Finally a SoundEdit 16 Replacement?
I’m a huge fan of an ancient software program called SoundEdit 16. This was/is on old Mac (pre-oS X) application that made sound editing easy. It was both powerful and simple. Everything else in the field was either very expensive, overly complex, or missing some ease-of-use features. Over the years I have tried many sound editing apps, sometimes converting over to one like Peak or Audacity for a few months, only to return to running SoundEdit 16 in Classic mode. The appeal is simple: I can open, edit, convert or record a sound for a Director or Flash movie in less than a minute. It just works.
But, knowing that SoundEdit is a dead program that dies a little each day as Mac Classic slips further into the past, I am always looking for a new app to replace it.
Recently, I’ve heard some buzz about SoundTrack Pro from Apple. This is the update to the old SoundTrack program that Apple seemed to replace with GarageBand. I owned SoundTrack, and used it for one project before GarageBand came out and replaced it for me. But both of these are more about music than sound files. However, the new SoundTrack Pro seems to have a lot of potential as a sound editing program for the Mac that is reasonable ($299), powerful, and Mac-simple. Anyway, the problem now seems to be waiting for a stable version. My friend Jay Shaffer has a review at
Mac Audio Guy: The Mac Audio Resource, dated July 14.
Perhaps I’ll try the next version of SoundTrack when it comes out.