Working with Audio Files

[johnneumann]

I posted this question some time ago without success. I thought I would ask again.

I've got an original Kron with 4.1c.

I want to send audio files (AIFFs, the file format on a CD) from my computer to the Kron. I want to edit the audio file on the Kron and then send the audio file back to the computer.

Note: this would need to be done via firewire or USB, not audio cables.

Can this be done in 4.1c?

I know the latest OS allows for burning CDs, which is very cool, but I'm not ready to upgrade yet, nor do I need to burn the audio file. I just need to get it from the computer to the Kron and back again.

Does anyone know how it can be done?

-JOHN

[BobNaughton]

John, I am not that familiar with an Aiff audio file, or very computer literate, but if these files are music or narration, I dont see why you cant just make a cd of them on your computer. Pop that cd into your Kron and download the tracks. You can then edit them in the Kron by trimmming, splitting and sweetning the sound as well as your Kron is capable of. Once you have finished with them make a sample>Scene of it. Your Kron will make a black video clip with your edited audio. Once it is a scene. You should be able to firewire them back to your computer, and with your computers Media software split the audio back out. I would think though that you should be able to do any audio editing right in your computer. The Casablanca's are great video editing devices, but they are limited in audio editing capability. If you have the Audio Effects option, you can do a lot more.

[TimKennelly]

Nope, you cannot send audio formats via firewire or USB.

AIFF is a Mac based audio format (not as common on CDs as the industry standard WAV files).

There are ways to jump through hoops to get it into your 4.1c Kron, but why?

You apparently have the audio on a Mac and want to have it end up back on a Mac and there are plenty of free audio software choices far superior to what we have available on the Smart Edit systems on a Mac, so why bother with taking it to the Kron?

I am not that familiar with Mac software as I am a PC guy, but http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ is one that is an excellent and powerful free cross platform audio editor that you could use.

[johnneumann]

Hi Tim,

I'll take a look at the software you're recommending, but I've spent time with free audio software before and I have never found anything as easily usable as the Kron.

Mind you, I'm doing something very simple. I have numerous vintage radio shows with lots of commercials in them and I want to clip the commercials out. The Kron's frame-by-frame advance and split is so easy that my senile three legged dog could do it.

All the computer software I've seen makes getting to a very fine point in time a clumsy process. You can roughly highlight and cut, but not down to the 1/30 of a second - at least not easily. Dropping a cursor to a point in time sucks. I want to advance to points in time. Dropping a cursor is how computers work. Frame by frame advance is how the Kron works.

Also, free audio software is almost never able to handle large files. You can edit a sound bit okay, but never an hour long audio file. I've been told that takes a different kind of software to do and it's always expensive - the stuff pros use.

The Kron is so cartoonish (I mean that in a very good way) in that the finest things are blown up to easily manipulated scale. Just like I can toggle film back and forth one frame at a time and hit 'split', I want to be able to do that to my radio shows. By the way, I have hundreds of these shows I want to do it to, so it's got to be easy easy easy to do it.

Bob, that's why I'm not inclined to burn a CD first. It's just too many shows to burn a CD first just to then edit it. I want to do this by the hundreds. The Kron is so cool in that (if this could be done), I could just track ball up to the commercials, delete 'em, and burn the finished CD. Finding the commercials and deleting them, I'm guessing, would take maybe five minutes for each one hour show.

I understand that the newest OS permits me to load an mp3 into the Kron, edit it, and then burn the finished audio to a CD, correct?

Does the new OS convert an mp3 to a CD audio file before burning?

[TimKennelly]

The current OS version (and at least one or two older versions) will accept MP3 and WAV files.

Standard CD audio files are not AIFF files John, they are WAV files and that would be what I would convert yours to rather than lossy MP3 files.

The output from your Kron with a newer OS would be WAV files on CDs (as it should be that being the industry standard).

[johnneumann]

Hi Tim,

Well, re WAVs being the standard CD audio format, that's news to me - but I am a dedicated Mac user - so WAVs don't come up much in my world. When I look at my CDs' contents on my computer, the tracks never appear with a suffix, so I have no way of knowing what the file format is.

So if WAVs are the industry format on a CD, that means that conventional CD players read both WAVs and AIFFs, because I keep favorite audios on my computer in the form of AIFFs and then burn them straight to CD - and they play in any CD player.

Interesting. I always thought all CD audio was one file format. It seems there is more than one type of audio file that CD players will play.

-JOHN

[IanPearson]

John
This site http://www.coolutils.com/Formats/CDA gives some insight into the various audio formats, quite interesting reading. This article says the actual format on a commercial CD is CDA?, so I assume PC's and Mac's convert this when reading from or writing to a CD.

Nothing is simple nowadays, well not to an old codger like me.

Ian

[MichaelD]

Why not play the files on the Mac and record them into the Kron via mini jack to phono, then edit.

Then use Quick Time (might have to be the Pro version) to record them back (albeit as .mov files) onto the Mac and finally drag them to I-Tunes so that they are automatically converted and you can then record to CD.

[CKNewman]

John,

Have you considered bringing the audio into the Mac, opening up i-movie, importing the audio, creating a video scene (like the Cassie's Sample to Scene), and doing the editing in the Mac's simple video editor. (not Final Cut Pro) Then if i-movie has a Scene to Sample function, take the audio sample and burn it to CD or MP3 disc in the Mac.

If the original material is spoken word and you're not doing critical listening, (the originals are probably mono) then I don't think you'd hear much loss when listening to an MP3 burned at 128 kbs. Why not see if its possible (and passes your listening tests) and let us know what you find?

If not, then I'd suggest upgrading the operating system in your Kron and using a re-writable CD to move audio between your Kron and the Mac. I know you're going kicking and screaming trying to hold on to version 4.1c but hey, we'll all walk down the hall with you - and the nurse in the upgrade room is really nice...

[johnneumann]

Hmm... Yeah... Whatever happened to iMovie?

That used to come stock with the OSX software. I never used it (owned a Kron, thank you very much) so I didn't miss it when it suddenly didn't come stock anymore. I have old iMovie discs from way back when it was new, but I haven't seen it resident on OSX discs in some time.

Re upgrading, it's all about dinero right now. I don't make money on my editing (heck, I don't make much money at all!) so dropping the three or four hundred bucks for the latest greatest seems a stretch.

I see the sound editing capabilities, which is cool, but not hundreds of dollars cool. More interesting to me is the idea of bopping files back and forth easily with my Mac (which supposedly the new MS OS does) and the ability to hook up an external backup drive. Other than that, I don't know what use I would get out of so much power.

It's like being President of the United States and really just wanting to play with my trains.



-John

ps. And again, I don't want to do the audio cable thing because I'm talking hundreds of hours of radio MP3s here. I need quick and easy access to these things followed by a speedy burn to a CD.