Although I am pretty handy with applications and hardware, I know very
little about audio editing. For my church I am looking to build a
system ideal for editing lots of audio, as well as learning to do the
work as I go. What would be the bare minimum and the ultimate system
to have for this? Which little things do I want to make sure I don't
overlook that may not be obvious to a newbie? Recommend any powerful
software that is also ideal for learning?

We ultimately are looking to clean up sermons and create nice CD's and
presentations with the audio. I should also add that once this is
conquered we will probably try to tackle SOME video editing (which I
know just enough about to be dangerous). Any insight or suggestions
(no matter from what angle they come) would be greatly appreciated.

TIA,
J. Roberts

Subject: Newbie questions
From: (J. Roberts) wrote
For my church I am looking to build a system ideal for editing lots of audio,
as well as learning to do the work as I go.

This sounds like an accident just waiting to happen.

What would be the bare minimum and the ultimate system
to have for this?

Minimum and ultimate???????

Which little things do I want to make sure I don't
overlook that may not be obvious to a newbie? Recommend any powerful software
that is also ideal for learning?

Tell me what you know about the big things first, I bet your all wrong about
them to (sorry to be blunt here).

We ultimately are looking to clean up sermons and create nice CD's and
presentations with the audio.

Whats wrong with what you have now? What do you have now? What sort of projects
are we talking about?

I should also add that once this is conquered we will probably try to tackle
SOME video editing (which I know just enough about to be dangerous). Any
insight or suggestions (no matter from what angle they come) would be greatly
appreciated.

Here at "Record Audio Pro" all of the regular posters are pros and do this sort
of thing with "Pro" (expensive) equipment, knowledge (education and or
experience) and of a business nature. All of this takes years of research, deep
pockets and time spent getting to know your gear. There is some extent of
talent to (if your talking about music as well) and if you want to talk about
video you need to expand all of what I've just told you by three or four fold.
I'm not trying to talk you out of anything here just let you know what your
going to be up against. There are some cheap easy ways to do what you want to
do but that will still requirer some time and cash to accomplish. Why don't you
talk to some people at a studio/AV company in your area first...face to face.
Then you will be able to see what they have there first hand.

check out sonic foundry, they have some great products.
www.sonicfoundry.com

Jon Waite
JB Productions

J. Roberts wrote:
Although I am pretty handy with applications and hardware, I know very
little about audio editing. For my church I am looking to build a
system ideal for editing lots of audio, as well as learning to do the
work as I go. What would be the bare minimum and the ultimate system
to have for this? Which little things do I want to make sure I don't
overlook that may not be obvious to a newbie? Recommend any powerful
software that is also ideal for learning?

We ultimately are looking to clean up sermons and create nice CD's and
presentations with the audio. I should also add that once this is
conquered we will probably try to tackle SOME video editing (which I
know just enough about to be dangerous). Any insight or suggestions
(no matter from what angle they come) would be greatly appreciated.

TIA,
J. Roberts

In article writes:

Although I am pretty handy with applications and hardware, I know very
little about audio editing. For my church I am looking to build a
system ideal for editing lots of audio, as well as learning to do the
work as I go. What would be the bare minimum and the ultimate system
to have for this?

The bare minimum would be the oldest Pentium you can find, a copy of
Windows 95, whatever sound card comes with the computer, a pair of
powered computer style speakers, and a copy of Fast Edit from
Minnetonka Software.

The ultimate would be the same with a faster CPU, a better sound card
(I like the Lynx One for this sort of application) and some better
speakers, maybe NHT M00's.

Editing doesn't require a lot of computer horsepower, though the
"oldest Pentium you can find" will probably have something like a 2 GB
hard drive in it, and you'll want to keep at least 20 GB on hand, plus
you'll probably want a CD writer to off-load your edited projects.

As far as learning how to edit, it's pretty intuitive but you just
have to do it. The reason why I recommend Fast Edit ($300, which seems
expensive compared to some of the freeware or cheapware) is because
it's fast and it makes a lot more sense to someone who thinks about
editing like we used to do it with tape. I find it to be far more
intuitive than using a "linear" 2-track program such as Sound Forge or
a multitrack program such as Cool Edit Pro. But you can download demos
of any of these programs and buy the one that makes most sense to you.

I should also add that once this is
conquered we will probably try to tackle SOME video editing (which I
know just enough about to be dangerous).

That's a whole other can of worms. Vegas Video seems to be pretty
popular for casual video editing, but video takes a lot more computer
horsepower than simple audio work.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1058286672k@trad...

the
"oldest Pentium you can find" will probably have something like a 2 GB
hard drive in it.

Naaah...
The oldest pentiums have something like maybe 540MB.

Sander

"J. Roberts" wrote in message
m...
Although I am pretty handy with applications and hardware, I know very
little about audio editing. For my church I am looking to build a
system ideal for editing lots of audio, as well as learning to do the
work as I go. What would be the bare minimum and the ultimate system
to have for this? Which little things do I want to make sure I don't
overlook that may not be obvious to a newbie? Recommend any powerful
software that is also ideal for learning?

We ultimately are looking to clean up sermons and create nice CD's and
presentations with the audio. I should also add that once this is
conquered we will probably try to tackle SOME video editing (which I
know just enough about to be dangerous). Any insight or suggestions
(no matter from what angle they come) would be greatly appreciated.

I suggest Sonic Founry products. And...I don't usually do this in this
newsgroup...but since you're in need: I'm currently auctioning off my older
versions on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tegory=41 786

In article gAXQa.16712$KF1.303384@amstwist00 writes:

Naaah...
The oldest pentiums have something like maybe 540MB.

I thought I had the oldest Pentium around and it originally had a
4 GB drive, but I bought it expressly for audio. At the time, most
everyone was getting 233 MHz with a 1 GB drive, but I splurged and got
a 266. Still using it, but now it has a 20 GB drive, but still only
64 MB of RAM.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

"J. Roberts" wrote in message
m

Although I am pretty handy with applications and hardware, I know very
little about audio editing. For my church I am looking to build a
system ideal for editing lots of audio, as well as learning to do the
work as I go. What would be the bare minimum and the ultimate system
to have for this? Which little things do I want to make sure I don't
overlook that may not be obvious to a newbie? Recommend any powerful
software that is also ideal for learning?

Funny you should mention this. I'm working on exactly the same thing.

What we've got is a nasty highly reverberant room with a bad slap echo off
the back wall and musicians who are in love with all the cover all this
reverberence gives them for lightly-practiced singing and playing.

We ultimately are looking to clean up sermons and create nice CD's and
presentations with the audio.

IME getting a clean audio recording from the sermons should be a slam dunk
as your basic SR system should do nothing if not a good job of picking up
clean voice from a single speaker. We use a Shure wireless mic for the
pastor and a Crown 300-series podium mic for other speakers.

Music is more complex. More sources, more active mics, more editing, more
careful mixing.

My system for doing music is a PC running CoolEdit Pro recording at 32 bits
via a Layla-20 patched into selected inserts on our Mackie SR-32 console. I
record with lots of headroom and do the editing and mixing later on. My
basic procedure is described in this post:

http://www.google.com/groups?selm=-a...%40comcast.com

I should also add that once this is
conquered we will probably try to tackle SOME video editing (which I
know just enough about to be dangerous).

Still in my future.

Raymond wrote:

Here at "Record Audio Pro" all of the regular posters are pros and do this sort
of thing with "Pro" (expensive) equipment, knowledge (education and or
experience) and of a business nature.

I agree about the "audio" part, but "rec" stands for "usenet
recreational newsgroups", and "pro" stands for "production" or maybe
"professional", depending on who you ask.


Don

In article gAXQa.16712$KF1.303384@amstwist00
writes:

Naaah...
The oldest pentiums have something like maybe 540MB.

Mike wrote
I thought I had the oldest Pentium around and it originally had a
4 GB drive, but I bought it expressly for audio. At the time, most
everyone was getting 233 MHz with a 1 GB drive, but I splurged and got a 266.
Still using it, but now it has a 20 GB drive, but still only
64 MB of RAM

Mike is closer on this one, I had (it died 4 or 5 years ago) one of the first
Pentium chips in an HP Pavilion (the first one of these to). I got it before I
went to college in 1996 I'm sure it was new in 1995. It had about 150 Mhz speed
and 32 Megs of RAM, the hard drive was about 4 gigs.
Mike made do with what he could get at that time (he is a pro at this recording
thing) but I would not use something like this for serious audio recording.
Even if it still worked (maybe not for long) IMHO it may be to slow for today's
"pro" editing/processing.

In article writes:

Mike made do with what he could get at that time (he is a pro at this recording
thing)

Maybe a little, but I'm not a pro at this computer stuff.

but I would not use something like this for serious audio recording.
Even if it still worked (maybe not for long) IMHO it may be to slow for today's
"pro" editing/processing.

I'll admit that I wouldn't go out of my way to buy a 200 MHz Pentium today,
particularly when I can get 400 MHz Pentiums for about $50 at the used
computer store down the road, however, I'm still using it for audio. I
use the same software that I used when the computer was new (it worked
then, and it works just as well now) and I don't care to add functions
to the computer that I don't need or that I can perform with outboard
equipment.

But I did suggest to the person who just wanted to do mono or stereo
editing that he didn't heed a new hot-rod computer as long as he got
software that didn't bog it down.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

In article ,
Arny Krueger wrote:
A Layla20 is more like 17 bits. Cool Edit pads it out to 32 bits (24 bit
mantissa+8 bit exponent floating point). The alternative would be 16 bits
which would lead to recording with less precision than the hardware is
capable of. To me the real benefit of recording at 32 bits is the ability
to process and mixdown without clipping or other loss of whatever data is
available.

Wouldn't it make more sense to print 24 bit fixed point tracks? 32
bit float is not that common of a format, and if you decide to go back
to the raw audio tracks later on, perhaps in some deep distant future
world where 32 bit float isn't used or after Cool Edit has stopped
working, you'd be S.O.L.

Also, and this is a very tiny nitpick, 32 bit float is normalized
(i.e. in the sense that the mantissa is always between -1 and 1) and
there is multiplication involved, whereas a straight 20 to 24 bit zero
padding is _completely_ clean. Yeah, the error from this is extremely
tiny, but what the heck - why not capture the bits as delivered and
then let CE pad it to float or whatever the heck it wants for internal
processing.

Just a thought...

Monte McGuire