Aviary launched an online audio editing application called Myna today, and it's all kinds of awesome. Don't get me wrong, it's not exactly Pro Tools or Adobe Audition and it doesn't come with all the audio effects you would expect from those applications. But here's what it does and does well: It lets you create and edit multitrack audio recordings using a Flash-based web interface that's so natural to use you would swear it was a desktop application.

When you first load Myna you can either upload audio files from your computer or record audio tracks up to a minute using your computer's sound card and/or microphone. You can also import clips from a library that Aviary provides.

The editor itself is very easy to use for anyone who has spent time using virtually any audio editing software, from Audacity to Garage Band to Pro Tools. You just drag your tracks from the clip library or imported tracks area to the timeline and drag and drop them into place. One thing that did take me a few moments to figure out was that in order to split a track you need to click the "selection" tool from the toolbar on the right side of the screen, highlight a section of the audio file, and then click the Edit menu to split a track. This means it's tough to create a truly precise split point.

You can trim tracks just by grabbing the beginning or end point and dragging. And you can zoom in and out either by hitting the zoom buttons int he toolbar or by grabbing the edge of the slider above the audio timeline. You can also add fades, pans, or other automation points by clicking the "auto" button on any track. There are also a handful of effects including Reverb, Flanger, and EQ effects.

I haven't tried using Myna to mix down music yet, but my background in audio production is as a radio news journalist. And I can say without a doubt that Myna provides about 90% of the tools I would need to file a story on the go if I didn't have access to a computer with audio editing software installed. Of course, it does take longer to upload audio tracks to Myna for editing than it would to edit them on the desktop, but once a track is uploaded, you can import it into other projects in the future.

Myna has been in the works since Aviary acquired DigiMix in March. You can check out an overview video of Myna in action after the break.

[via CNet]

Online music collaboration, creation, and sharing suite Indaba Music has opened its new online audio editing tool to the public. Session Console 2.0 Alpha lets you create and mix audio recordings online. Sort of. The application is built on JavaFX, so while you launch the application from a web browser, it acts more like a desktop app that opens in a separate window and can take a minute or two to load.

But once Session Console 2.0 is loaded, it works as a powerful digital audio workstation that blurs the lines between local and remote storage. You can import hundreds of drum, bass, guitar, and other audio from Indaba's library, or download tracks you've uploaded to an Indaba Music Session. You can also click the big red record button to record a new track using your computer's audio hardware and save it to an online session.

Session Console 2.0 offers true multi-track, non-destructive audio editing. In other words, you can load up a bunch of audio files and apply dozens of effects in real-time without affecting the original source files. This makes it easy to create a mix, then a remix, then another remix, and then go back to the original version of the audio to start all over again from scratch.

The software is still a little rough around the edges. It locked up on me when I tried importing audio files from my desktop or files I'd used for an older Indaba Music project. But I had no problem loading a few of Indaba's pre-recorded guitar and drum samples to play around. It's worth keeping in mind, this is still Alpha software, and it might be worth keeping an eye on if you're looking for a quick and easy audio editing solution that you can use from any Java-enabled computer.

You can check out a demo video from Indaba Music after the break.

[via Create Digital Music]

I got a chance to catch up with Aviary today at a CEA event in New York, and the first thing I wanted to know is when the company will be ready to launch its web-based audio editor. Aviary makes web-based image editing tools, but the company purchased online audio editor DigiMix in March with the intention of launching its own audio production tools. And with the recent announcement that music community site Indaba Music would be updating its web based audio production suite, I was wondering what Aviary had up its sleeve.

So here's the deal. Sometime this summer Aviary will launch its digital audio editing application. It will let users create and mix audio using a web interface. There will be a variety of sounds available to work with, or you'll be able to upload your own audio tracks. At launch you won't be able to record new audio tracks using the web interface, something Indaba Music's new suite is expected to offer.

But while Indaba music's site is built around a community of users who share and talk about music, Aviary is building an application that will have an open API that the company hopes will be used across the web. In other words, if all goes according to plan, you won't just be able to edit audio at Aviary.com, but also on other sites making use of the tools.

In the meantime, Aviary is continuing to move ahead with its image editing tools. The company recently launched an Firefox add-on that lets you right-click on any image in your web browser to edit it with Aviary. The company hasn't begun to promote the add-on yet, because it's still experimental. But it's already been downloaded over 5,000 times.

Free Audio Editor is... you guessed it, a free audio utility for Windows. You can use it to record audio, or open WAV, MP3, OGG, or WMA files. And of course, you can use it to chop up audio by removing sections or mixing one audio track with another.

But Free Audio Editor also provides a bunch of advanced tools including effects like echo, vibrato, fades, and reverb. There are also a compressor, normalizer, and noise reduction tools. You can use Free Audio Editor to adjust the pitch of an audio file, or change the sample rate.

What Free Audio Editor doesn't include is multi-track editing tools. If you're looking for a free multitrack editor you might want to stick with Audacity, which runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. But Free Audio Editor does offer some advanced features and a nice clean, easy to use interface which could make it an attractive alternative to Audacity for quick and simple editing tasks.

There's also a deluxe version of the program that adds support for burning and ripping audio CDs, batch converting audio files, and converting text to speech. You also need to shell out $30 for the deluxe version if you want to save your audio in compressed audio formats like MP3 or OGG instead of WAV. But you can find free utilities, including Audacity, that perform most of these features.

[via Life Rocks 2.0]

There are plenty of things to love about a modern desktop Linux distribution like Ubuntu 8.04. It's got nifty desktop effects, comes with an office suite, web browser, media player, and pretty much anything else you need for day to day computer user. And there's a huge list of applications you can install with the click of a mouse.

But there's one thing I absolutely hate. And that's the fact that while package managers like Synaptic and apt-get make it incredibly easy to install all sorts of applications, uninstalling is another matter.

I wanted to see if I could get some audio editing tools up and running on my Eee PC 1000H today. I could have just tried installing Jack and Ardour, but I decided to go all out and install Ubuntu Studio's audio packages. I opened a terminal, typed in "sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-audio," and after downloading 300MB of files and unpacking them to take up 600MB on my desktop I was all set. Dozens of utilities has been installed, most of which I didn't have any intention of using. After playing around a bit, I couldn't figure out how to playback audio in Ardour, the one app I really wanted to use. And Ardour crashed about 70% of the time I tried to launch it.

So I decided to uninstall using the same method. I opened a terminal, typed "sudo apt-get remove ubuntustudio-audio" and received a message saying I could free up 49.2KB. Only two packages would be uninstalled, and almost all of the audio applications I didn't need would stick around, eating up hard disk space.

Apt-get makes it incredibly easy to install software. It's not so easy to remove it. It looks like my best bet is to go through and remove the applications I don't need one by one. I'm amazed how often I run into this program.

If you don't tend to install a lot of programs that you later wind up uninstalling, Ubuntu's a great operating system. If you enjoy testing out new software, and value both your hard drive space and your free time, Ubuntu may not be for you.

I haven't played with Fedora, SUSE, or PCLinuxOS lately. Anyone know if any of them have a package manager that makes it easier to remove applications?

Update: Thanks to mcdope, I managed to find a solution. But it was so non-intuitive that I'm going to stand by my headline. Uninstalling applications needs to be much simpler in Linux.

Basically, apt-get autoclean, apt-get autoremove, and apt-get --purge remove did nothing for me. What helped was installing the debfoster package and then running it. This shows a list of all packages that were installed along with ubuntustudio-audio (or any other package). If you select "y," you can keep a package. Selecting "n" removes it -- but not the other packages that rely on it, as I figured out the hard way.

So I had to reinstall ubuntustudio-audio, run through the whole process again, and this time select "p" for purge." That finally removed most of the apps that had been installed as part of the package and cleaned up 519MB of disc space. Finally, I ran apt-get autoremove which seemed to cleanup a few more loose ends.

Thanks for all your suggestions!

MeTeoR is a multi-track digital audio workstation (DAW) designed for Windows Mobile. It has all the basic features you'd expect from a full-fledged desktop DAW like Pro Tools, Adobe Audition, or Reaper. But it runs on Windows Mobile.

That means it's not going to be quite as fast or efficient at applying effects or mixing down large projects as the big guys. But here's a little secret. While most people use their cellphones and PDAs to do things like make phone calls and track appointments, many modern phones have more processing power than a computer from 10 years ago. And there's been decent digital audio editing software for PCs for much longer than 10 years. Now when somebody shows me a good digital video editing package for Windows Mobile I'll be surprised.

MeTeoR has a multi-track recorder plus windows for editing wave forms, mixing audio levels and pan settings, and importing audio. You can also add several effects including reverb and EQ effects. The full program costs $29.95, but there's a free trial available.

The program works with Windows Mobile 2003 and newer devices. A 400MHz or faster processor is recommended.

[via Create Digital Music]

The Audacity team has released an updated version of the popular opern source audio editing application. Audacity 1.3.5 beta packs a bunch of minor updates, including bug fixes better file handling, and some interface improvements. Here are some of the things that jumped out at us:

• Hit Shift while clicking record to start a recording at the end of an existing track
• Users should see fewer invalid sample rate problems under LInux
• Updated versions of the Portaudio, Libogg, LIbvorbis, and other libraries
• More informative dialogs when dealing with unsupported file formats
• New keyboard shortcuts

Audacity is already one of the best free audio editing applications for Mac, Linux, and Windows, and the program just keeps getting better.

[via Making Music]