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Adobe Soundbooth Beta 2: Now Easier, More Photoshop
createdigitalmusic.com — Can sound editing be as intuitive as graphics editing in Photoshop? That ’s the question Soundbooth, the new Adobe sound app, poses.
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- bwizard, on 10/12/2007, -21/+13Does not support Power PC MACS......:(
- adrocknaphobia, on 10/12/2007, -17/+42Yeah, doesn't support Windows 3.1 either... go figure!
- unloud, on 10/12/2007, -17/+19Windows 3.1 was 15 years ago, Apple was making PowerPC macs as early as a few months ago.
- kapkorn, on 10/12/2007, -10/+5I can't believe they did that! Maybe it is just for the BETA, I dont have a PPC Mac but still you think that would reduce their sales greatly.
- CMoncur, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6As if PowerPC macs were a thing of the past?! Im sure a big portion of mac users do not yet own an Intel based macintosh, and by only chosing to support the latest and greatest they are losing a lot of profit, and many people's positive view of the company.
And how is a Windows 3.1 based system even a comparison?! My old 22 Mhz laptop running Windows 3.1 would need to have 4.09 times the processing power, and twice the RAM in order to run STARCRAFT, and that was released many years ago.
If you believe in any way PowerPC based macs to be obsolete, especially the more recent ones, then by all means, give yours away, because I'm sure there are millions of people out there with open minds that will make 100 times more use out of them than you. - h2d2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Here's the URL to Adobe's product page (with a download link):
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/soundbooth/ - dannygutters, on 10/12/2007, -9/+0What a suprise, Adobe is a ***** development company.
- PueSi, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3Buy a PC with Windows XP and stop whining.
- dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3PPC Mac's are still used a lot, particularly in places with lots of them. Upgrading your single computer to the newer shinier one is fine, but upgrading hundreds/thousands of computers just because there's a newer version out is totally impractical, especially given the price of them.
*Most* software works fine on PPC's, since most software is Universal, or PPC only, there's very few Intel-only applications (Only others I know of are things like Parallels, which relies on the Intel CPU). Something like a sound-editing program that doesn't run on PPC is very unlikely to be picked up by most companies that'd use it, but Soundbooth seems more aimed at home/"independent" users anyway (As oposed to things like Pro Tools)
As for Photoshop not being intuitive, if your using Soundbooth, chances are you've used Photoshop at some point (Which is pretty likely, given how popular Photoshop is) - If you know how to use a parituclar program, and another is similar (UI, how certain tools work, keyboard/menu shortcuts etc), it should be far easier to pick up than a program with a totally different UI
"Photoshoping" the spectrogram is something I've always wanted to do in any application I've seen it in - But, Soundbooth is the first application I've seen that allows it.
Finally, DuggMirror link :
http://duggmirror.com/software/Adobe_Soundbooth_Beta_2_Now_Easier_More_Photoshop/
- Ben - nafisto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/soundbooth/ says:
Will there be a PowerPC version?
No. Apple is quickly moving its focus towards Intel Macs, and no longer sells Power PC systems in many places. By focusing on Apple's future, we have been able to bring this powerful application to the Mac platform much more rapidly, and with a stronger feature set.
Visit the Adobe Intel Mac FAQ for more information. - DjDimitrious, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@dbr onix:
Well, technically you remove the header of an audio file then open it up in photoshop :) That always creates interesting results. - codemonkey2841, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@unloud
AND Apple hasn't ceased support on the PPC Macs yet.
- natmaster, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33Photoshop is intuitive?
- krschuerman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Thank you, I thought I was the only one.
- BenDuffy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Nope, it is only intuitive once you are completely familliar with it...
- felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As an information architect, I'm constantly wincing to myself as clients confuse "intuitive" with "familiar."
- audiocollective, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1for real dude! maybe they are making this like the photoshop elements for adobe audition
- greymarketbrain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Actually Photoshop is incredibly intuitive, if you know a dark room or have PHOTO experience. It may just be me, but it's aimed a a specific group of people: Artists.
- AaronTyler, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2The title of this post would be 10x better if you wrote: "Adobe Soundbooth Beta 2: Now Easier, More Cowbell"
- natmaster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@greymarketbrain
Dark room technical experience != art
Please don't try to say it is.
- thejokell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14There's very little that is intuitive about Photoshop - put someone who's never used it before in front of it and they'll be clueless. The only reason people can call it intuitive is because they've learned the Photoshop system and that's how they expect all graphics applications to function.
- HFrankenstein, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Exactly. It's the same reason Windows users think OS X is unintuitive, same reason English speakers think Cantonese in unintuitive.
- noliberalbull, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Agree completely. On top of that, Adobe aquired a program that already is the best audio editor in its Audition program (previously Cool Edit Pro). Its simple, extremely powerful, fast, and, unfortunately for me, Windows only. If they would just port that to Mac, I would a happy man. Though I suppose that their goal in SoundBooth seems to be to compete with Soundtrack pro by incorporating video into the audio editing process.
- unixer, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3@ adrocknaphobia
Ya but Windows 3.1 is old Mac OS X on the other hand...- marksy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4yeah i think the original source (from syntrillium) was made for the intel architecture only
- serpicolugnut, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7This has been covered before. PowerPC is a dead architecture on the Mac, and Adobe couldn't justify the resources to make the app PowerPC compatible. This most likely stems from Adobe leveraging code from their Audition app, which is Intel only.
By the time this app hits the streets (officially), it will probably have been about a year since Apple stopped shipping PPC Macs.- Yarnage, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3@cacoe, stop your bitching. If they don't want to target the largest portion of Mac users, then who cares? Windows has a larger market share anyway and it runs on Windows just fine.
- kethraal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"By the time this app hits the streets (officially), it will probably have been about a year since Apple stopped shipping PPC Macs."
Regardless, I still think it's a stupid idea. Your above statement means that people with 1 year-old computers will not be able to run this app. That's dumb. There's no excuse for a company the size of Adobe to be incapable of making a UB. If they're using Xcode, which I believe they said they are, then it's literally as easy as adding another compile parameter to the build settings. Provided that their coders aren't complete idiots and that they write somewhat portable C/C++, then there should be little to no work required to make the app run on both archs -- there's no excuse for this other than laziness.
A lot of pros out there still have the big multi-G5 monsters from right before the Mac Pro's release (at least audio pros do - that's the field I work with - but I assume graphics pros are the same.) They're not going to run out and buy another Mac just because Adobe was too damn lazy to make their app run on 1 year-old machines -- so Adobe just won't get those prospective customers. Their loss really, since there are a variety of high-end audio apps for the Mac. - mikedaul, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0"Yea but they'll be LOTS of potential buyers that are still using their quad core g5's for example, that don't wanna upgrade for another year or two."
For some reason I bet that anyone who is using a quad g5 will be using more robust audio editing software,,,
- diatrevolo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2It doesn't run on PPC's because of some low-level optimization that is made for the x86 architecture. This is based off of old Cool Edit 2000 code, and creating a solid PPC port of this would require a rewrite of large parts of the code. Making a Universal app is as easy a checking the "Universal" checkbox in XCode...making a GOOD Universal app, however...
- kethraal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Perhaps. But I also doubt that Cool Edit 2000 is _so_ x86 bound that it's an infeasible task. Cool Edit 2000 was a windows app -- Adobe ported it to Mac OS. That itself means that they made significant changes to the codebase. I fail to see how it was economically acceptable to make a dual-OS codebase, but too much work to make sure it ran on the PowerPC platform...
- NorthStateGonzo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0What is the COST after the Free Trial.. Does anyone know?
- god4twenty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@NorthStateGonzo "What is the COST after the Free Trial.. Does anyone know?"
Beta software is just that- BETA not TRIAL. There is a difference.
- god4twenty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@NorthStateGonzo "What is the COST after the Free Trial.. Does anyone know?"
- kaffein, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I'm pretty content with Sound Forge 8.
- audiocollective, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2there is little need to upgrade from Cool Edit also... unless you need asio drivers
- alexvalentine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I haven't done a lot of sound editing in years, but its interesting to see that Adobe bought cool edit. I'm amazed how much consolidation is allowed in the software industry, especially with the Adobe + Macromedia merger. While there is certainly a lot of competition in the sound editing market, there are quite a few products (Photoshop/Illustrator/Acrobat) where Adobe has no serious competition.
- TheFornicator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Maybe it should answer the question of intuitiveness instead of pose it.
- fdelucio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Still no MP3 or AAC support.
Adobe: "Support for mp3 and AAC export is planned. We can't export to those in this public beta version because we'd have to pay a royalty for every copy that was downloaded. As you can imagine, that would add up pretty quickly"- kethraal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0So you export OGG Vorbis? Right? 'cuz you know, Adobe, that doesn't require royalties....
Seriously though, Adobe has the major pull necessary to launch OGG Vorbis into the pro world, and it would be trivial for them to tack on (since there are a variety of open source encoders for it, they wouldn't have to write their own.) - diggumjonez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Unfortunately, Soundbooth is not going to support Ogg/Vorbis in version 1.0, but is it definitely planned for subsequent releases. It may also be available for export via the Adobe Media Encoder, which most of the A/V apps share.
- kethraal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0So you export OGG Vorbis? Right? 'cuz you know, Adobe, that doesn't require royalties....
- UltimaNut, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Photoshop is intuitive?
- mcleaver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Come on, releasing a new software product now, one that will be sold for many years to come, it's hardly surprising they didn't focus on making it work on hardware that is no longer produced. Legacy hardware is not usually a priority for a new product.
- rabidsnail, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So Slow!
I tried running it on my 2.16Ghz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro and it took two minutes to start up and thirty seconds to shut down.
Also, it can't open MP3, flac, or ogg.
I think I'll stick with audacity.- zixxer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1hmm...it runs as fast as CS3 (VERY fast) on my core duo 2.0ghz mbp w/ 1.5gb ram....did you run it from the dmg or install it to apps?
edit: it took exactly 3 secs to go from closed to open. fast enough - noliberalbull, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Problem with Audacity is that it has to reconvert every time; you lose a generation of quality every time you export you final edit. RogueAmeoba came out wiht Fission recently which is lossless, but is not nearly as versitile in what it can do as Audacity.
- diggumjonez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@rabidsnail - the very first launch of the app will be significantly slower than subsequent launches as the app creates default preference files, media cache folders, and needs to scan and verify importers and effects.
- zixxer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1hmm...it runs as fast as CS3 (VERY fast) on my core duo 2.0ghz mbp w/ 1.5gb ram....did you run it from the dmg or install it to apps?
- CMoncur, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I'm surprised to see so many people stating that Photoshop is not intuitive!
Though I definitely agree that it takes a lot of time to learn about before you are capable of doing something, well, intuitive, what "Intuitive" program is there that has the capabilities of Photoshop, yet is so simple to use that anyone opening the program for the first time can create a masterpiece? - zixxer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1im trying the software right now and its not too bad..i dont know alot about sound editing, but i can easily do it in this
- qishi, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0If Photoshop isn't intuitive for you, maybe you should stop pirating it to make your MySpace graphics and look into doing something else with your life. Because you are an unmitigated retard. It reminds me of people who "tried OS X but just couldn't get anything done" or "couldn't get used to it". How stupid do you have to be for this to be the case?
- Paul, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1PS intuitive? BAH!
I can frequently bend it to my will but it is anything but intuitive. - zixxer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2to be honest, these are pro apps....so knowing how to use it is one thing, and knowing how to master it is another. for example...excel can do about anything. but you have to really know it to do all the neat embedded macros and crazy ass formulas. i am fairly impressed with adobe's new stuff as of late. acrobat 8 pro is nothing short of awesome IMHO. i use it all the time for about anything i possibly can (they did make it more intuitive than 7) CS3 photoshop isn't bad, but its alot faster than CS2. and this sound app is pretty cool too. i just tried out audacity for the first time too in comparison, and i think i would probably use it instead of this based on a price to performance comparison (adobe isn't going to be free and most likely will be very expensive, where audacity is free and has very comparable features, just not as slick interface) either way, i am definitely enjoying watch these new intel native/universal apps shape up
- kd5ftn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well, Soundbooth is an interesting beast. It's a single track editor with simple "tasks" and very basic effects. The noise reduction algorithm seems very good and the "healing brush" on the spectral display is pretty good. Other than that, I'm not sure who this product appeals to. Pros won't use it. Power users will stick to Audition (on the PC at least) and beginners will probably want to stick to something free like Audacity. The only market I can see for Soundbooth is Podcasters. Even then there's the lack of mp3 support (I understand it's a beta, but they could've thrown in LAME).
- mikedaul, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Trust me; power users don't use audition. For single track stereo editing wavelab and soundforge are typically the choices of the pros.
- kd5ftn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well, I guess by "power users" I'm referring to those who use Premiere for editing. As a film student I usually work in Final Cut and Pro Tools LE/HD. However, I always used to enjoy Cool Edit on the PC for simple tasks, so I can see possibly using Soundbooth for basic recording on my new mac.
- diggumjonez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Power users absolutely use Audition for editing and restoration work. Watch CNN anytime a new Al Qaeda tape is released and they do an interview with the Audio Forensics engineer at the CIA who verifies the person speaking on the tape. Invariably, there's a few screen shots of Audition as eye candy.
SoundForge died the day Sony took over.
- PRlME, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Look at all the power PC users get all offended over one joke... now they start to state the amount of people still using non intel chips.
but you can make "i'm a Mac and I'm a Pc Ads right. Pump Off. - diggydiggy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1here's the direct download link:
http://trials.adobe.com/pub/esd/labs/soundbooth/Adobe_Soundbooth_b2_121907.zip - teetow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The only thing that's "unique" about Soundbooth is the spectral editing mode, which is the "Next Big Thing" for destructive sound editing. Basically, they're gunning for the "LOL I has mikrafon!" crowd who want to clean up crappy recordings - as in, the Podcast People. Nothing wrong with that, if the price is right I'm sure they'll make decent sales.
Spectral Editing will be in all major destructive editors soon, Adobe just happened to be one of the earlier adopters. Good for them, but it won't make much of a splash with audio pros who already run Wavelab or Soundforge. - JuyLe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Looks good, but only on the paper, for now. They could create a really powerfull product, just like PS is, even if it's not intuitive for everybody, that is sure...
- kethraal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Unfortunately, Soundbooth is not going to support Ogg/Vorbis in version 1.0, but is it definitely planned for subsequent releases."
Sigh... one of the reasons, I don't believe their line about royalties stopping them from adding MP3. Vorbis is superior to MP3 in many ways, and requires no royalties -- yet Adobe hasn't added it. It would be laughably easy (make the encoder a plugin/module and GPL it. Wrap the reference encoder in a plugin -- that would take your coders all of what... a day?) -- and who knows, you might even get the support of the OSS community for pioneering a format like Vorbis into the mainstream market...- diggumjonez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@kethraal
[disclosure: i'm on the dev team for Soundbooth and Audition.] Audition supports Ogg/Vorbis as of version 2.0, primarily I'd like to think due to my whining. During the beginning of development on Soundbooth, a lot of professional flash and DV houses were consulted and asked how badly they wanted Ogg support. None rated it in their top feature requests. I personally wanted Ogg support in Soundbooth, for selfish reasons, but at what expense? It might take a coder all of a day to implement it into the build process, but it needs to be tested on several different versions of Windows, several versions of OS X, on multiple hardware platforms and with a wide variety of files and players. It adds up and the laughably easy single-day project is now taking up 5 or more days from a tight development schedule, for a feature that few of the target customers desired. Many were unaware of its existence, as well.
The folks this initial version of Soundbooth is aimed for tend to have very specific needs. This is not yet an audio application for everyone, but an audio application for visual designers who have no interest in becoming an audio engineer in addition to their other knowledge. Our goal is to slowly sneak these people into a better understanding of audio's place in multimedia, as it tends to be overlooked, and an afterthought in both production and budgeting. The fact that you understand and appreciate Ogg suggests to me that you would benefit from a more robust, in depth audio application in the first place and don't need the minimalism on the front-end that we've incorporated into Soundbooth.
- diggumjonez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@kethraal
- Coronagold, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0No vinyl, no peace!
If Adobe wants to jump-start a sound revolution they should look toward Japanese R&D and invest in nano-plastics.
In order for generations of the current bastard RIAA (or a more respectable sibling) to survive they'd have to break themselves away from the popular oligarchy of PC media manipulation (MP3 etc). They need to create a groundbreaking new hands-on media which on its own is creative, fully manipulative, and viably commercial, while at the same time portable to current PC & broadcast replay. Something similar to vinyl sounds like the toy to grab. Nano-plastics is the new vinyl.
To have heat or I/0 controls of "moving" plastic at the artist's & consumer's control would be curious to say the least. - SchizoDuckie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've downloaded and installed it yesterday and immediately threw it away... I'm going back to GoldWave 5.xx
* It doesn't even support MP3!!!?! Then what's there to edit?
* It's SLOW
* It's HUGE - divatri, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Perfect post! Nothing particular, but still interesting for me.
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