audio editors

[Charles Hallenbeck]

There are a lot of audio tools for Linux. Some of them even work!

I have not tried 'ecasound' which several people have mentioned, but have
thrown together a wav file editor which I call 'afix' available on my web
site. But Geoff is right, it is not all that obvious how to use it, and I
have not yet written any manual for it. I have used it intensively for
many months now though, and it is robust and does most of what I need. I
plan to develop it further but - who knows when? The next feature to be
added will be a simulated automatic gain control (agc). The program relies
on the availability of mpg123 to convert from mp3 to wav format, trplayer
and vsound to convert from realaudio to wav format, lame to convert back
into mp3, and sox to do other conversions and play sample portions. If any
of these utilities is missing there will be parts of afix that you cannot
use. Be warned also that vsound does not always work as advertised for
most users on most systems.

I have found it to be great fun to work with audio files, particularly on
a fast machine with lots of ram and disk space. If anyone wants to play
with the program, the source code is included with the package and I will
be happy to 'consult' about its use. 

But you know, if you are comfortable with basic tools such as 'cat', 'dd',
and 'sox', you can do a lot of simple editing without a formal audio
editor. I began by putting together a bunch of scripts based on those
tools, but soon found there were some things I wanted to do that were just
plain easier to do in C++ code than in bash scripts. But one way or
another, the Linux environment is a great playground for audio toys.

Chuck



My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh 
The Moon is Waning Gibbous (77% of Full)