Essential Utilities

Dec 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Len Sasso

STREAMLINE YOUR WORK FLOW WITH THESE MUST-HAVE APPLICATIONS

It's hard to get excited about utility software; it usually does a job you'd rather not have to bother with. But when the job needs to be done, having the right tools can make it less of a chore and even fun.

In this article, I'll cover four software applications that will come in handy no matter what kind of music you make, and I'll offer some tips on how to make the best use of them. All are reasonably priced, and all but one are cross-platform (see the chart “Essential Utilities Compared”). In the sidebar “Little Gems,” you'll find six free or donationware downloads that you might rarely use but will be happy to have when you need them.

It's a Slice

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With most popular DAWs and samplers able to import and manipulate slice-formatted audio files and to perform beat slicing and time-warping on their own, a plug-in devoted to sliced audio might seem superfluous. But iZotope pHATmatik Pro 1.52 has enough tricks up its sleeve to make it an indispensable tool for working with REX or Acid audio files as well as for slicing your own.

You gain control of a variety of playback parameters for individual slices, and you can route any slice to any of three auxiliary outputs for separate DAW mixing and processing. Master effects, which apply to all slices routed to the main output, include delay, distortion, multimode and comb filtering, and a modulation matrix for routing two built-in LFOs, MIDI Mod Wheel, and MIDI Velocity to various settings (see Fig. 1 and Web Clip 1). A single instance of the plug-in holds up to 16 audio files, each with its own master effects and MIDI channel (see Web Clip 2). MIDI Learn lets you control master-effects settings on the fly.

Although the pHATmatik Pro control panel has small icons with sometimes-obscure functions, the plug-in is easy to use and takes only a short time to learn. To start, open the browser (Folder icon at top left), audition files until you find one you like, and load it into the sample-slicing window. If you load a REX or Acid file, you'll see its slice markers. For unsliced audio, click on the Do Slice button to the left of the Sensitivity slider, and the plug-in will place slice markers at attack transients it detects. If you get too few slices, increase the Sensitivity slider and click again. No matter what format you start with, you can add, delete, and move slice markers at will.

Audition individual slices by Shift-clicking on them or by playing their trigger notes from your MIDI keyboard (starting with C0 — MIDI Note Number 24). When you're satisfied with the slicing, use the MIDI Export button (to the right of the Sensitivity slider) to save a MIDI file that will trigger the slices with the correct timing. Alternatively, Option-drag (Alt-drag on the PC) the button to place the MIDI file on a DAW track, and pHATmatik Pro will automatically save it next to the audio file. You can also drag audio slices to DAW audio tracks.

The two areas at the bottom of the GUI, labeled Slice and Master, contain the slice processes and master effects. Slices can play forward, backward, or alternating, and with or without looping. Looping and alternating become interesting when the slice is shorter than the time allotted to play it, which can result from lowering the tempo, triggering slices manually, increasing the length of recorded trigger notes, or shortening a slice's loop. (The envelope graphic doubles as a loop-tuning display that lets you adjust a slice's loop end points.) Each slice has its own pitch offset, lowpass or highpass resonant filter, amplitude, and pan position, along with ADSR envelopes for pitch, filter cutoff, and amplitude.

PHATmatik Pro requires only slightly more CPU power than playing audio files directly, and it offers the many advantages of MIDI slice triggering.

I Know It's Here Somewhere

Even with the flexible browsers in modern DAWs and samplers, finding what you're looking for in a large audio library is often a tedious, hit-and-miss operation. Iced Audio AudioFinder 4.8 is a fast and easy way to locate; audition; and move, copy, or alias audio files on a Mac (see Fig. 2). Beyond that, it offers a basic sample editor for trimming, crossfading, and slicing audio files; a Sample Extractor that's handy for separating clips in multiclip audio files; and processing and rendering with AU plug-ins. It will even follow your browsing in the Finder and automatically pop up to play audio files as you select them. But search is what this tool is all about.

At the simplest level, you can manually navigate the folders on your hard drives while AudioFinder displays the audio files they contain. Selecting an audio file plays it, and you can step sequentially or randomly through all found files or have AudioFinder automate that for you. When you find an audio file you want to use, drag-and-drop it (or a segment of it) to any location, including tracks of your DAW, or use various keystrokes to move, copy, or alias it to locations you've bookmarked. Alternatively, a single keystroke saves it in a Session Favorites list, allowing you to review your favorites later. Another handy temporary location, Playback History, shows everything played since launch.

One of AudioFinder's most powerful features is scanning. You point it to a folder, a single volume, or all volumes and have the program scan for all audio files nested within that structure. You can specify what kinds of file extensions to include in scans (.aif, .wav, .mp3, .rx2, and so on). Furthermore, you can create your own Scan Sets to make AudioFinder search areas that are not nested within each other. For example, if you've grouped your libraries according to genre but want to scan only some of the folders in a genre or selected folders across several genres, you would create a Scan Set.