Free mp3 splitter

Byline: Daniel Keller

As an early OS X adopter, BIAS is to be commended for releasing Peak 3.0 right on the heels of OS X's introduction. The popular stereo editing program was the first professional audio application to work with OS X's Core Audio protocol, and expectations have been understandably high. Fortunately, Peak does not disappoint. Now at version 3.11, the program's look, feel, and functionality are better than ever.

Part of Peak's appeal lies in its minimalism. Its colorful interface is straightforward, well organized, easy on the eyes, and filled with visual clues (see Fig. 1). The program's apparent simplicity, however, belies the depths of its capabilities; this is a serious application and one that combines features not typically found in other Macintosh programs.

Peak supports resolutions up to 32-bit and sampling rates up to 10 MHz - well beyond the range of any hardware presently available. The program supports and seamlessly converts a wide range of common formats, including AIFF, SDII, WAV, Broadcast WAV, AU, MP3, RAW, QuickTime, Paris PSF, and Sonic Solutions AIFF. The version 3.1 update added compatibility with QuickTime 6 files, allowing Peak to read and write Dolby's new AAC encoding format - a compression scheme that has been gaining in popularity as an alternative to MP3 for online audio delivery. Peak also works with OS X's Core Audio, Sound Manager, and ASIO and supports the VST plug-in format.

As it did in the previous versions, Peak 3.11 works much like a word processor for audio; indeed, BIAS even refers to audio files as documents. You can arrange, resize, and tile multiple documents, and it's easy to cut, copy, and paste from within any open document window; each document has its own unlimited Undo/Redo menu with a graphic history. Documents can reside in the Dock for retrieval, and you can use the number keys on the Macintosh keyboard to trigger the last ten documents for instant playback - a nice touch.

THE RIGHT TOOLS FOR THE JOB

A high degree of flexibility is one of Peak's strongest assets. The user interface is fully customizable, allowing you to resize, rearrange, and color most onscreen elements. Most menu commands can be added to or removed from the toolbar, and few tasks require more than a couple of mouse clicks. Keyboard shortcuts are in ample supply, and you can freely reassign key combinations to better suit your working style. The editing palette floats in its own window, and the cursor toggles with the Tab key between the Select, Move, Zoom, and Pencil tools. The Transport bar is also free-floating and features long, multicolored VU-style meters with adjustable peak- and clip-hold times. Above the main waveform view, the Overview display shows the entire waveform, making it easy to locate and zoom in on specific areas.

Peak has a host of features designed to streamline editing tasks, and no matter how you normally use a 2-track editor, you'll find a range of useful tools, including several types of scrubbing (Jog, Tape-Style, and Dynamic), crossfading (and automatic blending at edit points), and a full arsenal of standard editing commands for cropping, deleting, inserting, and extracting selected audio. The program lets you record directly from a live input, or you can import audio tracks directly from a CD. Adding markers to the waveform display is a snap during playback or when the audio is stopped. You can then relabel and color the markers and use them to navigate audio files, create loops, or designate regions.

Peak's Playlist is one of the program's most powerful features. The Playlist is a nondestructive environment that lets you string together a list of regions (from one or more audio documents) without altering the original files. With the Playlist you can assemble a full musical program, replete with crossfades, DSP effects, gain changes, various gap times, and track markers and then save the results as a new audio document in a number of formats. You can even burn the Playlist directly to CD with the included Roxio Toast Lite. I also found the Playlist to be a great remixing tool, useful for experimenting with shuffling parts of a song around while leaving the original file unchanged.

Peak sports a full range of excellent mastering tools, including several high-quality dithering options. The Movie window lets you view QuickTime and DV movies, and you can extract the soundtracks for editing. The movie window syncs to the audio even while you're scrubbing and selecting, which makes Peak an excellent tool for audio post-production.

Peak's Batch File Processor (see Fig. 2) can perform an amazing range of editing and processing functions (bounce, invert, swap channels, fade out, normalize, change pitch, and much more). The program also supports Apple Events, allowing you to automate batch processing and manage file libraries using database applications.

THERE AND BACK

Peak features a number of easy-to-use tools for creating, tuning, duplicating, and exporting loops, edit markers, and regions. One very cool feature is Loop Surfer. It lets you modify the loop during playback, and it can also adjust the loop based on the tempo or on a selected section of audio. Among Peak's other useful features are Guess Tempo, which can estimate the tempo of a designated audio selection, and Loop Tuner, which allows for extremely fine tuning of a loop's start and end points.

Unfortunately, Peak lets you create only one loop per audio document. That's not a major problem because you can always create a copy of the file, but it's an unnecessary extra step if you're pulling multiple loops out of a single audio file. On the other hand, it's easy to transform loops into regions and drop them into a Playlist multiple times for loop-style playback, so having multiple loops in a single document may not always be necessary.

Peak supports sampler transfers using SMDI or SCSI, and it provides dedicated support for several popular units, including Kurzweil's K series, Peavey's SP/SX, Yamaha's A series, and E-mu models. It would be nice to see support for software samplers such as HALion and the Windows-only GigaStudio. In fact, given GigaStudio's popularity among cross-platform Mac professionals, direct GSIF support might be a popular move (although no Mac audio editors currently support proprietary software sample formats).

DSP FOR DAYS

In addition to its standard set of digital signal-processing tools (gain change, normalize, time stretch, pitch change, sampling-rate convert, fade in/out, and so forth), Peak 3.11 also has other features worth noting. The Threshold command analyzes the amplitude levels in an audio file and splits the file into sections much like Propellerhead ReCycle does. It's great for splitting up successive notes from a musical instrument, breaking up a drum loop into its component parts, adjusting the gain of individual drum hits (such as snare or kick drum), and more.

Another interesting DSP tool is Reverse Boomerang. It mixes a reversed copy of the selected audio with the original. I tried it on several drum loops with unexpected but surprisingly usable results.

Several of Peak's DSP tools should be of special interest to sound designers. Convolve allows you to apply the spectral characteristics of one sound to another to create exotic ambiences and frequency combinations. It can also be used with impulse-response files from various acoustic spaces to apply natural reverb to an otherwise dry audio file.

Rappify can degrade a signal and add in a lo-fi grungy element, and you can use Phase Vocoder to introduce some strange spectrum-based resynthesis.

As its name suggests, Click Repair is a handy tool for removing a variety of clicks and pops. It works by scanning the audio document for what the manual describes as "significant discontinuity" from sample to sample. For example, a radical jump in sample value from - 100 to 10,000 and back is most likely a spike, so the offending click is removed, and the area is automatically smoothed over. The smoothing factor, detection level, and size of the repaired area are all user configurable.

PLUG-IN PACK

BIAS's decision to support VST plug-ins in Peak's 2.5 update was a very prudent one. The ubiquity of the VST protocol and the availability of excellent VST products from numerous developers provides an open-ended opportunity to customize Peak's toolkit and to expand the program's versatility.