14 DAY TRIAL // There is common knowledge that most of the people making proper use of multimedia, especially audio, will sooner or later feel the need to edit some parts. And when I say to edit I think of almost anything that could be done with an audio file so that you change it in part or in whole: amplify or normalize, boost or cut some frequencies, add echoes or flanges, de-noise or filter certain frequencies and so on... And as audio editing means more than clicking some buttons in your operating session, it's obvious that you need a dedicated application to allow and help you do this; on the other hand, there are various issues with this thing, such as price, ease of use, ease of learning how to work with such a program, reliability and last, but not least, the quality of the resulting media. Needless to say that no matter how nice or how freeware a software might be, should you not be able to obtain quality results after working with it, it's rather useless!
Such audio editing software must definitely comply with another very important requirement: the overall ease of use - because it's more likely that its users will be home users rather than pros. Therefore, one must not need extensive audio editing knowledge in order to operate the editor but rather have some decent amount of PC intuition. Audio Editor Gold seems to be the perfect candidate for such a title because its simple design and processing/editing power it can deliver for the home desktop at a very good price.
The Looks
I guess that the way audio editing software looks is a one-of-a-kind GUI: I can't think of another way such programs' GUIs could look like...for better, of course, not for worse. Much to my surprise, I found Audio Editor Gold to be a light-interface program I really enjoyed working with and not being tiresome as some other GUIs I've tested turned out to be.
The Audio Editor Gold is a classic one: a very large area in its main window is dedicated to displaying the waveform, in nice dark-blue sine on white background, turning to bright blue on black background when having a selected region thus being extremely visible even for people with sight disabilities. Rather than forcing people to navigate through extensive and maybe complicated menus, the developers of Audio Editor Gold have decided to place very handy quick-access buttons on the main screen.
This way, even the inexperienced users can quickly form a better picture of how does the program work and what are the possibilities it offers them - actually, seeing the lists of commands makes Audio Editor Gold very "visual", more user-friendly and definitely more attractive due to the general impression of simplicity and homely feeling it radiates. Audio Editor Gold really looks like having been created especially for the warm corner of your living room in which you sit and process your audio during a quiet weekend afternoon. Even more, not only the buttons are large and highly visible but they also sport readable text on them as well as small iconic drawings which kind of guide your steps as you start learning how to work with Audio Editor Gold.
The transport control buttons have been placed at the bottom of the screen, along with the zooming commands and the very helpful time-counting section. Speaking of which, I must say it is really pro-grade, displaying info on both selected and currently viewed areas, start and end points as well as the overall length, all these, down to the thousands of seconds. Imagine the accuracy you can attain working with such precision-metering! The playback buttons have very intuitive markings on them and one has to be pretty dumb or completely inexperienced with any kind of audio tools (both software and hardware, real-life ones) such as to need more than one second to know what all of them do. Commands like "Play to end" and "Loop" are available, letting you experience your audio editing the way you want and with effortless operation, while the zooming buttons are very explicit and you'll see yourself using them with great efficiency in no time.
The menus in the Audio Editor Gold are very easy and clear as well: no "funny things" to confuse the first-time user and definitely nothing misleading as sometimes seen in similar programs - everything is in its place and learning your way across them all is quite easy. Even the "high-tech" features, such as Frequency Analyzer are a pleasure to look at and offer tons of information to the eyes that know how to see it. Be it waveform view or the spectrum view, the Audio Editor Gold provides accurate data thus helping you and making your audio editing much easier.
Finally, some more: the first of them is the VU-meter bar, located vertically in the rightmost side. I really can't understand why has it been drawn so simple and definitely not in the line with the rest of the GUI. It is bright green and not with the classical and very convenient green-yellow-red volume-scaling so, as the levels are too high, you won't get the best visual on them. The VU-meter is also a bit "unsure" in its dynamics and seems to be not as accurate as the beats themselves; some better response to the beat could mean a lot in the future versions!
The last thing I will tell you about in what the Audio Editor Gold's GUI is concerned is the way the FX-tweaking windows look like: even if they aren't too much of a professional-style effects interfaces, they look very simple and functional exactly because it's so obvious that the producers of the Audio Editor Gold wanted their software to be used with ease by many people, not necessarily by those well-trained audio media specialists... Overall, a nice job with the GUI!
The Works
There is not too much to talk about what the Audio Editor Gold does as I assume most of you already know what sound editing means. Nevertheless, I must insist on the fact that Audio Editor Gold is one hell of a tool for semi-pro use: it's exactly what someone might need when it comes to editing audio files and preparing them for different jobs such as embedding audio in home movies, editing the home movies' soundtracks, preparing cool audio for parties or simply enhancing old recordings or even recordings made with smartphones, MP3 players and so on.
In fact, the Audio Editor Gold offers quite a lot for the almost 30 USD it sells for: from delay/echo FX and up to very configurable compression or filters, the Audio Editor Gold can easily transform your PC into a powerful audio tool with which you can do almost anything with a track. From DSP and MPC files to classics like WAV or MP3, including RAW, AU or OGG files, the Audio Editor Gold will handle a lot of extensions thus expanding the field of your preoccupations and also the possibilities you can take advantage of while developing new ideas.
What's really cool in the Audio Editor Gold is the fact that the workflow is really easy: there aren't any complicated processes you must follow in order to have your fav audio edited, well, of course, this depends much on what you want to do. When usual, "day by day" editing or effects are required, doing everything with the Audio Editor Gold becomes a child's play once you have gotten a bit acquainted with the way it looks and "what all those buttons do".
The fact that Audio Editor Gold has almost all the commands at hand by means of very handy buttons allows the inexperienced users to surpass the potential fears of working with it; even more, these generic buttons deploy extensive drop menus in which the tasks are located and you can extremely easy access the one you need with just a simple mouse click. For example, pressing the Delay Effects button will grant you instant access to Delay, Phaser, Flanger, Reverb and Chorus SFX - one click and the corresponding window pops out and you can easily tweak the parameters until you obtain what you wanted.
A not so good thing in what effects are like in Audio Editor Gold is the fact that you can't preview the post-FX track. You have to know a bit what you are doing so you don't obtain total crap out of your audio. If you have made a mistake, you'll just have to undo it first and then come back to the effect-window and mend things. Should future versions bring in this preview capability, the Audio Editor Gold could easily smash a lot of competitors in its class; combining this feature with the already-present other cool things such as "Zoom to selection", Vertical/Horizontal zoom could mean a serious advantage against competitors.
Zoom can also be done the pro way, using the mouse wheel; even though this kind of zooming is a little imprecise and you may need some time to get used to the way it works. One cool thing in Audio Editor Gold is the fact that you can set up the output formats' specs from one easy to use place and then never mind them unless you have some special output settings to make. Having all them set up the right way will dramatically speed up your workflow as you won't be forced to set things up again and again each time you process audio. As I guess you have figured out by now, the Audio Editor Gold can also be used as a very good file format converter: you just load an audio track and then save it with a supported extension of your choice so it suits your needs.
I won't tell you here how to use the effects in the Audio Editor Gold nor what they do - I'd rather leave this up to you as I am quite sure you'll enjoy a lot working with this very nice piece of software. Believe me, it's well worth at least downloading it and giving it a thorough spin if not even buying it.
The Good
The best things about Audio Editor Gold are the handy zoom tools and the extensive range of file formats it can handle. Of course, features like the large number of SFX bulked in this program will also add a lot of value to it.
The Bad
The Audio Editor Gold does not have really bad things in it but rather things that could use some upgrade or a little bit of re-thinking. The VU-meter and the precision of the mouse-wheel zoom are 2 of the most important ones.
The Truth
Audio Editor Gold is definitely one good audio editing software to use for your current home and even office use. Give it a try and I just know you won't regret it.
Take a look at the screenshots below while you download the Audio Editor Gold:
