bias peak vs. waveburner

To me Bias is a great editor of audio bits, and it does sound very good. The effects in it are quite good, and it's fairly stable. Keep in mind I am only familiar with Peak 4, 5 may be much more stable. I in no way think it's worth over $1000 or whatever it costs. For the simple, fast editing, I can use Audacity (which is unstable, but free), for the burning you've got Waveburner, for the effects you've got Logic, etc. That's not to say Peak isn't a great product: but for $1000 I'd rather work around in other programs. That's just me, and if I was wealthy I'd certainly come off the money for Peak. But you can go to, among other places, Version Tracker and check out the reviews . Bias Peak does well usually, their DAW is reviled, and Sound Soap gets mixed reviews. Hope this was helpful- good luck!

I am about to get Logic 8 bundle, and so have not used Waveburner in that setting yet (with Apple
as owner) However, I used to use Waveburner Pro on OS9, and also own Peak Pro 5. Hands down
Waveburner Pro on OS9 is more stable, intuitive and easier to use. The ability to add plugins on a
per track basis is so much more stable and easier on WB. Peak will quit unexpectedly will not
access some commands, and has produced inexplicable clicks & pops on final burns. (You should
not have to listen to a complete CD after burning, when you've just listened to it before burning,
before you hand it off to a client!).

Peak sounds great, but WB works better, and I don't hear a qualitative sound difference. Also-
for restoration tools, Izotope has just released RX, which is fantastic.

My 2 cents

Regards,

Ted

Not that I'm sticking up for Peak Pro, but isn't the demo basically Peak LE with some additional stuff disabled?

I found Peak LE almost useless. The Bias people are trying to market it like it's Wavelab (which is the only decent product made by Steinberg). I really can't see paying $500-$1000 for it.

However Peak still uses Jam > Toast and I am definitely finding Toast Titanium rather flaky (as in irregular glitches in the audio burn) when you add plugins.

I have been using Peak since Version 1.5 actually. But only for audio file/sample editing. Why somebody is actually using this for CD mastering is totally beyond me, the workflow in Peak is unbelievably bad, like it used to be in 1994. Before Version 5 you coulnd´t even drag audio files from the Finder to the Playlist document. You can´t edit in the playlist, plug-ins are unstable, blah blah...

It´s nice that you can add DDP export in Peak though, but the workflow is totally unusable to me.

Toby

I would sell any of you guys my copy of peak pro 5 for $150 - Except Bias forbid license transfers, that's right, once you pay for it, you are stuck with it. Peak Pro is a buggy piece of junk with an AWFUL work flow. Bias claims it is able to load up quick to quickly edit single wav/aif files and prevent having to load your main sequencer, but in practice Logic loads quicker! They have been saying Peak 6 is coming soon since forever. If you own logic studio you will not need peak pro, get one of the simple and quick wav editors floating around and do any real processing in Soundtrack Pro, waveburner or logic.

Just to clarify Peak Le retails for 129$ Peak Pro retails for 599$ and Peak Pro XT retails for 1,199$. XT comes with there entire line of software SoundSoap SoundSoap Pro and the Master Perfection Suite (six top notch mastering plug-ins). This is there prices on there website however you can find better deals elsewhere. I have been using Peak Pro 5 XT to master for quite some time and love it. I think it blows other 2 track editors out of the water. The flexibility of this Peak is un-paralleled by any program.

What are the differences between those three price points? Is it just the bundled plug-ins?

Is there anything that it can do that couldn't be done with a mix of Soundtrack Pro (for editing/finalizing) and Waveburner (for actual mastering)?

I used the demo of Peak LE once and was able to use it to stitch some audio files together that I had problems with before, but I didn't feel compelled to get it. Now whenever I look at it and at those three price points, I wonder what's so special about the $599 version, or what's crippled in the $129 version.

hmmm...maybe I'm in the minority here. I use Peak Pro 5 and like it, more than Waveburner. I got Peak LE for $99, which seems to be the going street price versus the suggested retail of $129. Once I registered it I got all sorts of special offers in my email from Bias for the upgrade to Pro. I think the upgrade to Pro ended up costing me an extra $299. In LE, there are fewer DSP effects and you can't burn from a playlist. When you get Pro, burning from a playlist is enabled and there are more plugins available. Bias frequently runs special offers, but I haven't been sold on upgrading to XT yet. Because I used Peak before I got Waveburner, I just got used to the workflow and the way it looks and I am just not comfortable with Waveburner. It's pretty stable in OS 10.4.9; I like the Bias Master Perfection Suite of plug-ins and am happy with the Bias products I have.

Only have Peak Express that came bundled with Toast with Jam so I don't have much Peak experience. The little I have had was not satisfying. However, I had Waveburner pro as an OS9 app and loved it. I recently brought my Mac 9600 out of storage just to use WBP. Last week I bought Logic, just to get Waveburner 1.50. That's how much I like it. I have never found a better, easier, more feature packed CD authoring program than WB. I wish Apple would sell it as a stand-alone app. I was thrilled to find out today that WB 1.5 opens old sessions from the OS9 version 2.2.1 (don't know why the version numbers are going the wrong way). Version 1.5 didn't recognize my old crossfades, but everything else was fine. And now I can use my Waves 5.9.7 plug-ins in WB and my Pro Tools hardware. It's the best, but a bit pricey if you have to buy Logic to get it, but I HAD to have it. The new version of Toast lost some of the key features when they rolled Jam into it, and Jam was a poor 2nd choice to WB.

Wave Editor is nice with a DAW. It's extremely fast and has a neat toolbox. In Logic, hit SHIFT + W, the WE toolbox pops up, choose a setting, apply and hit CMD + W. You're done in just a few seconds, really :--)