For the record, I'm in no way affiliated with the company developing this software.
I'm a program junkie and have tried and tested all in the whole range of audio editors for the Mac. And if the price point isn't the key factor for you, but rather quality and great features, then my sole recommendation will undoubtedly be Audiofile Engineering's Wave Editor.
It's not at all free. But does it really matter, when you know you want the best there is? Just buy a couple beer pints less one month and you'll affort it.
Now. Wave Editor has some unique approaches to editing sound. Firstly, one couldn't say it's a (single file) audio editor per se, as it can handle lots of layered soundfiles all at once, in the same document. Whereas normal type audio editors use to do either one mono or stereo file only.
Having multiple layers/tracks of sound isn't that unique, though. Audacity being one example of multitrack editors. But Wave Editor let you edit sounds in *layers*, where you can move around each layer independently of each other, and you can add separate Audio Unit (soon to come, also VST) effect plugins on each layer. It's much like Photoshop's layer editing. Read further on audiofile engineering's website on this unique approach for more info.
Wave Editor is blazing fast and NEVER stutters. I said, NEVER. When you select a portion of audio and then repeat it over and over again, you won't hear any glitch between the end and start of the selection, something that almost always happened in other programs.
I can't stretch this awesomeness far enough. You can drag the looping selection around, in realtime, and it will continue looping wherever you drag it the selection. Think of it as if you select small portions of speech, and then have it looped, while dragging back & forth in time. You'll hear the word or sentence being spoked at whatever speed you're dragging the loop around.
Here's another killer feat, that is SO useful for sound design: instant MIDI playability of the sound you're editing. If you haven't got anything selected, it will play the whole audio file. If you have something selected, it will play that instead. Absolutely fantastic. And it's FAST. Exactly the same as if you had played the sound in a dedicated sampler machine or software.
A nice thing, is that the thoughts behind Wave Editor, was to resemble all of the powerful features of Sound Designer II; an application that is now (since long) defunct, but which managed to gain almost cult status among audio people at the time of its existence.
Right. Now, this isn't the place to write huge essays, but I felt that Wave Editor really deserve some extra reputation in here.
It's one of my best buys in creative apps of all time. A workhorse that you can trust in any project of any scale. Just give it a serious test drive, and I guarantee you will swear by it.
Best,
Henrik
Joined: 2007-08-27