I’ve been using Audition to clean up old cassette recordings that have been digitised. I use the clipping fixing feature all the time as well as removing background noises.
Is there any mac app that could replace this? I’m trying to get rid of my Adobe subscription.
Nothing cheap probably. iZotope RX would be the best option in my mind.
Looks good, but wouldn’t save me any money.
Another option might be TwistedWave. I’ve used it for years and have been very happy with it. That said … my needs aren’t exactly the same as yours. I believe it comes with a trial period. Worth checking out here: https://twistedwave.com
There are several things I do where the actions to take are not as obvious as RX. (After all, RX is all about “fixing” audio, TW is about recording, editing, and fixing.) So if there’s a set of actions where it’s not obvious to you what’s the optimal steps to take then the developer is very responsive and helpful. I believe I’ve always had a very complete reply in less than 24 hours. Email is: support-osx@twistedwave.com
There are several tutorials you can find under Support at the website.
I deal with clipping and background noise at times, but your use-case may be more intensive.
If you’re willing to do this on an iPad rather than a Mac, Ferrite would be an option.
The recordings I’m dealing with are poorly recorded sermons that clip alot, and I mean alot! They were recorded in the era when mobile phones could be heard clicking through audio as they connected with the tower. There is also cassette hissing and the speaker moving away and back again towards the microphone. The clean up is sometimes impossible. Do you think twistedwave can handle that?
Does ferrite have tools to deal with those problems, I’ve mentioned above?
@svsmailus It sounds like you have very intensive fixing to do and no app may sort out all the problems to your satisfaction. First, if you are happy with the performance of Audition … then in this case I’d stay with what you know. RX is the best choice … it’s a fantastic app … but price seems to be a factor. I can’t say if TwistedWave would meet all your needs 100%.
My take about TwistedWave: clipping should be fairly easy to deal with. Speaker moving back and forth: that will be trickier no matter what you are using: it will need intensive manual work. Hissing is likely the trickiest in your case as it’s going on all the time. I would definitely email the TwistedWave developer about how he suggests dealing with hiss.
Another alternative is there’s a lite version of RX named RX Elements ($129) that may really help in your case: especially with hissing. If you are an educator then there are significant price reductions on their products.
Thank you for your help! In Audition hissing is fairly easy to deal with as it’s the same though the whole recording and there’s often a silent section where I can take a noise print and remove. Does Twistedwave have a feature to take noise print of something you want to remove?
I think the answer is “yes” and it will work perfectly fine, but I don’t want to mislead you as this is a critical feature for you. I really suggest contacting the developer directly. Let us know what he says. As an example (which doesn’t fit your case but gives some insights into using TwistedWave) I asked the developer:
I may be imagining things, but I remember being able to reduce the level of audio in a file if it was below a certain level. For example, if the audio level was at -21db then it could be changed to -48db. Essentially what I want to do is a one-click reduction of all the more-or-less silent areas to be even more silent.
and his response (which provided perfect solutions for me) was:
You can either use the silence detector in “Select > Detect Silences…” from the main menu. Configure it to select the parts you want to process. When you have selected all the silences, you can either select “Effect > Amplify…” to reduce the level of these parts, or paste a sample of room tone you have copied previously to replace all the silences with some room tone. If you want to paste the room tone without changing the duration of the silences, you can use the “Special Paste” instead, configured in “Replace” mode, and with the attenuation set to -oo.
The other way to do that is with a noise gate. You can find one in the main menu in “Effects > AudioUnits & VST > Apple > AUDynamicsProcessor”. In the factory presets, you have a light, a medium and a hard noise gate.
So there often is more than 1 way to accomplish something in TW.
I’ve used Audacity in the past for different editing tasks. It’s been a while, so I do t remember all its capabilities. Price is right.
Awesome, thank you! These are a great help.