cool edit pro or adobe audition PLEASE HELP!

You could run virtual windows using VMware if you wanted to. Doesn't require a complicated and big second drive partition, you never have to reboot to enter into Windows. For all intents and purposes it's just like launching an app from within the Mac. Put it to full screen mode and you're in Windows. Hide the app and you're in your Mac just like normal. Then as far as viruses are concerned, just never ever use the Windows virtual machine to run Cool Edit Pro, never for web browsing or anything else and you will be as safe as houses.

Another alternative is to forget about that program and just use Soundtrack Pro, which comes with Logic Studio. You'd have to learn a new program, but it's a fully-fledged audio editor so I'd presume it does more or less what Cool Edit Pro does.

The problem with some of the other sound programs is that they do too much other stuff, and it is virtually impossible to do simple tasks...

You do know that all Macs come with Garageband for free, right? The name of the program might be a bit misleading, it's actually a very simple to use audio recording and editing program as well as being used to make music. A lot of people who produce podcasts or radio programs use Garageband as their recording and editing software. If you just need a simple editor, go and look at what Garageband can do, you might find that you actually don't need to buy any software at all, just the Mac.

Which features you need? Have a look at [Amadeus Pro|http://www.hairersoft.com/AmadeusPro/AmadeusPro.html] which is $40 or [Audacity|http://audacity.sourceforge.net] which is free. Garageband, as tbird suggests, could do the job just fine too. It really depends on what type of editing and processing you need to do.

Also would you know? I know that Cool Edit Pro works with a sound card (on PCs), but I cannot get anyone to give me a straight answer about what type of sound cards mac's use. any idea?

If you can't get a straight answer on this question, then you aren't asking the right people. The term "Sound card" is more of a consumer concept, what you need to be asking about is "audio interfaces". There is pretty much as much choice as you could possibly imagine, ranging from basic low cost stereo in, stereo out interfaces all the way up to the highest end professional studio gear. It's not like there is some separate world of Mac audio interfaces and a separate world of PC ones.. with only a few exceptions, all of them are cross-platform, you just install the PC driver if you have a PC, or the Mac driver if you have a Mac.

Any store selling pro audio and music gear will be able to inform you on the choices, but if you say exactly what you need to use it for and what your budget is, then people here can advise you on what audio interfaces are appropriate for you.

Btw, if you are just needing to record voice-over work, there are now quite a few microphones on the market that have their own preamp built-in and connect directly to a computer via USB. This started out to cater to the podcaster market, but now there are actually some pretty decent quality ones. If that's all you need, then you don't even necessarily need an audio interface at all because you can use the built-in sound outputs on the Mac for monitoring. The built-in sound is not exactly high-end studio quality, but if you're doing basic work, it might be fine for you.

Yes, to clarify - I'd say that you should give Garageband a go and see how you get on (and it won't cost you a thing). It should do the job very nicely for simple voiceover stuff and I'd say you'd be hard pushed to find a simpler and more effective product, let alone for free.

As for interfaces etc. you may not even need one. As mentioned there are USB powered mics these days that you can plug straight in, or if you don't really want to spend much, you can simply plug in a battery powered mic with a minijack plug and record with that (there are a few decent ones around that shouldn't cost more than $40/50).

You can always expand and get more as you go, but you may find you have everything you need when you buy your Mac. Unless you need serious quality and fidelity why spend more?

pplschmp wrote:
The only thing I am still confused about is the sound card. As per the Cool Edit pro website, Cool Edit Pro and the sound card need to be able to speak to each other--will this be a problem on a Mac, as although I am formatting a portion of my drive to run Windows, will it be able to talk to the sound card that may or may not be installed on my Mac???? Do Macs have sound cards??? I see no specs anywhere that talk about it!

Stop it. Just...stop it. Relax. You're in Apple country, here. 🙂

The Mac has a built-in sound chip on the main logic board. Cool Edit will talk to any "sound card", whether it's an actual card or an external interface (which, for some bizarre reason, people insist on calling "sound cards" despite the fact that they're quite obviously boxes with lots of little sockets, pots, and lights on them), or a simple two-dollar chip on the main logic board, AS LONG AS there's a proper driver for it to speak to the hardware through.

Apple supplies proper Windows drivers for all the built-in components of their machines on the install disks that come with every computer, so there's no issues with Windows and the internal audio interface.

HOWEVER: That on-board chip is said two-dollar chip, and is hardly useful for professional audio work.

So you'll be getting a decent external interface, anyway. Those USB microphones mentioned above DO NOT qualify. Get one that works in both Windows and Mac OS X, and that's that.

Message was edited by: spheric

the 2 dollar chip worked on their PC... Apple's soundchip is actually a nice one - I'd just try using what you have - there's plenty of recording programs for OS X - Audacity & Amadeus were mentioned and Garageband too - why screw with Windows when the Mac does it and usually does it better.

No, were not.

We're all arrogant twits; everybody knows that!

🙂

spheric wrote:
No, were not.

We're all arrogant twits; everybody knows that!

🙂

I'm not arrogant, I'm just better than everybody else.

OP: If quality and fidelity are so important then you really should be taking the time to learn a new bit of software as well (e.g. Garageband) rather than making things so complicated and trying to run an old piece of software in Windows (ugh!) just to save yourself learning something new. That to me is SO much more complicated than just figuring out Garageband. I explained to someone how to use it over email a few weeks ago and I'd never even used it myself before that. If you've got the outboard gear, then buy yourself a $100 audio interface and learn Garageband... you will get excellent results.

An Apogee Duet or Apogee One would probably be an appropriate level of quality to go for in an audio interface if you've got a decent mic and you've gone to the trouble of acoustically treated your work environment.

strangedogs wrote:
the 2 dollar chip worked on their PC... Apple's soundchip is actually a nice one - I'd just try using what you have - there's plenty of recording programs for OS X - Audacity & Amadeus were mentioned and Garageband too - why screw with Windows when the Mac does it and usually does it better.

No, it's not really a nice one, it's the same one that's on my $599 Acer PC laptop. The noise floor is atrocious. The last decent sound chips were on the G5's.

As for Cool-Edit Pro/Audition. The fellow that programmed both of those applications lives about 100 miles north of me and is one fine programmer... Cool Edit and Audition were years ahead of their time and still do a lot of things better than most.

How would you like to have your bedroom programming project (CoolEdit Pro) be purchased by Adobe!

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