TwistedWave 1.9 was just released. The detailed list of new features, fixes and improvements can be found in the release notes. It can be downloaded from the home page. The main new features are the support for VST plugins, the ability to import YouTube soundtracks, and support for .wmv, .flv, .ac3 and Audiobook .m4b files with chapters, and speech synthesis.

VST plugins

In addition to Audio Unit plugins, TwistedWave now supports VST (Steinberg’s Virtual Studio Technology) plugins. It is now possible to use with TwistedWave the effect plugins that are not available as Audio Units.

TwistedWave handles VST plugins exactly as Audio Units. They can be loaded in an effect stack, or used with the batch processing.

Import YouTube soundtracks

TwistedWave can now import the soundtrack directly from a YouTube movie. Select “File / Import from YouTube” from the main menu, and you have the option to provide the URL (the web page address) of a YouTube web page. TwistedWave will then start loading the movie’s soundtrack which you can then edit, and save as a file on your disk.

Speech synthesis

TwistedWave now integrates Apple’s speech synthesis. Enter your text, select a voice, and the corresponding synthesized speech will be inserted in the current sound file.

Support for Audiobook .m4b files

It is now possible to read and save audiobook files in the .m4b format. When an audiobook is read or saved, TwistedWave converts the chapters to markers and back. This makes it very easy to add, rename or move chapters in an audiobook or podcast.

When the file is loaded in iTunes or an iPod, the current chapter is displayed, and it is possible to skip to the next/previous chapter, making it easier to navigate inside a long audio file.

Improved batch processing

The batch processing offers new actions, such as:

• A cut action to remove or keep a specific part in the audio file.
• Two actions to apply fades in or out to the beginning or end of the audio file.
• An action to reorder the channels in a multichannel audio file.
• A few actions to work with markers, such as adding or removing markers, or splitting the file by the markers.
• An action that can copy a metadata field to another, or save the file name in a metadata field.

Support for trackpad swipe and pinch gestures

TwistedWave now understands trackpad gestures. You can use pinch to zoom, and swipe to quickly move to the beginning or the end of the file.

Additionally, scrolling with the trackpad or magic mouse has been improved and is much smoother.

Improved the insert silence effect

If a region is selected when applying the insert silence effect, instead of inserting the silence at the cursor position, the selected region is first deleted, and replaced by the silence.

This new behavior can be particularly useful in combination with the silence detector. When you have selected all the silences, inserting a silence will automatically make all the selected silences the same length.

Selecting a part of the waveform usually results in a contiguous selection, starting where you clicked the mouse up to the point where you released it.

A non-contiguous selection can be thought of as being composed of several simple selections, several regions are selected simultaneously. Here is how a non-contiguous selection can look like:

Although TwistedWave has always been able to handle non-contiguous selections, it has recently gained more visibility with the silence detector, because it uses a non-contiguous selection to mark the silences in an audio file.

Making a non-contiguous selection

When you click the waveform, the current selection is discarded, and you start making another selection. In order to make a non-contiguous, you can option-click, and the existing selection will remain, and you start adding to it.

Additionally, you can option-shift-click and drag the mouse to remove an area from the selection.

Exactly as with a simple selection, you can adjust a non-contiguous selection by clicking on its edges, or shift-clicking if you want to avoid accidentally deselecting everything by clicking just a bit too far.

What for?

What can this be used for?

The interesting point about non-contiguous selections is that all the effects that can be applied on a selection also work on non-contiguous selections, and if you want to apply an effect with the same settings on different parts of an audio file, instead of selecting a piece of audio, apply an effect, selecting another part, and applying again, you can select all the parts you want to process simultaneously, and apply the effect.

The nice part is that TwistedWave remembers the selection you applied the effect on. If you want to apply your effect with a different preset, hit undo, and the audio you were working on is automatically reselected.

Also, as indicated above, a non-contiguous selection is a very helpful tool to mark the silences automatically detected in the sound file.

TwistedWave 1.8 was just released. The detailed list of new features, fixes and improvements can be found in the release notes. It can be downloaded from the home page. The main new features being the availability of a 64-bit version of TwistedWave, automatically splitting a sound file by detecting silences, and the ability to export iPhone ringtone files.

TwistedWave 64 bit

With Mac OS 10.6, Apple has completed the transition to 64 bit computing, and it is time for TwistedWave to jump on the bandwagon.

By going 64 bit, TwistedWave benefits from the ability to use a lot more memory, and deliver faster performance.

Running TwistedWave 64 with 32-bit Audio Units

In theory, a 32 bit application can load only 32 bit plugins, and a 64 bit application can load only 64 bit plugins. This would mean that TwistedWave 64 will not be able to load 32 bit Audio Units.

The problem is that today, the vast majority of Audio Units available is 32 bit only. In fact, from the hundred of plugins currently installed on my mac, all of them are 32 bit, except from the built-in Apple Audio Units, since Mac OS 10.6.

Using 32-bit Audio Units is possible

Without being able to run 32-bit Audio Units, a 64 bit TwistedWave would be useless to many.

For that reason, TwistedWave 64 incorporates a new technology that makes it able to load 32 and 64 bit Audio Units transparently. You will not even have to know you are running a 32 bit Audio Unit with TwistedWave 64.

Silence detector

If manually cutting a long file into many different parts, and saving them as individual files looks like a big waste of your time, you will be happy to use the silence detector built in TwistedWave that allows you to do exactly that.

In just a few steps, you can:

• Detect the silences
• Name the different parts
• Export as individual files

You can read more on how to automatically split an audio file.

Manually cutting a long file into many different parts, and saving them as individual files can be very tedious and quickly take a lot of time. In this article, I will demonstrate how easily this can be done with TwistedWave, thanks to the built-in silence detector.

Detecting the silences

When you want to split an audio file, the first task consists in detecting the silences, parts of the audio where there is no or little sound. Each time a silence appears in the file, this is a place where it should be cut. The silence detector is perfectly suited to this job. From the main menu, click Select / Detect Silences…, and here is what you get:

The simplicity of the interface reflects the fact that the task is fully automatic, and TwistedWave is able to detect the silences without any extra configuration. If you are working on a more complex sound file where the difference between the silences and the useful sounds is not obvious, you can see below how the expert mode of the silence detector can be used to fine-tune the way TwistedWave tells the silences from the rest of the file.

When the silence detector is opened, it first analyzes the audio, and previews the silences by selecting them, like this:

Seeing the image below may surprise you if you thought the selection always had to be contiguous. Well, it does not have to be, and this can be particularly useful in cases like this one. You can read more on non-contiguous selections.

When previewing the silences, you can start playing the audio, and TwistedWave will play all the selected silences. That way, you can make sure a useful sound was not selected by mistake.

After the audio was analyzed, from the pop-up button, you can select what to do with the silences in the audio file. When pressing the Apply button, one of several actions will be performed:

• Select Silences. This option will select the parts of the audio containing silence.
• Select Sounds. This is the opposite of the previous option, and only the areas not containing silence will be selected.
• Place Markers. Markers will be automatically placed at the beginning and end of each detected silence.
• Delete Silences. All the silences will be deleted.
• Delete Silences and Mark. All the silences will be deleted, and some markers will be placed where the cuts were made.

The option we are going to use is Delete Silences and Mark, which will give this when applied:

Naming the different parts

TwistedWave has automatically placed some markers at the places where the sound file should be cut. Now, it is convenient to give more explicit names to the markers, because they are going to be used to name the files.

Instead of double-clicking the markers one by one to rename them, the markers window provides a convenient way to rename all of them in one go. Double click the first one, and when you press return, the second is automatically selected to be renamed. You can also check the “Auto play” checkbox, and TwistedWave will automatically preview the audio starting at the marker you are renaming.

Splitting in individual files

Once you have placed the markers, and renamed them, the work is almost done. Select “Split by Markers” form the Markers menu, select the destination folder and file format, and TwistedWave does the rest:

The expert silence detector

On some occasions, there is no clear distinction between the silences and the rest of the file, and the simple detector will not correctly locate the silences in the sound file. In that case, you should switch to the expert mode, and you will have access to a number of settings that allow you to fine-tune the detection.

The expert silences detector looks like this:

A number of new parameters are available to control the silence detection. They are:

• Threshold. This parameter specifies the sound level in dB below which a sound is considered as silence. Note that when you open the silence detector, the sound file is analyzed, and this parameter is automatically set to a value that should be fine. You should only have to change this parameter in some cases where the distinction between sound and silence is less obvious.
• Minimum silence duration. This parameter specifies the minimum duration below which a silence is not considered. This can be useful when detecting silences from a file containing spoken text, and a small pause between two words should not be considered as silence.
• Minimum sound duration. This parameter specifies the minimum duration below which a sound is not considered as such, and will be treated as a silence. When a short noise is present during a silence, it can be desirable to still consider the silence as a whole, and ignore the sounds up to a given length.
• Left and right padding. When you want to cut the silences from a sound file, it may be necessary to keep around a fraction of a second of audio before and after each sound. If the sound fades out at the end, for instance, it may be necessary to keep it a bit longer even after it drops below the silence threshold.

For best results, here is how you should set the different parameters in the expert detector:

• First, set all the parameters to 0, except the threshold.
• If necessary, fine-tune the threshold so that all the silences are detected, even if some silence is found in the useful sounds.
• Increase the minimum silence duration just enough for the small silences in the middle of a sound to be ignored.
• If necessary, increase the minimum sound duration to ignore a short noise inside a silence.
• Increase the left and right padding values to keep a short silence before and after each useful sound.

Manually tweaking the silence detection

If the difference between the sounds and the silences is so small that the expert silence detector can’t make a correct detection, you still have the option to manually adjust the detection.

First, adjust the detection parameters as well as possible, and instead of cutting and marking the silences right now, select the option to “Select Silences”. Apply this, and close the silence detector.

Exactly as above, you should end up with a non-contiguous selection in the audio file:

You can adjust this selection by:

• Shift clicking its edges to adjust them.
• Option-click and drag the mouse to add a region to the selection in order to mark a silence that would not have been detected.
• Shift-Option-click and drag the mouse to remove a region from the selection to remove a silence that should be ignored, or to mark a sound that was ignored within a silence.

When this is done, make sure the option to Auto Mark Cuts is enabled, from the Markers menu, and press backspace, or Edit / Delete from the main menu. Then, export the files with “Split by Markers” and you are done.

As for all the updates released so far, TwistedWave 1.7 is freely available for all the registered users. It contains a number of new features, fixes and improvements, the most important ones being the new support for batch processing, and the DIRAC Time Stretch/Pitch Shift technology, licensed from The DSP Dimension, one of the best pitch shifting implementations, an excellent replacement for Apple’s built in pitch shifting algorithms.

The detailed list of new features, fixes and improvements can be found in the release notes. The most important ones are detailed below.

Batch processing

TwistedWave now has a very powerful batch processing engine. It can work on any number of files, and apply any number of effects on them, such as amplifying, applying an Audio Unit or changing the frame rate, for instance.

After a file has been processed, it can be saved in a different file format. Because TwistedWave can read and write in many different file formats, this makes a very powerful batch converter.

The batch processing can also be used to generate the waveform image from a list of files. This can be used to generate small images representing sound files to build a web site, for instance.

DIRAC Time Stretch/Pitch Shift technology

Before TwistedWave 1.7, the Change Pitch and Speed effect was using Apple’s built-in implementation.

Now, it uses the DIRAC Time Stretch/Pitch Shift technology, licensed from The DSP Dimension. It sounds very good, and is really usable for pro audio work.

The “Change Pitch and Speed” window has been extended with a few settings specific to the DIRAC algorithm, such as the formant correction that makes it possible to do a more natural pitch transformation.

The lambda setting offers the ability to select a time/frequency tradeoff. You can find more information on this in the manual, available directly by pressing the (?) button in the lower left corner of the window.

Pitch correction

Another feature available with the DIRAC technology is the automatic pitch correction. Given a piece of audio, DIRAC will automatically pitch shift it to the closest note. This is available from the main menu, in Effects / Pitch Correction…

Other improvements

• Support for saving WMA files.
• Added support for the MS and IMA4 ADPCM codec.
• Clicking on a marker moves the cursor.
• Selecting markers in the markers window selects the corresponding audio regin.
• Avoid doing a selection by mistake with a simple click.
• More bug fixes and improvements…

A new update is now available, TwistedWave1.6.3.dmg.

It contains a few new features and a bug fix, as described below:

Change the pitch and speed

As a replacement for the old “Change Speed” effect, you now have the “Change Pitch and Speed” effect. In addition to changing the speed of your audio, you can now alter its pitch, independently of the speed.

Loop crossfade

A new kind of crossfade is now available. When playing a piece of audio in loop, if it was not prepared specifically to be looped, you can hear an annoying click when the play head moves from the end to the start of the loop.

With the new “Loop Crossfade” effect, TwistedWave will blend the end of the loop with its beginning. You just have to specify the duration of the fading between the two ends of the loop, and the result can be looped seamlessly.

Bug fix

Since TwistedWave 1.6.1, a crash could occur when opening the preferences window. This was now fixed. I am sorry for the inconvenience.

Bug fix

By mistake, I have introduced a small bug in TwistedWave 1.6.1.
Namely, some Audio Unit Plugins, or the “Change Speed” effect can
freeze TwistedWave when they are applied. Fortunately, I could fix it
as soon I as was aware of the problem. The correction is now available
in TwistedWave 1.6.2.

Custom Fade

In addition to a bug fix, the 1.6.2 update just released contains a
new feature. In response to a customer request, I have added the
ability to apply Custom Fades. This is like a “Fade In” or “Fade Out”,
except that you can specify the gain an the start and at the end of
the selection.

This feature is available from the main menu, in “Effects / Custom
Fade…”.

If there is something you would really like TwistedWave to do, your
suggestion is always welcome. I am usually quite responsive, and will
consider any suggestion.

TwistedWave 1.6.1 is mainly a bug fixes update. It contains very few
new features or improvements, as you can see from the release notes
below.

It’s been a long time since the last update, but the good news is that
I have now started working full time on TwistedWave, and it shouldn’t
be long before updates with more exciting new features are released.

Minor improvements

• Adjustable buffer size.
• The selection is now replaced when pasting.
• Move the cursor to the beginning/end of the selection with option-left/right.
• Scroll left or right with page-up/page-down.
• The cursor remains visible when moving it with the arrow keys.

Fixes

• Improved play through with lower latency.
• The crash recovery could fail in some cases.
• A crash when loading T-RackS 3 plugins.
• Ozone4′s GUI could disappear in some cases.
• The audio could get corrupted when recording with an Apogee duet.
• Playing 192kHz files was broken.
• The manual would not open correctly from the help menu, or the help buttons.
• Marker names with accents wouldn’t show up correctly.
• Markers would be duplicated when converting to mono.
• The audio units from the effect stack were applied in the reverse order.
• Some audio unit plugins, such as soundhack’s ones could produce a few seconds of silence.
• TwistedWave could record with a wrong sampling rate, resulting in a pitch shifted audio.
• When recording, play through could play only on the left side in some cases.
• Some jpeg files did not work properly in mp4 files artwork metadata.
• Scrolling with shift + mouse wheel was broken.

Here is the list of new features and improvements from the release notes:

New Features

• Support for markers.
• Added the ability to manipulate cuts/crossfades.
• Automatically restore the session after a crash.
• Drag and dropping the selection.
• Play through when recording.
• Saving the color scheme presets.

Fixes and Improvements

• Wave64 support was broken on 10.4/intel.
• Ability to zoom when command dragging the overview window.

Support for markers

Editing cuts and crossfades

When applying a crossfade, it is not always easy to figure out what
part of the audio to select, and what the crossfade duration should be
for the best results. Undoing and trying with new settings each time
can quickly become tedious.

After a cut or crossfade is applied, TwistedWave now shows some
handles that allow you to tweak the duration of the crossfade, as well
as the in and out points.

Powerful crash recovery

If TwistedWave crashes, because of a faulty Audio Unit, a bug in
TwistedWave, or even a power failure, your work is not lost. The next
time TwistedWave is opened, all the documents you were working on will
be opened in the same state, your unsaved changes will not be lost,
and even the whole undo history remains intact.

Even if the crash or power failure happens during a recording, all the
sound recorded up to the crash will be restored.

Drag and dropping the selection

Right above the vertical ruler, a small icon represents the current
selection. If you drag and drop it in the finder, this will create a
new audio file containing the selected sound. If nothing is selected,
the whole sound will be exported.

This can provide a very fast and efficient way to split an audio file
into many different parts.

Because dropping repeatedly in the same folder will always create a
new file each time, it provides a convenient way to keep the whole
history of a file, by saving it after each edition.

Play through when recording

In order to monitor the sound exactly as it is being recorded,
TwistedWave now offers the option to play the recorded audio through
the output device.

To enable it, check the corresponding check box in the devices tab of
the preferences window.

Saving the color scheme presets

The waveform colors can be customized to a great extent, making
TwistedWave look exactly the way you want.

It is now possible to save the color schemes, and easily select one of
the previously saved schemes. Color schemes are saved in individual
files, allowing you to move your settings from one computer to
another, or exchange color schemes with friends.

Here is the list of new features and improvements:

New Features

• Added the ability to automatically apply a crossfade when deleting a region.
• Ability to export channels as individual files.
• Added the ability to register TwistedWave for all users.

Fixes and Improvements

• TwistedWave remembers the selection and cursor position when performing an undo/redo.
• The TimeReference is correctly updated when exporting the selection, creating a new doc with the selection, or changing the sampling rate.
• Fixed a crash when reading large files.
• Fixed some clicks when reading a 32bit floating point wav file.

Crossfades

Deleting a region from the middle of a file will produce a noticeable cut in the resulting file. This is often not desirable, and a common solution to such a problem is to apply a crossfade.

In order to apply a crossfade in TwistedWave, simply select the region you want to delete, and select Edit/Delete Crossfade… from the menu, or use the Command-Backspace shortcut. A window will pop-up asking you for the duration of the crossfade, and will then proceed to mix the audio before and after the region deleted in order to make the transition smoother.

In addition to the crossfade duration, a pop-up button allows you to use a fade out followed by a fade in instead of the crossfade.

Exporting individual channels

From the File menu, a new option allows you to save channels as individual files. It first asks you for a file name, then proceeds to saving the individual channels, each with a file name ending with _1, _2, _3… up to the number of channels present in the current document.

Registering TwistedWave for all users

When you register TwistedWave, either by entering a serial number, or by purchasing directly from within the application, TwistedWave becomes registered only for the user that is currently logged in on your computer.

In the preferences window, an option allows you to make the registration available to all the users. This can be convenient when TwistedWave is installed on a Macintosh with several accounts, where more than one person could be using it.