14 DAY TRIAL // From time to time, even the most inexperienced PC home-user feels the need to have several audio files joined together in what might be called a mix. And when it comes to the inexperienced user recommendations like tryouts for Cakewalk Sonar, Adobe Audition and the likes the situation becomes really hilarious: not that such a force deployment for god knows what small and unimportant mix looks truly silly, but rather the inexperienced user we've been referring to will most likely install let's say Audition and then burst into tears of confusion at the sight of the GUI.
For such operations, a dead-simple software is needed, with little tweak opportunities - so that the users would not get lost rather than benefiting from them - simple and highly-intuitive interfaces and last, but in any case NOT least - a very good and reliable processing engine/algorithm to have their job done in the best conditions available and in a short time. So the "joiner"-type softwares were created and further developed so that almost anyone could use them and have different tracks mixed together.
Well, if it comes to the Super Sound Joiner I already have a question: what's the "super" related to: the "sound" or the "joiner"? If "sound" is the answer I'd add it's a bit too much, since it just makes a wav-file; if the answer is "joiner" I'll definitely say it's all wrong.
The Looks
The first thing I noticed about the Super Sound Joiner was the strange desktop icon which depicted a multi-layer cake and with party-candles on top...don't ask me why because I have already spent one hour running the program and still haven't found a reason.
The Super Sound Joiner is a software with an extremely simple GUI: a single window containing the list of files you decided to mix down together, the command buttons and the ordering buttons for the playlist. All in a very neat-looking silver-grey polished metal background and with very visible, large icons in the Win98 minimalist style, yet good-looking.
One good thing is that Super Sound Joiner displays the title of the track you load and not the full path as some really annoying softwares used to doing thus the whole task easier and less tiring, especially when there are lots of files that have to be mixed in a single one.
The playlist displays both filenames and their duration in seconds, so it is very easy for any user to see what's going on in there, how long each part is and how much time will the resulting file have. This comes in handy when mixing for a timed event and I guess there is no need for further explanations as to why this happens.
The Works
Well, if for the GUI-part, the Super Sound Joiner has made it quite well, when it comes to the way it works, things are not that nice. The worst thing is the way the files are "attached" to each other: one can hear an extremely unpleasant gap between the files and this is the most important thing when the word "mix" comes up. Mixing simply means blending two or more things so you get a continuum and not a fractured sequence!
A good - yet common - feature is that the user can freely choose the name and location for the output WAV file, so when creating a lot of mixes this will help very much. Moreover, the playlist features very useful commands you can easily use to set order or to alter the order of the files you have loaded, according to you own wishes and ideas. You can move files up and down, erase one or multiply-selected files or even the entire playlist by means of just few and even one single mouseclicks. Too bad the Super Sound Joiner does not support drag and drop: things could have been sensibly easier with this feature.
Well, besides the fact that in the unregistered mode all files to be mixed are automatically reduced to 10 seconds, the gap is heard even better and with worse results. No crossfading algorithm and generally no fading at all, not even the elimination of that awful gap between the audio sequences is a "little" too little for the $30 the producers ask for the Super Sound Joiner. Should it not have been for this small pause between the files which have been "mixed" it could have been a great software, especially as it is so easy to use, with a simple and extremely intuitive GUI.
The Good
The only good thing is that the Super Sound Joiner is very simple to use and even those who have never done a similar operation so far will be able to make things OK.
The Bad
First of all, the "joining" sucks big time: all you get is a sequence made from other audio sequences, but instead of being properly mixed they have very audible gaps in between. Then, drag and drop will not work in Super Sound Joiner whatsoever. Third (and I'd better stop here) the price is simply HUGE!
The Truth
As I said at the beginning, I could not find the "super" anywhere in the Super Sound Joiner, except for the price which is unfortunately super-high for a joining software which does not exactly join files.
See the screenshots below, but also try the software for yourselves:
