Review: SoundSoap 2 from BIAS

 

The following review was recorded for the Mac Review Cast.  www.macreviewcast.com please visit their website, and subscribe to the podcast, it’s free.

SoundSoap is a professional-quality noise reduction software available for the Mac and Widnows.  It can be used as a stand-alone application, or as a real-time plugin for any software  compatible with Audio Units, RTAS, or VST plugins.  If you’re not sure what an Audio Unit plugin is, you actually have them installed on your computer and you’ll find them if you browse through the effects that come shipped with Garageband.

Any one that has purchased professional plugins for their software will know that they are not cheap, and also can be quite complex to learn.  SoundSoap is not only competitively priced, but extremely easy to use.  The User Guide included with the software is probably one of the easiest to understand, and offers workflow suggestions as well.

Alright, so we know what SoundSoap is, now why should you consider a noise reduction plugin.  Well, SoundSoap is for anyone who wants to remove unwanted hiss, room noise, rumble, electrical hum, clicks & crackles, and other background noise from almost any digital media file.  If you plan on converting your vinyl records to digital media, the click and crackle removal will help get better quality results.  SoundSoap was designed to clean up your noisy media quickly and easily.   Some people might get Noise reduction confused with a Noise Gate, which can also be used to control unwanted noise, but the thing to remember with noise gates is that, well, they’re gates.  They open and close.  There is a threshold you set usually in db that will keep the gate closed for any sounds below the selected threshold, and open the gate for any sounds above the threshold.  Of course there are other settings that some noise gates offer, but the basic function is the same, opening and closing.  SoundSoap is not a noise gate at all, it provides noise reduction by learning what frequency the noise is, and giving you the option to filter it out.

One of SoundSoap’s powerful feature is the “learn noise” function which automatically determines the noise contained in a file.  Suprisingly enough it only needs 2 seconds of the background noise to sample to set the Noise Tuner, and Noise Reduction knob automatically.  The Noise Tuner is the threshold, and the Noise Reduction is the amount of reduction applied to the frequencies filtered by the Noise Tuner.  Once noise has been filtered you have an option to listen to the filtered noise only, and adjust the Noise tuner and Reduction.  There are two sliders, one to eliminate clicks and crackles, and another slider labeled “enhance” which can be used to boost frequencies and tone to any degraded media files.

I record the podcast segment for the MacReview Cast using the SoundSoap plug-in with GarageBand, I turn Sound Soap off for a moment to show the difference.  Then I decided to record myself driving on the highway with the heater in my car turned up all the way, this would really put SoundSoap to the test.  Of course, most people don’t record under these conditions, but I thought it would fun to give it a shot. (Please forgive the overly excited Canadian accent)  The driving test is at the bottom of this post.

One more thing I’d like to mention is how it can be used with applications such as iMovie.  It can’t be used as a plugin, but there is a way to apply SoundSoap to the audio file of an iMovie project, without having iMovie running.  To find the audio file you need to right click on the iMovie project and “show the package contents” find the audio file, apply the settings, and replace the old file with the new one, making sure that the file has the exact same file name.  The step-by step instructions on how to do this are mentioned in the User Guide.  

Over all I was quite impressed with not only the plugin’s ability to filter out noise, but also it’s price point, and simplicity of use.  The cost for this plugin is $129 on it’s own, however it can also be purchased as part of a bundle with some of their other applications.  If this sounds like something you could use with your audio or video editing, head on over to their webstie at www.bias-inc.com and download a 14 day trial.  There are limitations to the trial software, but you should be able to put it to the test none the less.

 

 

 

 

   (5535 KB)
Listen on posterous

Posted via email from macintom

Mac Giving Tree: MacHeist Christmas give away and sale!

 

Mac Giving Tree.

 

 

 

OS X Update error: “…access privileges”

If you happen to get this error:

“You do not have appropriate access privileges”

Have no fear. It has happen to be twice now even though I am logged in to the administrative account on my Mac. If this happens head over to the Apple Downloads section of their site and download the “Combo Update” for the most recent build (for today it is the 10.5.6 Combo Update).

Mac OS X 10.5.6 Update Available

Click the “Apple” logo in the top left corner. Select “Software Update…” and then follow the instructions.

Sync your Address Book Contact Pictures with Facebook Profile Pics

Every Mac user has probably noticed that the Address Book application that ships with your Mac has the option to show an image for each contact card. This of course holds true to the contacts application on your iPhone or your iPod touch. Getting an image for every person in your Address Book could take you a while. However, if any of your contacts use Facebook, and of course if you do also, there is a simple and free way to get their profile picture in to your Address Book. Of course if it can get into your Address Book, it can get onto your iPhone or iPod touch when you sync with iTunes, or if you use MobileMe. The Application is called AddressBookSync and the developers name is Dan Auclair.

AddressBookSync is a Mac OS X appliation that does one thing, and does it well; and that is to download Facebook profile pictures to Address Book cards. The only thing that holds this application back, and by no fault of the developer, is if the name in the Address Book is different than the persons Facebook account it probably won’t present you with an option to download their picture. You have the option to narrow the search to Last names only and this will help if you have people for example with the name Tom Piraino on Facebook, but in your Address Card they are Thomas Piraino. Although this helps with some contacts, it creates problems with Facebook friends with the same last name, but have no worries, AddressBookSync will prompt you and ask whether the person on FaceBook should sync with the person in your AddressBook.

Each time the application runs it presents a window that shows you the current image in your AddressBook, and the persons image on FaceBook, that way you can see if it has changed and you can choose whether or not you’d like to update the picture in your AddressBook. If you do not want to sync the image you simply “uncheck” the box beside their name.

You can find AddressBookSync over at http://danauclair.com/addressbooksync

Recently Updated: Picasa Web Albums Uploaders

Picasa Web Albums Uploaders include a stand-alone application and an iPhoto exporter for uploading photos to a Picasa Web Albums account.

link: Download Here

Mobile Blogging – iPhone Photo Applications

These applications both perform functions that are easily done on your computer, but if you do any sort of mobile blogging, if you just want to polish up your pictures before sending them to someone, or before uploading to Flickr. You will want BOTH of these applications.

The first application is Photogene (mentioned before), and you can find it in the Appstore. The developer is Omer Shoor, and the application normally costs $4.99 but is currently on sale for $2.99. Photogene has been called PhotoShop on the iPhone, however I would consider it more like an iPhoto editor for the iPhone as it’s editing options are closer to iPhoto than they are to Photoshop. None the less it is very easy to use, and works really well. When you first launch the application you can chose to continue editing the last photo you were working on, or load a new image, which you can choose from the photo library on the iPhone. It doesn’t allow you to take a photo from within the application, but I don’t really find that necessary. Within the application you can crop the image, rotate the image, adjust the sharpness, saturation, temperature, colour, and add a frame. There are also 3 effect choices that I personally don’t use, and would prefer to see simpler options like sepia or black and white. For every editing option there is a reset option that will reset the editing option you are currently working on, there is also undo and redo buttons. When you are finished editing the photo you can save the image to your camera roll, and it does not overwrite the original image, it simply creates a duplicate, yet much nicer looking copy of the photo. If you use a Flickr account, the next application will be the next step.

Mobile Fotos by the developer XK72 Is a Flickr application for your iPhone. It allows you to view your photo sets, favorites, Flickr contacts, you can sort your images by tags and you can view the groups that you belong to. You can take photos directly from the application with your iPhone camera, or choose to upload photos already saved on your device. There is an option to search photos nearby using the iPhones built in GPS, there is a search page and my favorite the Explore page that pics random pics from Flickr. Now I wouldn’t exactly say they are random, all of the pics that show up in this page are very well done and appear very professional, so I think there might be a certain criteria met to get into this page. When you view a picture in the application you can then chose to add to favorites, save the photo to your camera roll, assign to a contact, open the image in Safari or share the photo to email, Twitter, or Pownce. The application is $2.99 in the Appstore, and it’s a perfect companion to the Photogene application. I highly recommend both of them.

WhatSize 10.4.4.1

I had mentioned WhatSize over a year ago and since then the interface has changed, the price has changed, but the value of the application is still as big as the files you hope to find and delete when using this application.

From the Developer:

WhatSize is shareware tool that allows the user to quickly measure the size in bytes of a given folder and all subfolders and files within it. You would be surprised at how many useless files might be laying around on your hard disks. The files and folders are automatically sorted by size, with the biggest sizes first.

While the app is measuring a folder the user can browse the files within that folder and immediately see the size in bytes. Hidden files, cache files, directories will all show up with their corresponding size.

Once the measuring of a folder has ended the user can also view the information by filtering for particular file sizes or types. The user can also move unwanted files and folders in the corresponding Trash bin similar to the Finder’s Delete button.

Developed in Cocoa, Objective-C, the application makes use of multithreading, low level UNIX file system APIs, C programming and Obj-C method implementation(IMP) caching to achieve speed, low memory footprint and stability, unmatched by other tools.

Use it for free to measure up to 20GB of data, or purchase a license for $12.99 to measure any volume, have access to the System Administrator functionality and support development of new features.

You can Download the application HERE, if you would like to purchase the application, keep in mind that it is part of the MacUpdate bundle which can be purchased by clicking on the link in the side bar.

Blogo – All in one Blogging and Microblogging Client

Being an on and off user of Mars Edit, I was really starting to get annoyed with the fact that I kept forgetting the Markup shortcuts I created for inserting html commands. The WordPress Dashboard interface has improved so much over the past year that I found it quicker to create posts on the site. My need for an offline/application editor is more of a want than a need, however the ability to create content in the absence of an internet connection is a huge bonus. I just found out about BLOGO.

Blogo allows you to Easily publish text, images, videos, slideshows and more. With a simple, intuitive interface and support for WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Typo, MovableType, Drupal, and Expression Engine, Blogo is the best way to maintain your blog and spread the word with Twitter, Ping.fm and other supported services.

Posting to WordPress with Blogo is simple, you can utilize your categories, create keyword tags, preview the post, and easily create links. You can import or drag and drop images, crop them resize and upload to WordPress easily. Another interesting feature within the editing window is the option to edit in “full screen”. This is a nice way to block out all other windows and help you focus on the post you are writing. You can even choose to have your Twitter status updated to say you’ve created a new blog post.

It is not only a fantastic Blogging client for my macintomblog, it is a pretty impressive Twitter client. While I’m typing a blog entry I can use the “command 1” keyboard shortcut to open the “Microblog Viewer” which is a Twitter window used for viewing the timeline. You can select to view friends, followers, replies, direct messages, your own tweets, and even a search! Using Blogo to post to Twitter is also feature full with an option to shorten a url using a selection of services (selected using a drop down menu)

Compared to MarsEdit and Ecto, it has a much simpler and easy to use layout, it is full of features, and has Growl integration to top it off. Don’t just take my word for it, download BLOGO and try it free for 21 days. If you like it, you can purchase it for $25.

MacUpdate Promo Bundle

If you haven’t taken of a MacUpdate Bundle before, you are truly missing out.  I’ve passed on some of the bundles in the past, and I truly regret it.  Sometimes you may not even think you need one of the apps, and by the time you realize you could use it, you’re paying DOUBLE the price for only one application instead of getting a bundle of applications. The thing to remember about bundles is not to think whether or not you could use all of the applications.  You’re better off to figure out which applications you would like, and figure out how much money you would SAVE by purchasing the bundle over the individual application.  In this current bundle I already had one of the applications (Rapid Weaver by Realmac Software), and I paid full price for it back when it was a little bit cheaper.  Now it runs over $100 CAD, and you get it as part of this bundle which is $49!!!   So what are the  applications come in this bundle:

 

	Drive Genius 2.1: Optimize/repair/test/resize and clean up your Mac’s drives.
	RapidWeaver 4.2.1: Create template-based websites rapidly.
	Default Folder X 4.1: Enhances Save and Open dialog boxes.
	VirusBarrier X5 10.5.5: Kill the latest viruses.
	MacGourmet Deluxe 1.0.5: Easily create, build, and share your recipe collection.
	Little Snitch 2.0.4: Alerts you to outgoing network connections.
	iVolume 3.1.4: Improves the built-in ‘Sound Check’ function of iTunes.
	KeyCue 4.3: Displays all menu shortcut commands.
	MacPilot 3.2.1: Enable over 700 hidden features in Mac OS X & other apps.
	WhatSize 4.4.1: Helps find out what files are taking up all your HD space.
	iDive 1.8.8: Digital video shoebox to organize, view and search tapes.

SIDE NOTE:  As great of an application Drive Genius is, I must give a word of  caution: USE THE DEFRAGMENTATION OPTION AT YOUR OWN RISK – my Father-in-Law had to restore from his Time Machine backup, and this seems to be a common occurance if you do a Google search.  I’ve never found a need to defragment my mac, that truly is a Windows thing.  Simply Repairing Disk Permissions and running Maintenance Scripts are good enough.  Maybe cleaning your Caches’ once in a while.  Other than that little issue, it is a very powerful application with many features and one of the most amazing user interfaces I’ve seen in a Mac application.