Re: Macintosh-based sound editing and analysis tools

["Susan F. Volman" <svolman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At  9:09 PM 7/12/94 -0700, Mark DeWitt wrote:
>My advisor, Benjamin Brinner, will be running a seminar this fall on
>ethnomusicological transcription, and would like any suggestions this
>group could offer for Macintosh-based tools to aid in musical
>transcription.  We already know of the MacRecorder program, which
>allows one to digitize sound, view and play soundfiles from disk, cut
>and paste sound segments, and (if I remember correctly) generate
>spectrograms that are too crude for use in musical analysis.  If you
>know more about MacRecorder or any other program from firsthand
>experience, we would appreciate any information you could offer.
>Other desirable features would include pitch tracking (for monophonic
>textures, of course), "tape-looping", finer-resolution spectrograms,
>and the ability to attach time-indexed annotations to a sound file.

The new version of the software that goes with MacRecorder, SoundEdit Pro,
actually makes pretty nice spectrograms -- much better than the old
SoundEdit did, and you can do more with them.  Another good Mac program for
spectrograms is Canary, obtainable from the Cornell Laboratory of
Ornithology.  There is a review in a recent issue of the journal
Bioacoustics.  Canary can import sound files from SoundEdit (not SoundEdit
Pro files, but this is easily solved by saving them in the other format),
AIFF files, and several other formats.  Canary has several analysis tools
and various options with which you can make the spectrograms look good on
the screen.  It costs $200.  Ph. 607 254-2408; e-mail canary@cornell.edu.

There are a lot of freeware and shareware sound programs at the various Mac
ftp sites.  Some of these are useful for converting files from other
sources.  As far as I know, none of them make spectrograms, but several
have editing features.

E-mail me if you want any further details.

Susan