Hi, welcome to our wonderful community.

Samplitude? YES! Do it! Samplitude Pro X is choice for you. Its a learning curve but once you get onto it, no return. It has a restoration suite that is wonderful but its an add-on that you can always buy if needed. But it is Window 7, not Mac, however, a mac version is slated to be released this summer. But it could be buggy.

How are you transferring the analog to digital though? I'm assuming your recording setup it excellent but thought to ask just in case.
What AD converter are you using. This is a critical part of archiving. Most people think they aren't that important to invest in something better than average but I beg to differ. Either way, you need to have a converter to import the audio into your DAW ( samplitude, pro tools etc) the computer).

I absolutely recommend the Lavry AD11 for you because it is simple , USB and deadly accurate and uncoloured. But its $1600.00 There are other interfaces for hundreds less that will work too. If you choose to record her, you can use this setup because it has built-in preamps that is wonderful for classical music. All you would need then is a fine mic. So you are investing in something that will be great later.

My mother was a mezzo-soprano Metropolitan Opera singer. I restored her albums ten years ago and I wish I would have been smarter back then.

Sorry, I went on... Back to your question:

I shoot for the best but there are other DAW's like Reaper that are very reasonable. Simple , and very good converters can be found by RME

Others may chime in to help you too. Hope this helps.

Samplitude is excellent.

Cheers!

I'm a little concerned that you feel that your mezzo-soprano wife can't get through an aria without 20 freaking edits? This ain't rock 'n roll nor rap/hip-hop and so, this is excessive. This is a technical vocal issue. So if you composite all of your edits into a final product, how is she going to live up to that performance level when it's required of her to do so live? Microphones, converters, preamps, software ain't your problem nor her problem. What you're doing is real audio editing which, yeah, takes one hell of a lot of time to do professionally. Nobody can punch a button on your wife and make her sound like Marilyn Horne. And there is no button in software that will make the correct musical edits for you. You should have tried it with grease pencils and razor blades along with splicing tape. Thankfully, that wasn't very necessary for my mother a former Metropolitan Opera coloratura are my ex a Wagnerian Metropolitan Opera guest soloist. At most only 1-3 edits. If they needed more than that, I'd be doing rap and hip-hop.

ARF!
Mx. Remy Ann David

RemyRAD, post: 385659 wrote: I'm a little concerned that you feel that your mezzo-soprano wife can't get through an aria without 20 freaking edits? This ain't rock 'n roll nor rap/hip-hop and so, this is excessive. This is a technical vocal issue. So if you composite all of your edits into a final product, how is she going to live up to that performance level when it's required of her to do so live? Microphones, converters, preamps, software ain't your problem nor her problem. What you're doing is real audio editing which, yeah, takes one hell of a lot of time to do professionally. Nobody can punch a button on your wife and make her sound like Marilyn Horne. And there is no button in software that will make the correct musical edits for you. You should have tried it with grease pencils and razor blades along with splicing tape. Thankfully, that wasn't very necessary for my mother a former Metropolitan Opera coloratura are my ex a Wagnerian Metropolitan Opera guest soloist. At most only 1-3 edits. If they needed more than that, I'd be doing rap and hip-hop.

ARF!
Mx. Remy Ann David

Remy,

I think the OP wants the DAW to separate all the tracks or sessions more than anything. Which is crazy with tape. It surely cannot be for copy and pasting pieces of her singing like some rap pop tracks. Its not for us to judge regardless. The OP is asking for help, not to be attacked. How insulting.

Everyone makes mistake too, including my mother who was as good as they get. People use edits to learn from as well. Please, lets keep things more professional. erk...

Thank you for the defense, audiokid. Indeed...

To set the scene here – I am a professional conductor who receives audition audios almost weekly from aspiring singers so I know what it takes to get the attention of a potential hirer. When we listen to audition tapes as consumers for our concerts, we are not expecting a state-of-the-art sonic product, just ones that sound reasonably acceptable – our real focus is the performance potential of the artist.

In terms of splicing, we're not talking about mistakes (note or otherwise) but minor ensemble glitches, a word not pronounced quite as well as it could be, an accelerando that is not quite as symmetrical as we would like, etc. These are minor matters that would go virtually unnoticed in performance – any competent artist of any rank should walk off stage and be able to recite a litany of minor things he or she wished had gone better – they are human.

However, when it comes to listening to a audition recording, those minor glitches are more discernible (especially to ears like mine) and, if present, they send a subtle subconscious message that is counterproductive to the goal at hand – getting the performer hired. It is much like seeing a head shot of the artist that is perfectly acceptable as a photo, but, as a marketing tool, it must virtually always be retouched to take away minor annoyances so it achieves maximum impact in one glance.

On the subject of number of splices, I've watched high-end professionals record in our hall (including Naxos, no less) and let me assure you, the number of splices I do are minor compared to what they routinely do for commercial high-end classical music CDs.

By the standards of you who either produce commercial work or for whom recording is your all-consuming hobby, the equipment I use would surely be considered almost amateurish (Beyer mics, A/D work with an Omega – my use of Audacity as my production editor should have been a clue). My goal is to present a performance that catches the ear of the producer.

My reason for coming to this forum was to get advice on the splicing part of the process. I am happy with the sound I’m getting with the equipment I’m using. I’m just trying to drop the time investment in the editing.

Thus, the questions are:

1. Will Samplitude (Producer or Pro -- and which would be better?) make my life easier, or, will the learning curve outweigh make my current manual zero-crossing splices be a wash?

2. Once learned, do these programs make the splicing process easier, faster and potentially more accurate? I know that, with enough care and time, I can produce perfect splices in something as crude as Audacity … I’m just trying to save time (and not sacrifice quality).

3. If I buy those one of those products, where does one find tutorials that teach how to use the program for my editing purposes? What I find on the net is for pop production, not classical music.

Please understand that I’m not looking to invest thousands of dollars in state-of-the-art equipment. It’s achieving an enticing performance that accomplishs its goal in only one cursory hearing that is my priority.

Thanks very much.

maestrogn

RemyRAD, post: 385659 wrote: I'm a little concerned that you feel that your mezzo-soprano wife can't get through an aria without 20 freaking edits? This ain't rock 'n roll nor rap/hip-hop and so, this is excessive. This is a technical vocal issue. So if you composite all of your edits into a final product, how is she going to live up to that performance level when it's required of her to do so live? Microphones, converters, preamps, software ain't your problem nor her problem. What you're doing is real audio editing which, yeah, takes one hell of a lot of time to do professionally. Nobody can punch a button on your wife and make her sound like Marilyn Horne. And there is no button in software that will make the correct musical edits for you. You should have tried it with grease pencils and razor blades along with splicing tape. Thankfully, that wasn't very necessary for my mother a former Metropolitan Opera coloratura are my ex a Wagnerian Metropolitan Opera guest soloist. At most only 1-3 edits. If they needed more than that, I'd be doing rap and hip-hop.

From what I gather, you are out of touch. My outsider's impression is that classical has been bit hard by a technical perfectionism bug. It starts with youth competitions where the robots with no musical expression but fabulous technique win and ends up with five minute recordings with two dozen edits - and three dozen buyers.

And BTW Samplitude seems to be the DAW of choice for classical - particularly because it does those edits so well.

I must say that I am somewhat taken aback by the critical nature of some of the replies -- critical responses that do nothing to help me on the subject for which I called for help. For the last poster, classical music recordings have always "suffered" from that bug. Years ago, I worked in Columbia Records sessions (as a musician, not the engineer) where I saw incredible splicing work being done for the philosophical reasons stated in my last post -- a recording must meet artistic standards that are different from a performance because one listens to the the recording repeatedly and such glitches become more grating with each hearing ... not so in the single hearing of a performance.

So, please stop with the moralizing -- from my 40 professional years in the business I know what I'm doing and what my goals are and don't need your philosophical two-cents worth. If you disagree me, that is your right -- just don't take up my time with it. If my call for simple technical advice continues to receive this kind of subjective, insulting response, I'll have look elsewhere for the help I need.

maestrogn

RemyRAD, post: 385659 wrote: Thankfully, that wasn't very necessary for my mother a former Metropolitan Opera coloratura are my ex a Wagnerian Metropolitan Opera guest soloist. At most only 1-3 edits. If they needed more than that, I'd be doing rap and hip-hop.

ARF!
Mx. Remy Ann David

What kind of response is this? Was this necessary to pass judgement on someone asking for information on a DAW. To be personally concerned about why he wants something and then to assume your Mother was better than her all in the first post. And he gets a (like) vote of support for this response by another Mod. Sorry, I find this very distasteful and unprofessional.

maestrogn, post: 385679 wrote: Thank you for the defense, audiokid. Indeed...

Thus, the questions are:

1. Will Samplitude (Producer or Pro -- and which would be better?) make my life easier, or, will the learning curve outweigh make my current manual zero-crossing splices be a wash?

2. Once learned, do these programs make the splicing process easier, faster and potentially more accurate? I know that, with enough care and time, I can produce perfect splices in something as crude as Audacity … I’m just trying to save time (and not sacrifice quality).

3. If I buy those one of those products, where does one find tutorials that teach how to use the program for my editing purposes? What I find on the net is for pop production, not classical music.

Please understand that I’m not looking to invest thousands of dollars in state-of-the-art equipment. It’s achieving an enticing performance that accomplishs its goal in only one cursory hearing that is my priority.

Thanks very much.

maestrogn

Not a problem.

Back to helping you respectfully.

You can download the [[url=http://[/URL]="http://pro.magix.co…"]30 day trial[/]="http://pro.magix.co…"]30 day trial[/] . Maybe either version I think ( contact support). It all might be more than you are prepared to tackle though.

Reaper is a really solid and stable DAW program, but its ugly and not so logical compared. Many recommend it because it works and its cheap.
Samplitude on the other hand is a beast, but its set-up very smart and gets no better. Its an editing king. If you are going to be in the area of the industry ( recording) it wouldn't hurt to learn about this program. If you are like me, I would like to be able to record my talent around the times that work for us, all in the name of improvement and passion to become better without the need of fitting into someone elses time schedule.
The online tutorials cover most of what you need to know and some. Just because its Rock doesn't mean you won't go OOOH, I get it! And apply what you learn to your needs. Hope that makes sense. Its all about audio, not styles.

Another DAW would be Pro Tools 9 or 10. 10 is the latest version but I'm told is buggy.

Samplitude is the DAW of choice for mastering and a lot of classical recordists. The editing features and audio engine on that program are the best in the business.

Most DAWs have fully functioning demos. Pro Tools doesn't but most do. The first week is always the toughest curve. Feel welcome to PM me if you need more persoanl help :)

Cheers!

Now, that was helpful

Dear audiokid:

Thank you so much for that extremely helpful response. I just spent a little while looking into Reaper (I'll download it at home tonight because I don't need it at this point in my University office). It may not be pretty, but it really looks like it will do the job without my having to delve down through all kinds of layers that may not turn out to be useful to get to the functionality that I need right now . I also note that there is an add-in (Spectro) one can purchase to give one spectrographic capacity.

My scholarly field as a university professor is the use of real-time spectrography as behavior modification during the training of voice. I have two books published on the subject and been all over the world holding workshops and lectures on it. The result of this is that I have the capacity to read the spectrographic information and recognize the constituent phonemes of a language. Why is this important? When dealing with singers in the process of mastering a recording, it is quite often a challenge to find the exact point in time where an /s/ at the beginning of the word actually begins. Yes, through listening and trial and error, one can find it in the waveform. However, I know the spectral signature of the noise that constitutes /s/ and I can spot that a lot quicker – that spectrographic capacity was one of the things that was drawing me toward Samplitude.

Regarding the rock functions, I will use anything that makes the product work and have no bias against really fine tools. However, at this point, it is the combination of sections of various takes into one master track that is at the heart of my needs. I will also be interested in the EQ capacity in Reaper because occasionally that needs to be tweaked. Another area is that of modifying room acoustics if I find that my miking was too close and I've missed some of the room ambience. So all in all, my needs are not that complex and your suggestion seems to fill the bill exactly.

I will report in as I discover things.

maestrogn

PS it's ironic that I purposely asked my question on the professional side of this formum hoping to avoid the kind of responses that bothered both you and me. My reasoning was that I was bound to get that kind of comment on the amateur side, but was shocked that it came in on the professional side. I also know that moderators cannot censor things in advance. But please know that I do really appreciate your support in this.

Looks like I need to get a leash. My appologies and please feel welcome to come back here.

regards,

Say you're complaining about my comment being unprofessional. What is their professional about an opera singer who has been over edited into perfection when there is no perfection to begin with? It's based upon performance not perfection when it comes to real performances as opposed to fake performances we call recordings. You've been conducting for 40 years and I have been conducting recordings for 40 years with 99% of these people who can't cut the mustard live. You want your edits to be accurate so you learn how to edit. I don't give a crap what software I'm using my editing is still professional. So you're conducting relies upon your understanding of software? I don't think so? Sorry if I've offended folks but I also find it offensive that people think that software and editing will replace talent. It doesn't. It won't. You either learn how to play an instrument or you don't. You either learn how to edit or you don't. It doesn't matter what the instrument is. It doesn't matter what the software is. You either have talent for this or you don't. Unfortunately even talent of 40+ years of doing something doesn't mean you have talent for doing something. It just means you been doing it for 40 years without any talent. The question was outrageous and you are upset by the answer like I said no talent.

Have fun
Mx. Remy Ann David

RemyRAD, post: 385697 wrote: Say you're complaining about my comment being unprofessional. What is their professional about an opera singer who has been over edited into perfection when there is no perfection to begin with? It's based upon performance not perfection when it comes to real performances as opposed to fake performances we call recordings. You've been conducting for 40 years and I have been conducting recordings for 40 years with 99% of these people who can't cut the mustard live. You want your edits to be accurate so you learn how to edit. I don't give a crap what software I'm using my editing is still professional. So you're conducting relies upon your understanding of software? I don't think so? Sorry if I've offended folks but I also find it offensive that people think that software and editing will replace talent. It doesn't. It won't. You either learn how to play an instrument or you don't. You either learn how to edit or you don't. It doesn't matter what the instrument is. It doesn't matter what the software is. You either have talent for this or you don't. Unfortunately even talent of 40+ years of doing something doesn't mean you have talent for doing something. It just means you been doing it for 40 years without any talent. The question was outrageous and you are upset by the answer like I said no talent.

Have fun
Mx. Remy Ann David

Not this time.

I agree with Chris that this is based on opinion based on experience and is tending more towards the politics of the professional classical music production and the state of its affairs these days, rather than focusing on the actual question at hand. What someone wishes to do with their choice of gear, EVEN IF ITS NOT WHAT WE THINK IT SHOULD BE, is not the purpose of our existence here. Chiding total beginners into seeing the truth behind the methodology of this experience and getting them to think for themselves is one thing, but opining to an industry professional about whys and wherefores of their choices to implement their business is a stretch beyond where we need to be.

If I was given a project that was to edit all the mistakes from a performance on any aria or solo, I would have to learn the piece in complete perfection in order to chose which elongated 'rrr' sound or slightly splattered 'ssss' to begin on. If this is the means by which this side of the business operates (and I believe it must!) then who am I to say its not kosher?

Should someone wish to start a thread bemoaning the state of classical editing then perhaps the maestro would have the grace to opine in it with us but in this case he just wants to make his job easier doing something he already does with tools and music he's already well invested in.

I dont think this warrants an opinion on whether his clientele can hit an A above high C with the proper power and pronunciation. I just think he wants to know about programs that work for the editing he needs.

Samplitude is all inclusive and you could build huge classical productions with it. A lot of folks do. For a simple editing, Reaper is simple and easy. ProTools 9 is stable and has great editing capabilities as well as being able to be used on other hardware....unlike earlier versions. I would hope you are on a Mac. This is meant to not inflame but to indicate that a Mac is simply easier to edit on. PC's these days are just as fast and have the same abilities as the Mac.....I just think the operating system is more in tune to editing of material on the Apple side of things. This is primarily why most of your large scale artist programs and drawing programs have come from the Mac side of things.

It probably doesnt matter much now.

Remy, you are out of line here and on some bitter rant. This person was gracious, very kind toned and asking about a DAW. The comparison to your mother was over the top for me. You may be accurate if this was a live performance and you were writing a review but you are not, and you have no idea who they are or any business passing judgement on them like this.
If he was posting about whether he should do this or not edit something that we could clearly hear, and had a tape of this
( audio clip for us to hear), then yes, by all means rant away and compare your mother and all your knowledge all you want... But this was not the question. You have turned this into a personal thread with a touch of arrogance I'm not sure is acceptable from a moderator. You've side railed this all into some BS rant like you have a drinking problem. I'm shocked and concerned.:mad:

HE was asking about what DAW would be best.

RemyRAD, post: 385697 wrote: ... What is their professional about an opera singer who has been over edited into perfection when there is no perfection to begin with?...

Remy, You've seen a lot more of the classical recording industry than I have. Do you really claim that there is not a large portion of your professional colleagues who produce extensively edited recordings? (I am not asking whether it is good or bad. I am asking if you are claiming that no working professionals use extensive editing.) Because my limited experience (mostly through my daughter's experience in Pittsburgh) is that there are working pros who do this and claim it is "standard." Now, I have no real idea if it is "standard," or "common," or "done by a minority," but I can rule out "not done at all." I've seen it done with professional soloists that regularly tour world wide. So I don't think it is fair to make judgements about the person being recorded because of the recording technique, especially one that seems to me to be used fairly widely.

Now if you want to criticize the technique, go ahead. I think I'm on your side. Classical music is definitely suffering - some would say beyond suffering. Correlation does not imply causation, but anyone looking at a chart of classical record sales will have a hard time arguing that modern techniques have helped sales.

People who truly walk/ share and contribute to this circle of music have more class and insight than what we just experienced in this thread. Remy and I share similar backgrounds but I keep mine more private and seem to know the real deal when I see it. I am also still employed and working in this industry at god speed and very grateful every hour of my life to still be here. Remy's response had nothing to do with the question this well respected man asked and IMHO, he deserves an apology.

Then,

We will remove the BS and split this thread off into one related to Remy's rant. I have no problem with that.

peace and respect.