Apr 1, 2010
Posted by admin on Apr 1, 2010 in Audio, Desktop Software | 0 comments
Finding a good audio editing software is about as hard as finding a good bank. There are a kazillion out there, they all have some features, some meet your needs more than others, and of course they all claim to be the best. Some have certain requirements if you want to take advantage of certain features (a bit like Operating Systems), some demand a monthly fee (licensing?), while others are free. Of course there are always going to be those that have all the features, demand monthly fees, and still suck (like Bank of America – sorry, I couldn’t help it). All things considered, the goal is to find the one that services you best for your specific needs.
In this post, I’m going to start with my preferred applications and then I’ll discuss some of the pros & cons of more advanced audio recording and editing software on the market. I’ll also be mentioning different kinds software licensing standards that are often confusing to many people. To learn more about the differences between licensing terms such as freeware, shareware, Open Source, and others, please see this fine compilation of terms.
Audacity
(http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)
Audacity is an intuitive audio recording and editing application for Mac, Windows, Linux, BSD, and just about any other operating system out there. Best of all, it’s a Free and Open Source software.
If you’re a pro audio engineer, recording, or remix artist, you’re probably not going to go for a free recording/editing software. However, for the rest of the world, Audacity delivers great results for a simply unbeatable price. The following are some of the key features:
- Record live, multi-track audio or overdub existing tracks with an unlimited number of tracks.
- Convert tapes, records, or any outside source into digital recordings or CDs
- Import/Export/Edit Ogg Vorbis (OGG), MP3, AIFF, WAV, and other sound files
- Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together
- Change the tempo of a recording with out affecting the pitch
- Recording/editing quality of 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit
- Supports many Open and proprietary plugins, including VST
- Noise reduction/filtering
- And much, much more!
Visit Audacity’s site for more info or to see a complete list of features)
If you’re interested in seeing what many of the pros use, the following have stood the test of time and continue to be industry leaders:
Pro Tools
(Digidesign) 
The undisputed champion and perhaps the oldest of professional digital audio recording software. Pro Tools has been the known standard for many years and it’s user base spans from recording garage bands to producing elaborate movie scores, and everything in between.
Reason
(Propellerhead) 
Hailing from the early days of techno, Reason quickly matured into an awesome all-in-one studio emulation complete with synthesizers, samplers, drum machine, looping tools, mastering & mixing tools, vocoder, effects, pattern sequencer and tons more. Perhaps one of the most unique features is the authentic simulation of real rack-mount hardware and the ability to add as many components as you want. Propellerhead’s first product release was ReCycle, a sample loop editor launched and marketed in conjunction with Steinberg’s Cubase.
Cubase
(Steinburg) 
Cubase is a well-refined all-in-one digital audio production environment with over 25 years of development backing it, and boasts being “probably the most feature-rich MIDI sequencing toolset in the audio industry today. The most recent version (Cubase 5) includes advanced features for creating beats and loop editing, undoubtably to cater to the explosion of remixing and mashups.
Finale
(MakeMusic) 
Finale was one of the first, and is still regarded by many as one of the industry standards for notation software. In short, Finale takes a piece of music that you’ve played into your computer, and then transcribes it into sheet music.
There are many others, and new competitors pop up all the time. Feel free to comment and/or share your thoughts on great audio editing software.
Mar 29, 2010
Posted by admin on Mar 29, 2010 in Desktop Software, HTML & CSS, Intellectual Property, Legal, Products, Random Stuff, Web Applications, Web Design, Web Development | 0 comments
As defined on wikipedia.org,
A software license (or software licence in commonwealth usage) is a legal instrument (by way of contract law) governing the usage or redistribution of software. All software is copyright protected, irrespective of whether it is in the public domain. Contractual confidentiality is another way of protecting software. A typical software license grants an end-user permission to use one or more copies of software in ways where such a use would otherwise constitute copyright infringement of the software owner’s exclusive rights under copyright law.
The following are a few different kinds of software licensing terms that are commonly used. All of the information in this post has been extracted directly from Wikipedia and the content has not been modified. For the sake of keeping things clean & simple, however, Wikipedia’s internal links have been removed.
Proprietary Software:
The hallmark of proprietary software licenses is that the software publisher grants a license to use one or more copies of software, but that ownership of those copies remains with the software publisher (hence use of the term “proprietary”). One consequence of this feature of proprietary software licenses is that virtually all rights regarding the software are reserved by the software publisher. Only a very limited set of well-defined rights are conceded to the end-user. Therefore, it is typical of proprietary software license agreements to include many terms which specifically prohibit certain uses of the software, often including uses which would otherwise be allowed under copyright law.
One example of such a proprietary software license is the license for Microsoft Windows. As is usually the case with proprietary software licenses, this license contains an extensive list of activities which are restricted, such as: reverse engineering, simultaneous use of the software by multiple users, and publication of benchmarks or performance tests.
Free and Open Source Software
(also known as F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS)
Newcomers to the subject can be confused by the term “free”. In the context of free and open source software, “free” is intended to refer to the freedom to copy and re-use the software, rather than to the price of the software. The Free Software Foundation, an organization that advocates for free software, suggests that to understand the concept, one should “think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer”.
Free and open source software is an inclusive term which covers both free software and open source software which, despite describing similar development models, have differing cultures and philosophies. Free software focuses on the philosophical freedoms it gives to users while open source focuses on the perceived strengths of its peer-to-peer development model. FOSS is a term that can be used without particular bias towards either political approach.
Free Software:
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and that manufacturers of consumer-facing hardware allow user modifications to their hardware. Free software is generally available without charge, but can have a fee.
Open Source Software:
The term open-source software originated as part of a marketing campaign for Free Software. A report by Standish Group states that adoption of open-source software models has resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year to consumers.
Open-Source Software (OSS) is computer software that is available in source code form for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software. Open source licenses often meet the requirements of the Open Source Definition. Some open source software is available within the public domain. Open source software is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open-source software is the most prominent example of open-source development and often compared to user-generated content.
