Audio editors for Mac

Equipment
1

I’m using Audacity as Audio Editor on my computer, but since the acquisition by Muse Group a couple of months ago some issues have emerged.
What’s an alternative, commercial or not?
Thank you!

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2

I use Twisted Wave and rate it. Lightweight and fully featured. Batch processing often comes in very handy too.

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3

Ocean Audio is pretty great.
https://www.ocenaudio.com/en/whatis

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4

I’m using Felt Tip Sound Studio for additional editing, file conversion or tagging. For heavy cuts I prefer to work inside Live or Reason.

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5

not free ($59) but i’ve used Amadeus for years

https://www.hairersoft.com/pro.html

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6

Seconded. This replaced Adobe Audition for me on Mac and Windows. It has “Save selection to new file” which was the most important feature of my workflow (i.e. grabbing small loops and drum hits from longer improvisations).

Two side notes:

  1. Who at Adobe had the boneheaded idea to raise student subscriptions from $20/month to $50/month when they graduate? That’s not how the job market works :laughing:
  2. There will undoubtedly be an Audacity fork. There are many conversations happening on various programming websites. I imagine it won’t take terribly long. It just won’t be called “Audacity”.
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it’s also worth mentioning that the acquisition and related problems do not impact the older versions of Audacity nor do these nullify the huge work community has put into the development of the code. I’m very sad about the situation, at the same time it does not change the fact that for me Audacity is the best computer based music making software. Now I rolled back from v. 3.0 to 2.2.2 and in the future will look for open version of the same updated code compiled directly from github. Maybe we could have Lines edition as there are plenty of code savvy people in this forum, I’m sure of?

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8

DSP Quattro

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9

I use Reaper for quick audio edits.

Edit: To add on, it’s a fairly capable DAW that feels lightweight for doing quick tasks, it’s cheap/free, a small number of people run the company but updates are frequent.

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10

I spend all day with Pro Tools and RX open, but I still do tons of the simple tasks in Fission. It’s by the lovely people who make Audio Hijack and Loopback, and it’s only $29.

It’s fast and efficient CPU-wise: click the icon and it opens straight to a window that you can drag-and-drop files onto. Anytime I need to do things like split a file, trim top and tail, conversion, etc, it takes a matter of moments. highly recommend!!

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11

+1
I use Twisted Wave for editing stems, adding markers (which Erica Sample Drum recognizes), batch processing, EQ & VST processing, preparing samples for modular/SD sample players, saving MP3s, Paul-Stretching—it is lightweight and perfect for utility editing.

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Fission

i rate all of rogue amoeba’s stuff extremely high. Loopback and Audio Hijack are the most important programs in my toolchain.

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13

Why not just use garage band?

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Also using TwistedWave, particularly when batch processing is needed, and I used to use Amadeus. I can run great versions of TwistedWave on Macs from 10.6.8 to Big Sur. Very happy with it.

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15

I’ll third the recommendation for Fission: it’s the only editor I know of that can directly edit files in lossy audio formats.

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16

I use Wavelab (for years) and before that Soundforge. Expensive but VERY capable.

If I didn’t, I’d probably just use my DAWS (Ableton and Reaper) which is what most of my friends do (or Protools etc.).

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I have never found Ableton to be very approachable as a stereo audio editor, so I use Amadeus Pro, which I have been very happy with for probably more than a decade.

I would be interested in hearing how others are using Ableton in this way.

Thanks!

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18

Tbh, I only use it when I can’t be bothered to fire up Wavelab (but since I have WL as my default external editor in both Reaper and Ableton, this is rare). And I guess it depends on the task really. If you’re in arrangement view it’s not that difficult to add fades, cuts, reverse, EQ etc etc and then render it out. Effects chains are of course very easy too. There’s also Sampler which is quite powerful for messing with files in a more creative way. Nothing beats the ‘clarity’ of a dedicated wave editor though imo which is why is own WL (and before that Soundforge).

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19

I have Twisted Wave set up as my audio editor from Ableton, when you hit the ‘edit’ button it launches TW and updates after saving.

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Thanks, I’ll try it with Amadeus!