What are the best sound editors, plug-ins, and effects creator programs for make great sound effects? thnx

Cool
Edit 2000
SoundForge
and
WaveLab
are pretty much the big 3 editing programs. There are some freebies and very simple cheap shareware editors at www.hitsquad.com , but for $69 Cool Edit 2000 really is tough to beat for a cheap one. If you want to layer sounds to come up with your effects, Cool Edit Pro 2.0 is an editor and a multi-track program – but it’s more expensive than Cool Edit 2000. Wavelab kind of does multi-track in what they call a 'Montage' but its not really a full multi-track either, but it is a very good editor - just maybe more complex (and expensive) than most people would need.   As for plug-ins you can check out www.thedirectxfiles.com.  Not all are free there, but some are - and there's lots of demo versions.

http://www.sonicfarms.com





[edited by - Sonic Lamb on September 11, 2002 9:09:07 PM]

thanks sonic lamb!

Another great program is the Acid Pro series, its great for creating background music, and its rather cheap, and royalty free. A user just cuts and pastes samples onto a track, and then the music can be saved in several formats, including midi, wav, and Mp3

Don''t forget the lowly, yet useful, Goldwave. www.godlwave.com

What''s WaveLab all about?

I''m not making sound effects, just composing MIDI, but I use Magix Music/Midi Studio Generation 6. I love the matrix editor -- makes things sooo much easier to arrange.

Mike Snyder
Prowler Productions

Ahhh...SA-Magic, how could I forget Goldwave - its been around for a while too. It’s also a very good editor.

As to WaveLab, it’s a digital audio editor by Steinberg. A lot of people use it mostly for its mastering capabilities, but as an editor it does a lot. I think its pretty expensive though (it lists for about $600.00 US) If you click on the link in my above post it will take you to the Steinberg site and you can read all about it.


www.sonicfarms.com

I agree with Sonic Lamb and Dede that sound forge & pro tools series are just great for low budget sound designing. But for example Wavelab is still bit unstable on Macs, Edit 2000 (too simple and not enough punch to do some wicked stuff), Cool Edit (same thing as with Edit 2000).

What I recommend to get (if the money isn''t obsticle), is a Pro Tools system (DIGI002 is good enough) and buy some TDM-plugins to it. When you buy Digi002 box, you''ll get Digidesign own software with it (LE). This soft is just great for sound designing and creating full compatible songs. And TDM-plugins are actually a hardware synthesizer cards, what are as good as the manufactors synthesizers, but they don''t contain the outer layer with keyboard. With these you''ll be able to work continuesly all the time (in symbios) with Pro Tools system, so
this means that you can make some great sounds just with the synth card and after that edit it in Pro Tools soft.

Also there is still other sound design system what''ll blow most other softwares to the sky, is Kyma System. This is just wicked sound design system. You''ll be able to design completely new (never before heard sounds) from scratch! You''ll be able to do anything to sound and twist it to any direction with this one.
The only minus is that this system is frickin expensive - about 3300$ + expansion cards 595$/per card (I paid a lot to get it, but it has already paid back with debts). So if you got the cash, I suggest that you''ll go to Kyma system (www.symbolicsound.com)

Otherwise Sound Forge and Acid Pro series are just great for not so serious (pro) sound designing.

Well if you just need software to edit material you already have recorded then you can pickup protools free software off their website. I like pro tools best because of the fading/crossfading system. When you get to creating loopable sfx it's a godsend! As far as plugins go, it comes with the basic eqs, compressors and reverb that are really needed to create solid production.

Jesus Laven 3300.00 for Kyma. When I start selling organs to pick that up I might as well get a Sonic Solutions DAW too! LOL

Speaking of Sonic Solutions, who the hell uses that system, it's like the great white of digital audio! I've never even seen it in use.

[edited by - Drakar on September 18, 2002 8:41:41 PM]

[edited by - Drakar on September 18, 2002 8:44:50 PM]