Best tool for amateur podcast editing

[nachenko]

Hi everyone.

I'm preparing a workshop on podcast editing, and I'm facing a problem.

The problem is: most people use Audacity, but I don't think it cuts it. It's okay for recording and cutting audio files, but anything beyond that: EQing, leveling dynamics, applying noise gates, etc is a total no no. Not offering non destructive editing on 2019 is just unacceptable.

If it was for me, that would not be a problem. I'd just throw the audio tracks in FLStudio and do my thing. But this is for people who just want to do basic editing at a very low cost, and I find most DAWs overwhelming for my audience.

I considered Tracktion 7, strong candidate, but the initial Wizard is unnecessarily complicated, and I know nothing about Pro Tools First and Presonus Studio One Free. I opened Ardour website but when I saw that promo image with that super cluttered interface, I just closed that tab. Ableton Live has the most streamlined interface, actually, but 80€ for a Intro license is just too much for people who just want to do very basic editing and adjustments.

There seems to be nothing between Audacity and a fully charged DAW, but I keep looking, and I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks.

[Tj Shredder]

I feel with you, after Sounddesigner was discontinued I was using Peak. Since that was discontinued I am still looking for a replacement. Wavelab LE comes sometimes with a magazin, but I don‘t like it so much as I dislike Audacity as you do. I do use Ardour for those tasks most of the time, but for a beginners workshop its a bit overkill...
Recently using also Izotope RX elements, but only if restauration is involved...
There is a market gap...

[liv]

Twisted wave.
https://twistedwave.com/mac

Amadeus.
https://www.hairersoft.com/pro.html

Wavelab Elements.
https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/w ... ments.html

[jochicago]

I agree with you, compared to a DAW, Audacity doesn't even rank. DAWs make the process smoother and the sound results are better and easier to achieve.

I use Tracktion and Studio One.
Of those 2, Studio One Pro is by a distance the better DAW. But for your specific purposes I would recommend Tracktion 7.

T7 is free. No limitations, you get the full version. This means you can add VST plugins, which will most likely come in very handy if you want to recommend solid free plugins to your students. I believe the free S1 doesn't allow external plugins.

In terms of workflow, T7 is a bit easier, more streamlined to get going. Overall it is easier to learn with a few intro videos, easy to use for simple needs. if you are working with 8 tracks or less and only use a handful of external plugins, T7 will interrupt your workflow less and feel more in tune with what you are doing.

Cons:
The built-in effects are decent at best. Any serious work requires incorporating external plugins, which thankfully can be easy and free. However, T7 overall suffers of more plugin incompatibility, particularly with commercial plugins.
On my system, T7 is unstable (Win 10, Ryzen 7 CPU). I can crash it pretty easily, so it is important to save work all the time. Your mileage may vary as I've talked to people that don't crash T7.


I personally recommend T7 to anyone that needs to get started doing functional audio editing or trying to adopt a DAW. And anything learned working on T7 will transfer nicely if the person decides eventually to upgrade to something more robust like S1, Cubase, Cakewalk, etc.

BTW, I believe there's also a free version of Cakewalk, so that would be fully featured as well, but probably much harder to adopt and learn than T7.

[ztrauq]

I was working on something similar for programmers at a new community radio station, and compiled a write-up and links discussing a number of audio editors and DAWs for free/cheap. You might find it helpful:

https://ksqd.org/programmer-audio-guide/

[nachenko]

Thanks everyone for their responses. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time researching this. Many of your suggestions are awesome, but for newbies, most of them are just scary.

Thans ztrauq for that link, good info there.

I agree with you, compared to a DAW, Audacity doesn't even rank. DAWs make the process smoother and the sound results are better and easier to achieve.

I've had crashes with Audacity, and even the initial setup for Tracktion 7 was time consuming and made no sense for me. Also, those stability problems jochicago mentions make me reconsider Tracktion. I had a look at ProTools First, and while I appreciate AVID effort to offer a simple entry point to this technology, this wording: "sends", "inserts", "returns", etc... is complicated. I know they are just using the technical vocabulary that is industry standard, but we're talking about teaching people how to edit their poscasts, not full music production.

So far, I can't find anything more simple /streamlined than Ableton Live Intro. It's not free, but second hand licenses are quite cheap here. Maybe I should go this way.

I sometimes feel like Ableton and Native instruments are the only companies that hire real UX designers for their R&D. The rest of them just hire Photoshop nerds.

[yellowmix]

You can demo Reaper for 60 days, it's fully-functional even after that.

You don't need to learn about sends and returns but you should know inserts. That's how you apply FX directly on a track. A lot of your work is going to involve cutting and trimming audio, so you'll want to know how to "ripple edit" so all other assets move when you delete dead air or whatever.

You'll want to use a compressor to even out the volume, possibly a gate to kill background noise, an EQ to sweeten your voice, and perhaps a very short reverb to give it presence. Those would all be insert FX.

Once you get the hang of it you'll be adding music on another track and sidechaining it so it ducks (lowers in volume) when you talk (you're going to need to learn about sends at this point). No software is going to hand hold you through this. But fortunately there are tutorials on YouTube (that you can search for once you know the industry standard terms). And once you learn the concepts they apply to pretty much any DAW.

[mgw38]

You might want to also check out Hindenburg:

https://hindenburg.com

It is essentially a DAW that is targeted at radio and podcast production. They have ridiculous sales once in a while. I remember picking up Hindenburg Journalist for $2 or so.

[Saffran]

Another alternative. Open Broadcaster Software - https://obsproject.com