A run a charitable project which records and edits bedtime stories for serving personnel’s children who are on deployment for the RAF.
I have a team of volunteers who help me with the editing (we add music and sound effects to the recorded story) and we all currently use Adobe Audition 3.0.
I desperately need more volunteer editors as the project is growing in popularity but Adobe have upgraded Audition to a version which is more expensive, will require full re-training and does a lot more than we need it to.
I’m wondering about switching everyone over to Audacity and wonder if you could advise as to the similarities in capability with Audition of doing quite simple editing but with excellent quality?
Main tasks are fading music in and out, removing background noise from the recorded story, adding in sound effects at relevant parts to the story and then mixing down to a file to be burnt to CD and posted out to the child. The original vocal recording is saved as mp3 file on an SD card which I can then upload and edit using Audacity I assume?
I’d be extremely grateful for any advice you can give me
many thanks
Rather than blow a loud whistle and have the whole project drop Audition like a hot rock, why not a pilot project where a subset of editors start using Audacity and see how it goes. This will also give you a cadre of experienced users to coach others if you decide to go this route. And there’s always us, of course.
You should know that Audacity isn’t a WAV Editor. It’s a sound editor or a production editor. Audacity doesn’t save sound files. It saves Projects and you can get a sound file later if you want one by Exporting one. This may be the one place that burns new users the most.
My Audition came with a full Fraunhofer-Gesellshaft license for MP3. Audacity won’t make an MP3 without adding separate open-source work-alike software. Did you know MP3 creation is licensed? It’s not free.
You may decide that the noise reduction tools in Audacity aren’t up to the job. That’s a developing tool. I’d be interested in your comparisons.
Because Audacity isn’t a WAV editor, it doesn’t actually edit MP3s. It imports them into a very high quality internal format and then makes a whole new one when it’s done. This means you always get double compression artifacts and sound damage each pass.
The mantra is never do any production in MP3, ever. People fall in love with the tiny, efficient files ignoring the bubbling, gargling and honking sound damage. MP3 sound damage can make some of the more serious filters and effects impossible.
So that’s what I would do. Start an Audacity Production Pod and see what happens. You may decide as you suggest that Audition is vast overkill, so keep a few licenses of that on hand for when you just can’t rescue a performance any other way.
In my previous job I used Adobe Audition, Logic, ProTools. Cubase, but mostly I used Audacity. For the most jobs I found that I could get the job done quicker and more easily in Audacity. For big multi-track projects I used ProTools, and when I really needed real-time effects I used Audition. When I had to work on a Mac I used Logic, but my tool of choice was Audacity.
It’s not just because Audacity works with projects. It’s mostly because the compressed format of MP3 only allows basic editing. The other programs that I listed all import, decompress and copy MP3s in a similar way.
Sometimes it is unavoidable, for example if the original recording is done on an MP3 recorder.
Whenever possible it is best to record in an uncompressed format (such as WAV) and only convert to MP3 at the end if you specifically need the final product in MP3 format.
Asking how one software package compares to another is rarely constructive. Rather, what you want to know is whether Audacity will do the job you want to do - which may well be quite a small subset of what Audition is capable of.
Main tasks are fading music in and out, removing background noise from the recorded story, adding in sound effects at relevant parts to the story and then mixing down to a file to be burnt to CD and posted out to the child. The original vocal recording is saved as mp3 file on an SD card which I can then upload and edit using Audacity I assume?
Putting this into order, your workflow is (I think)
Record voice using MP3 recorder, which records onto an SD card
Copy MP3 file from SD card to computer for editing
Import the MP3 file into the audio editor
Do background noise removal and edits
Add music, fades and sound effects
Export an audio file of the complete recording
Burn the audio file to an audio CD for distribution
Given that list, only 3, 4, 5 and 6 are actually done in the audio editor - 1 is done with the audio recorder, 2 with a file manager and 7 with your choice of audio CD burning package. So we have to look at 3, 4, 5 and 6.
Audacity can import MP3 files for editing. Tick.
Audacity can do noise removal, but it could always be better. You would have to try some real material to see whether Audacity is up to what you need to do.
Audacity supports multiple tracks, so adding in additional audio to run alongside the main voice track is easy. I would adjust the levels and do fades with the envelope tool on each track, but there are other ways of doing this as well. Tick.
Audacity will export to WAV or AIFF files which are accepted by almost all audio CD burning packages. If you want smaller files for archival purposes then FLAC would be suitable as it introduces no further quality loss. As others have noted, MP3 encoding is not included in the Audacity download, but can be added separately. Nothing you have said suggests you need it however, and exporting to MP3 will introduce additional quality loss. Tick.
From what you have said I can’t see anything that you wouldn’t be able to do in Audacity, but none of us are watching you work. You will only really know what you download Audacity (it is free!) and try using it on a real project.
Remember that Saving a project saves the complete workspace, with all the tracks and tweaks, but can only be played in Audacity. Exporting produces the single audio file you need to burn the CD.