps any audio sample across the musical range and rhythm you choose.
Finally, there's the "brainwave synchronizer" - unique to CoolEdit - which is basically a sub-program for generating and sequencing alpha and theta waves for meditation and trance production (caveat: CoolEdit is not responsible for those who may abuse this capability...this capability...this capability...).
The Analyze menu displays waveform stats. The Options group controls looping, VU monitoring, SMPTE slaving and MIDI triggering options, as well as general system settings. You can also invoke a dialog box to create "scripts" - combinations of effects and functions that you commonly use. For example, you could write a batch-editing script which would take a group of samples, convert them to a certain sample rate, add a certain EQ and reverb and save them as a certain format. Huge time-saver.
In short, within the Single Waveform view you've got a powerful two-track recording and processing environment that is - in my opinion - the equal of Sound Forge. It's convenient and configurable, and there are even a few extras thrown in.
The MultiTrack View is a tracking and mixdown arena - essentially an audio sequencer with up to 64 tracks possible. Call in waveforms to an insert menu and plunk them in from there to your tracks, or record directly to one or more tracks. Each track has individual controls for soloing, muting, panning and volume levels. You can edit volume and pan envelopes by drawing curves directly on a track's waveform. Cool Edit stores pre-mixed tracks in a proprietary format called "sessions" (with a .ses suffix).
If you want to fine-tune a particular track or section of a track, just highlight, double click and it'll pop up in the Single Waveform view. Do your adjustments and return it to the track by toggling back to the MultiTrack view. Punch-in options are flexible, splicing takes is easy and CoolEdit keeps track of your take history in a handy menu.
It's easy to accomplish sub-mixes and cross-fades. When you're ready to mix down the whole thing, CoolEdit saves the mix as a .wav. You can then apply final effects, compression, etc. to the mixdown within the Single Waveform View.
What you have here is a full-featured, up-to-64-track recorder and mixdown environment that integrates seamlessly with the single waveform editor. You can record, move tracks around, edit envelopes, adjust parameters, etc., jumping in and out at will to fine-edit and effect tracks without ever leaving CoolEdit.
Bottom line: CoolEdit is an excellent and full-featured audio editing, processing and multi-track recording environment. It's the general equal of Sound Forge, with much less publicity and following. Syntrillium is a small, essentially one-product company, but they've done this product right. The interface is cool and there are enhancements like the brainwave syncer and tone generators. For the price of Sound Forge, you also get a multi-track audio sequencer. If you don't want to or simply can't afford to invest in something as comprehensive as Pro Tools or SAW Plus, it makes a mighty powerful package for Windows 95 or NT.
