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Soundprobe 2

You can do it when you Soundprobe 2 it

Digital audio editors are always vast and powerful pieces of software which contain dozens, even hundreds,
of precision tools. With this power and precision comes an unavoidable complexity for anyone who is not
an experienced sound engineer.
Newcomers can often find it difficult to see the woods for the trees, so if you are new to the world of digital
audio we hope you find the following summary useful; it points out some of the main applications for
Soundprobe 2, as told to us by people who are actually using Soundprobe 2.

Restoring audio tracks to their original condition or better

Vinyl restoration, where you want to remove scratches or rumble
or generally improve the clarity of a recording.
Tape restoration, where you want to remove hiss and enhance lost
high frequencies, remove crackles and glitches, or perhaps remove
bad sections that are damaged and replace them with similar
sounding sections.
CD restoration. When a CD has been badly scratched, most CD
players will repeat sections of a track; these will need to be removed
and possibly replaced. Another type of CD error which can be
corrected with Soundprobe 2 is single sample jumps in which the
data stream is broken with small clicks.
MP3 restoration. As audio becomes more widely used in MP3
format to enable access and downloads over the web, more people are using damaged audio and need
to restore the data which the lossy MP3 encoding has destroyed. Nasty whistles caused by low bitrates can be removed by filtering, and high frequency content (such as hi-hats, for example) can be
resynthesized.

Removing vocals for karaoke or to enhance the backing track

Vocal removing is a process used in the main to create karaoke
tracks, however it can also be used for remixing when you are not
able to obtain the separate tracks of the original recording. This
could also be used in reverse; by removing the vocals you can then
use the restored backing sound to enhance or retain only the vocals.

Recording to prepare for CD or internet radio broadcast

Recording from DAT or other audio sources, maybe from
live recordings that you want to edit digitally or convert to
MP3 or put onto a CD. This is used mainly for web radio
where audio is taken (perhaps recorded live into
Soundprobe), edited, effects added and then compressed as
MP3 to stream over the web.

Editing to remove unwanted noises or to precisely align the timing

Editing can take many forms. One reason to edit is to prepare
an audio track for a video. You might want to remove
unwanted sounds - babies crying, dogs barking, any other
background noises or clippings and distortions... And you
might want to edit the audio to change the timing of events,
to add ambience through reverb/echo, to create special effects,
to fade sections in and out sections. You might even want to
remove foreground sounds, or include additional sounds, or
to mix sounds and align timing events - to remix tracks to
suit a particular need, such as adding a piece of music to a
video clip, the timing and fades will need to be precisely
aligned.

Converting from MP3 to repair damage and enhance quality

As mentioned above in Restortation, when you want to
convert damaged MP3 audio into a usable format such as
WAV, or in preparation for burning on to CD, the quality
of the audio in an MP3 file can be enhanced by using various
effects within Soundprobe 2 (presets are available).

Sound forensics to analyse and clean up poorly recorded audio

Sound forensics and analysis can be performed in using a
combination of statistics, graphical views, region matching, making
Soundprobe 2 a powerful tool for analysing and cleaning up bad
audio for analysis.

Special effects to add your personal touch to vocals or music

Effects processing of tracks for mixing and remixing can be done
directly within Soundprobe 2. An example might be to take the
vocals from a mix, apply fades, pitch changes, vocoding, chorus,
reverb, echo, flanging, resonance, EQ or distortion, to give the
final vocals. Similar processing can be done with any section of the
final mix to give the types of effects heard in most popular music
and dance music which are normally only available with expensive
equipment.

Realtime processing for live performaces or to try out effects

Use Soundprobe 2s realtime and preview processing to turn your
PC into a realtime effects system. With the modeless effects, and
especially with chaining, effects can be quickly swapped or turned
on and off during preview and realtime, providing you with features
normally only available with expensive equipment.

Voice-overs to change voices or edit out coughs and splutters

Voice-overs for radio, web and video adverts. You might want
to change the pitch to create new voice styles, add robotic
sound qualities to a voice, vocode a voice with a musical
instrument, make formant changes, add reverb or simply
edit to remove unwanted sections.

Multimedia to create sounds for games, videos or the internet

Sounds for video, websites and games. Add effects to create
new sounds, such as turning a voice into an alien for a game,
or a band into a reverberating explosion for a web or video
clip. The possible uses are endless; if you can think it,
Soundprobe 2 can do it.

HiSOFT, The Old School

Greenfield, Bedford, MK45 5DE
tel +44 (0)1525 718181
fax +44 (0)1525 713716
email customerservice@soundprobe.com
web www.soundprobe.com