Wavosaur

Smurf43 · Joined: 05 May 2007 Posts: 29 Location: Ohio, uSA

First off, even tho I have said this before, this has to be the best free audio editor out there, BAR NONE! It blows Audacity out of the water IMHO, and stands up very well against Soundforge 6, Cool Edit Pro 2.1, and Adobe Audition 1.5.

How can I say this? Because I own them all, and have been using Wavosaur right next to them editing the same files for the last 3 very intense weeks. I feel the one thing that sets Wavosaur apart is the FX rack, and how easily it opens VST's. But there are a few things that are really bugging me, and here they are....

1. When highlighting a section of a wave, it might take 2 or 3 tries before I can get it to highlite the section I want. Sometimes it will start the highlite from right were I have the cursor, other times I will have to move the mouse very fast to get it to start the highlite, and then I have to go back and adjust the edges to where I want it. It is not as responsive as CEP or SF in this respect. This happens no matter what the resolution is while working with the file, either zoomed in or out. I have had this problem since around the 1.6 release.

2. I would like to see a progress bar when working with files. When loading a mp3 or wave, batch processing a number of files, or when rendering a file after editing, there is nothing that gives me an idea if the program is working or not. A progress meter, bar, or even some kind of numerical reading, i.e. 50% done, 78% done, etc. would give me piece of mind that the program is working as it should, and that I have not lost any of my hard work! (on a side not, Wavosaur has never let me down in this respect, and has always render my edits with no problems)

3. I would like to see support added for FLAC and .ogg files. I have been experimenting with the FLAC compression scheme and have found it to be THE solution to storing the 100's of multi-track files that are generated during a session. It is a lossless format that sounds fine when played back, but the huge benefit for us home studio owners is that it sounds exactly the same after you un-compress it as the original file. Myself and 3 friends have ran tests using our spectrum analyzers, frequency analyzers, and the best test, our friends ears, and they all come back 99% perfect. People could not tell the difference between the Original wave and the un-compressed wave, and neither could or analyzers.

But they could tell the difference between a FLAC encoded file and a mp3 file at the same compression ratio, and the FLAC was always the winner. The same happened between the mp3's at 192kb and the .ogg at 190kb, the .ogg won.

These two, FLAC and .ogg, are free and open-source, so I would assume that you would have no problem using them. I also tried out Monkey Audio, and even tho it worked well it seems that it might be a dead project, since it has been a year since anyone of the developers have posted to their forum.

Now please don't get me wrong, Wavosaur is one fantastic piece of work as it stands now, and is totally useable in a studio environment. These are just some of MY wants and needs, nothing else!

Thanks Again for the GREAT piece of software!
Cool

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My Music
Soundclick

Rex · Site Admin Joined: 05 Oct 2006 Posts: 797

1. highlighting problems should not happen, you said it started in v1.0.0.6000 ?

2. yes ,i think we have added this kind of thing in the todo list, a progress bar with a "cancel button"

3. flac & ogg support will surely come,

Smurf43 · Joined: 05 May 2007 Posts: 29 Location: Ohio, uSA

Hello Rex,
Yes, it started happening with me since v1.0.0.6000. This is on as P3 600 & 700, both with 512mb memory. It also happens on our 1.2ghz AMD and 2gig Celeron. 2 MSI, one Dell, and one ECS boards. This happens with either or Logitech Trackballs or Optical mice. I can work around it, I am use to is now. I just thought I would point it out.

As for the rest of the items, that sounds great! Cool

_________________
My Music
Soundclick

Nikos · Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 46

I have troubles with highlighting too.
First of all the cusrsor remains as an arrow while I put it over the waveform while an "I" cursor could help a bit
and then it's the current position bar (I am not sure about the name) that gets focus when I start to select and the begging edge is near it, so it won't allow me to make a quick selection.

Rex · Site Admin Joined: 05 Oct 2006 Posts: 797

Do you have the same difficulties with previous version of Wavosaur (i'm thinking about v 7000, 6000 and even the previous alpha release, if you have them )

Nikos · Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 46

I don't remember I replaced 7000. Is there any old version archieve?

Rex · Site Admin Joined: 05 Oct 2006 Posts: 797

some website have mirrored older Wavosaur versions i think, if you can't find with a google search i'll upload old version here.

We changed a lot of things about the graphics between versions, there was no incidence (except lower CPU consumption) when we tested but maybe on some configurations there are some issues

metalkaline · Joined: 13 Dec 2007 Posts: 13 Location: earth

The only problem I encountered w/ Wavosaur is this:

pasting a beat over a track repeatedly it sometimes happens that the
location bar doesn't move to the end of the insterted sample...
as it should be.

It just seems to happen with some kind of mouses/controls, maybe
with higher paces?! ...I mean the sensitivity of the mouse/trackball.
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Rex · Site Admin Joined: 05 Oct 2006 Posts: 797

In what mode are you ? "paste replace" or "paste insert" ?
i can't reproduce "cursor not going to end of pasted data" in paste insert mode.

You can change the pasting mode in the wavosaur.cfg file (we haven't added yet the option in the config windows!) --> open wavosaur.cfg with a text editor, find the PasteReplace string and set his value to 0.