by Dave Oliwa
If you're not looking forward to the future, excited about the prospects of what technology can do for you in the studio, you're probably headed for retirement or thinking about another line of work-—if not, you had better be! For the rest of us, however, the future looks very bright, as the computer industry improves the performance of every nook and cranny inside, and outside, the box that will bring the new millennium into the studio with one hell of a bang. A very capable, quick bang. I could babble on for hours about one of my favorite subjects: what's on the drawing boards or actually in development right now that will make everything in your production room look like the workshop of the Wright brothers in just the next couple of years, even if you've got some "pretty hot stuff" right now-—computer advancements being one of the few things that are a blessing, and a curse, at the same time.
As we step into tomorrow, the viability of PC computing (versus the Mac) for audio applications will increase dramatically. There's not going to be another endless discussion here about Mac vs. PCs and which one is "better" (my first computer was a "pre-floppy" Apple with a cassette machine attached; I just happen to be a "PC person" now), but there is a concern about Apple Inc. itself surviving into the next century. It may sound as though I am just another naysayer, but really, I'm not. Many large companies, albeit quietly, have decided not to purchase, or include, anything from Mac in their future computing plans (a moment of silence, please).
If the relatively near-future of computers is PC-based (there are other, almost unbelievable things about to happen to computing, in general), then the need for PC software necessary to make/edit/process/lockup multiple-track audio, and for that matter audio-for-video, is a reality that cannot be escaped. There are already a few software choices on the market, in varying degrees of complexity, cost, and performance.
But, something new is about to be released.
It's called Cool Edit Pro. And, in a word, it is, well, cool. It's so new, only the beta version is available at the moment, but Syntrillium Software is planning on releasing the "Golden Master" sometime this month. Cool Edit Pro is a 32-bit, multiple-track recorder/editor/effects processor software for the PC with everything imaginable included. It's the grown-up version of the incredibly popular, 2-track Cool Edit shareware program. This will also mark the first time the Radio and Production Test Drive is reviewing a beta product that has not yet been released.
Cool History 101
The creator of the original Cool Edit, Dave Johnston, is an computer programming whiz who began writing programs for his Atari 800, then started writing software for Microsoft, working there when he was still in college. The Cool Edit shareware was his hobby/labor-of-love at home. That's when I first found it (my modem motto: download everything, delete later). Version 1 looked like some kind of scientist's sound analyzing tool, something you would see at the National Transportation Safety Board labs-—even in its earliest incantations, Cool Edit was extremely capable. The adjustments that could be made to any sound file covered the gamut of everything you could do in a studio, full of equipment. It had "synthesizer-type" controls (envelopes, processing, echoes, reverbs) as well as other controls (EQ, filtering, flangers, noise reduction) to affect and effect very long sound samples, showing it all with a "zoomable" waveform display. Very much to his credit, Johnston was sponge-like in listening to the input of the users, and, rebuilding the program in subsequent versions, sometimes in major jumps, answered their requests and suggestions, always adding more features, and making them even more advanced. By doing so, the interface for the program (the way it looks, behaves, and is worked by the user) that ran all this became incredibly simple to use, despite the exponentially increasing complexity of what it did.
That's what the cool stands for in Cool Edit.
Pro calls itself a "full-featured digital audio editor for Windows95 and WindowsNT." As an audio professional, the most important word in my book is: features. Cool Edit Pro is now a multitrack editor and, I dare say, has almost all the features available today. Its ability to "work" with sound rivals the editing workstations that cost tens of thousands of dollars, yet you have the ability to control the cost of your system by how many computer things you want to buy.
We took an IBM/Cyrix 686 P166+ on a Triton II motherboard with 512K of pipelined burst cache, 32 megs of EDO RAM, a Western Digital 5200 rpm hard drive, and a 2-channel Turtle Beach sound card to perform the review (Cool Edit Pro will also handle 8-in/8-out sound cards). The IBM/Cyrix chip is similar to a Pentium Pro chip but crunches numbers a little faster-—something digital audio editors do a lot. The 5200 rpm speed of the WD hard drive gives it an 8.23 millisecond access time. But, we were skimpy on the memory, just to make it work a little harder. It's important to realize the configuration of the computer can be greatly enhanced, such as adding more, or much more, memory. Outfitting a computer with a bunch of memory and assigning the memory itself as a "virtual drive" would allow a computer to perform without any disk caching, eliminating reading and writing to a hard drive (be sure to save your work to a physical drive before you quit the program!). Likewise, increasing the speed of the hard drive, such as using a SCSI drive instead of an EIDE drive like the one we used would speed things up. Also, purchasing a pen-type "artist's slate" increases the speed of the operator's clicks and drags by hundreds, if not thousands, of percent. (Why are we still using mice?)
Now, the cool stuff
Cool Edit Pro consists of two basic "screens:" a 2-track editor and a multitrack view. A large button in the upper left hand corner switches between them. The remaining buttons across the top of the customizable button bars are all of the other processing and computing controls, like an advanced word processor. A thin indicator of the entire wave (or the section of the entire wave you are viewing on the waveform display) is just underneath. The waveform display is as big as your monitor screen can go. On the lower left are the "transport" controls and the waveform display controls. On the lower right are time displays. Stereo peak and hold VU metering with "over" indicators runs across the bottom of the entire screen; on a 17" monitor, you can see them from fifty feet away! The Windows "information bar" below the meters shows information about the sound file itself, as well as the recording space left on your hard disk at all times. In the 2-track display (see figure 1), there is an indicator on the right side of the screen showing level percentage, sample values, or normalized values. In the multitrack view (see figure 2), there are individual track controls on the left of the multiple-waveform display, and global track display controls on the right.
Upon starting (quite quickly, I might add; just over 2 seconds), the two track editor is displayed. Almost everything in Cool Edit Pro is negotiable. Presets are everywhere, and you can add your own. The "settings," as well, shouldn't be taken lightly. You can set the number of "undo" levels, up to 999 if you have the disk space. Choose any of your waveform display-function colors. Determine the measurement method used to display the waveform drawn on the screen (all are incredibly accurate, right down the sample). Show a spectral view of what frequencies are present, instead of a waveform display. Adjust SMPTE response time. Pick which soundcard you want to use (should you have more than one). Change the pixel height of each track. There are literally scores of other settings in "settings" alone, including the ability to adjust the program to your computer's capabilities.
"Keyboard shortcuts" allows you to program almost every function to any keystroke on the keyboard, including all the combinations of a single keystroke, CTRL+, ALT+, and/or SHIFT+.
"Cool scripts" remember everything you've done to anything and can be used again and again--and that's even if you didn't make any presets of your own. To make the same changes to a number of different sound files, Cool Edit Pro will handle those automatically, using its "batch processor."
There's MIDI triggering of any shortcut, and Cool Edit Pro is an impressive sampler, as well. SMPTE controls offer frame accuracy when synched with other devices, giving the audio-for-video producer one cool tool to work with.
Of course, you can "left click" all over. But, since this is a Windows95/NT program, you can also "right click" all over. Menu "pop-ups" are everywhere.
The flexibility to set any preference in Cool Edit Pro is staggering. Yet, the learning curve is virtually flat. Everything is just as it looks-—graphical bliss. If you know how to click and drag and you've ever worked an analog multitrack recorder, you're producing in minutes.
Now, the really cool stuff
Cool Edit Pro has 64, separate, stereo tracks. Individual sound files may be up to a gigabyte in size. If it's a .wav, .snd, .aif, .vox, .au, .pcm, .vba, .smp, .vl, .dwd, .iff, .svx, .sam, in any kind of compressed or uncompressed state, Cool Edit Pro can read it, save it, or save it as another file type. Sorry, I forgot it also does RealAudio (.ra) files for your Web site. Of course, you can save entire multitrack sessions as well. You may open files as they are already sampled, or open them at a different sampling rate. Any sampling rate that your soundcard is capable of is possible. (You can even type in a sampling rate, if you would ever need to.) Record with an 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit resolution (something for next year's soundcards). When using files of different sampling rates on the multitrack, they're automatically converted with pre and post filtering to the sampling rate you choose to work with. You can append files (add files to the end of another) with other files, and append multitrack sessions with other sessions. Cool Edit Pro also makes "peak files" (.pk) from the waveform you record or load up, and doesn't have to read the file ever again, making the redraw of the display instant after an edit. Did I mention, while you are recording, the waveform is drawn on the screen in real-time? The cursor line can also stay in the middle of the screen, with the waveform driving by, on playback.
The transport controls are straight-forward (no pun intended). Stop, play, pause, loop, play-to-end (starting at a highlighted area, but continuing past the highlight), record, go to the track's beginning, go to the track's end, fast-forward, rewind, and, in the play mode, scrub forward and backwards.
The display controls are just as easily mastered. Zoom in (right down to the sample), zoom out, display entire wave, zoom in to display a highlighted section, display the highlighted section and an equal amount of time to the left of the highlight, and display the highlight and an equal time to the right of the highlight. In addition, two buttons in the lower right corner of the window changes the vertical zoom factor, zeroing in to the center of the amplitude of the 2-track editor, and showing more tracks in the multitrack view.
The time counters show the start and end points and the length of the entire waveform display (these are dynamic, and change with any zoom, to tell you where you are within the whole), where the cursor line is, and the start and end points of highlights, with the total time inside the highlight. The counters will show your choice of minutes/seconds/hundredths, samples, bars and beats, SMPTE drop frame, or, of course, a custom frame/second setting.
In the multitrack view, the track controls on the left of the display are very familiar. Each has a mute button, a solo button, and a record enable button. Track volume and track pan (stereo tracks, remember?) are also here. If you are using an 8-in/8-out soundcard, you can also use the two buttons there to set where that track's input will come from and where that track's output will go. A single left click on the track name, and you've got a dialog box that gives you all of the track controls in one spot.
While working on individual tracks in the multitrack view, you have a choice of editing the "image" of the original file (which will change the original file), or editing a "clone" of the original file (which leaves the original intact).
Sliding a wave around the multitrack is a right click and drag away, within the track or to a different one. Turn on the "snap" function, drag any wave close to another, and snap! It butts the two waves together for a seamless connection. I was sliding multiple waves around from track to track while it was playing without a glitch in sight.
It's difficult to go anywhere in Cool Edit Pro and not hear yourself whispering to yourself "this is cool."
Beyond just cool
Here's where you must fasten your seat belts: the DSP functions. It would take a book to explain them all in detail, but the list of effects alone is impressive. Only some of the effects controls are listed.
Here we go.
Dynamic Range Processing is the place to compress, expand, limit, and noise gate. Besides full gain and level controls, there is also a graphing capability that allows you to "draw" the effect you're looking for.
Envelope lets you draw a curve of any kind to shape the amplitude of your highlight--most useful, I find, for precision fades up and down, in very small places.
Normalize will, well, normalize the level of a wave to a preset "percentage of maximum," without changing its characteristics (compressing, for example) in any way. Essentially, it's a global volume control based on percent.
Amplify is a "smart" volume control. Not only will it set levels, it will also perform functions such as fade-up or fade-down. It's nice to fix syllables or overemphasized vowels in voice-overs.
Chorus is just as good, if not better, than the EFX processor in your rack. There are many settings, including the number of voices and vibrato.
Delay is a digital slap-back that will create a tunnel, a stereo feel for a mono sound, or even a single echo back. "Spatial" is the word for this one.
Echo is your auditorium, shower, or small room. There is a "successive echo EQ" and also includes a "falloff" ratio.
3D Echo Chamber is a calculator for sound. You choose the room size, how far the microphones are set apart, and what the walls are made of. The mother of all ambiance makers, this is one fun effect, with up to 25,000 echoes.
Flanger, and a good one. One of the presets is "under water," but my fave is "high school movies."
Multitap Delay is the ultimate reverb chamber. Set numerous "delay units" to all run at the same time, such as 1) delay 139 ms at 158 ms 2) delay 46 ms at 80 ms 3) delay 49 ms at 146 ms 4) delay 79 ms at 313 ms. Better than the real thing!
Reverb. Good ol' plain reverb with all the fixin's.
DTMF Filter is made specifically to lower the level of Touch Tones, the nemesis of VU meters, everywhere.
FFT Filter is the low-pass, high-pass, notch, and sound-like-a-telephone maker. With this filter, I discovered the perfect setting to remove popped Ps (and you can be sure, I made a preset for that one). A graphical display lets you draw what you want.
Graphic Equalizer is the EQ of EQ. Choose a 10, 20, or 30 band equalization with a display, a range setting, and an "accuracy" adjustment.
Parametric Equalizer is another cool choice, with the ability to drag the pattern around on a graphic display.
Quick Filter is like having bass and treble controls, except there are 8 of them. It's got both initial and final settings.
Scientific Filters are pretty scientific. A graph displays the likes of Bessels, Butterworths, and Chebychev low pass, high pass, band pass, and band stop (reject) filtering.
Click/Pop/Crackle Eliminator. You guessed it.
Hiss Reduction removes hiss under a set level. Oddly, you also have the choice of keeping only the hiss!
Noise Reduction analyzes the selection for noise, and allows you to set how much of it you want removed.
Stretch is, by far, the most useful effect for those 68 second spots. Speed up or slow down, I pushed this to 22% without a glitch. Now, that's cool.
Other effects include Convoluting, Distortion, Invert, Reverse, generating Noise, an Oscillator for tones, DTMF touch tones, and a Brainwave Synchronizer that creates effects to meditate with-—particularly useful on "Production Director Fridays." There's also a Frequency Analyzer and a Waveform Statistics analyzer that gives you RMS powers, sample values, and other things. Of course, Cool Edit Pro has a myriad of controls for copying, pasting, and mix-pasting--the combining of several waveforms into one stereo track.
All effects can be "previewed" in real-time so you can hear what you're doing while the wave is playing. Once you make a choice, the waveform is saved that way (of course, undo undoes). The average waiting time with the computer we built was about 45 seconds, including saving the undo file, for a 60 second long, 44.1/16-bit stereo file. The waiting time decreases accordingly when effecting smaller sections of the entire wave. To undo the changes made to the entire minute takes about 4 seconds. A better computer, as mentioned above, would lower the waiting time.
Each effect has many settings, and most have so many options, you will probably go back to work over the weekend just to play with them; this is one of the reasons for "presets" (and a valuable time-saver--imagine making the perfect preset for anything you produce, for any client or station promo, and always having it at your fingertips at a later date).
Now you know where they got the name
As far as crankin' out spots fast, fast, fast, Cool Edit Pro is excellent in many areas. If you don't make it perform tricks on the entire wave, only a few seconds will go by using most functions (Stretch and Squeeze, and Noise Reduction are the slow ones, if you consider waiting a minute slow, for such performance). Given faster computer hardware or a RAM-based virtual drive, the trade-off of a few seconds of waiting time versus the enormous power of this program doesn't seem, to me, to be much of a trade-off.
The only thing Cool Edit Pro doesn't have is a "Mixer Screen." But, as has been already mentioned, each track in the multitrack view has a single, left click access to its level. So, the question is, can you live without seeing a screen displaying the 64 sliders? Without a moment of hesitation, I can say "ohh yeah."
Now, the price.
Are you sitting down? Syntrillium has decided Cool Edit Pro is so easy to use, they are going to market it to the general public in computer stores, electronic superstores, and music stores, for-—get this—-a retail price of $399. Along with the program, on CD-ROM, they're also going to include a SFX library and a collection of music (although they probably would not be licensed for broadcast). It would be safe to assume nobody pays retail and that the street price would be closer to $300 than it would be to $400.
Let's pull out our calculators, boys and girls. Buying a faster computer, with much more memory than the one we used for our Test Drive, a drawing slate, and Cool Edit Pro, would cost less than $3000 today-—and that would include a 17" monitor (the 8-in/8-out soundcard would raise the price, however).
It doesn't get any cooler than that.
Thanks to Bob Ellison and Matt Bieber at Syntrillium for releasing the beta version of Cool Edit Pro to Radio And Production, coming soon to a store near you. Visit their Web site at www.syntrillium.com.
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