TwistedWave was updated to version 1.2.1. You can download it from the link available on our home page. It consists mainly of bug fixes, described in detail in the release notes.

From the release notes:

New Features

• Ready for Leopard!
• Reading/Writing FLAC files.
• Reading OGG/Vorbis files.
• Saving CAF files.
• It is possible to choose the sample size, bit rate and codec when saving a file.
• Added the cursor position and (optional) selection length in the toolbar.
• Added two dialogs for editing the cursor position and selection.
• Added the ability to reorder the channels.
• The file duration is displayed in the status bar.
• Added support for splitted multichannel files.
• Double click to select a whole channel, triple click to select all.
• Added the ‘Invert Polarity’ effect.
• It is possible to change the timeline font size.

Fixes and Improvements

• Recording would crash if the sound file and input device didn’t have the same number of channels.
• Previewing the “Change Speed” effect could crash.
• The check for updates should pass through proxies.
• The help buttons would not always open the documentation at the right page.
• Shift-clicking will select everything between the cursor and the mouse pointer.
• Improved the way TwistedWave follows the wave when recording.

Here’s a few comments on the main new features:

Cursor Position and Selection in the Toolbar

The Toolbar can now show the current cursor position, and the length
of the selection. Only the cursor position is included in the default
Toolbar. You can add the selection length by right-clicking the
toolbar, and selecting “Customize Toolbar…”.

If you had already used TwistedWave 1.0 or 1.1, the old toolbar was
saved in your preferences, and the cursor position will not show up.
You can customize the toolbar, and select the default toolbar.

Clicking on any of these two new items opens a dialog that allows you
to enter a precise position for the cursor, or the start and end
positions for the current selection.

Cursor position editor

The cursor position editor allows you to enter a numerical value for
the time you want to move the cursor to. This dialog allows a number
of formats for specifying the time, such as 10s for 10 seconds, or
1m25 for 1 minute and 25 seconds.

Selection editor

Exactly as with the cursor position editor, the selection editor
allows you to enter the precise duration of the selection, or specify
the start or end time.

An interesting feature of this dialog is the list of checkboxes on the
right hand side. They allow you to have a selection active only for a
selected number of channels. This can be useful if you want to have an
effect apply only on a subset of the channels. Some Audio Units, for
instance, are only able to work on stereo documents. You can now
easily select two channels, and apply the effect on these.

Reordering channels

In the Edit menu, you will now find this useful tool that allows you
to reorder the channels in a document.

With this tool, you can:

• Reorder the channels by drag and dropping them.
• Remove selected channels by pressing the delete key.
• Add channels by duplicating already existing ones.

Splitted multichannel files

Many audio file formats support more than two channels. These files
are already pretty well handled by TwistedWave.

Some applications, however, produce multichannel samples as a group of
mono files, one for each channel. These files are identified by a
.L/.R/.C/.LFE/.Ls/.Rs in the file name to indicate which channel they
represent.

When opening one of these files, TwistedWave automatically recognizes
that it is in fact a multichannel document, and opens all the other
similarly named files, one per channel.

Maybe the files you need to load don’t use the naming convention
described above. In that case, you can still manually select all the
files you want to open from the open panel, and check the option to
merge the channels from multiple files. If the channels don’t come up
in the right order, you can reorder them with the tool described just
above.

Editing a sound file consists mainly in copy/pasting and applying effects. Although TwistedWave lets you copy and paste bits of the sound file around in no time, applying a sound effect affects every sample, and takes more and more time as the file gets longer.

Repeatedly applying effects on a long file becomes a very tedious process. This is especially true with an ordinary audio editor, where you have to wait for an effect to be completely applied before you can do anything else.

Because having to stop for a minute between each step can turn you crazy, TwistedWave does all the job of applying the effects in the background.

Applying an effect

When you instruct TwistedWave to apply an effect, it immediately starts processing it in the background. The waveform display shows that area where the effect is to be applied in a lighter color, indicating the parts of the wave currently being processed by the background task. As the task advances, this lighter area reduces, revealing the updated waveform.

An audio unit being processed

What makes this really useful is that even though TwistedWave has not finished applying the effect, you can still continue working on your document. With the only limitation that the waveform does not show the effect applied, you can still copy/paste parts of the file, play it back, or apply more effects. Here is how all this works:

• Applying a second effect. TwistedWave will keep a list of all the effects to be applied, and the background task will work on them one by one. The waveform will still appear in its lighter color until all the effects have been applied.
• Playing back. When you play back a part of the file that still needs some processing, TwistedWave uses the most up to date data it has, and applies the pending effects in real time.
• Copy/pasting. When you copy and paste a part of the file, TwistedWave will remember where it came from, and as the original data is being updated, this is automatically reflected at the place where it was pasted.

Loading a file

It is likely that you will first notice that TwistedWave works in the background as soon as you open a large file for the first time. Instead of showing you a progress bar while the file is being loaded, as is usual with a regular audio editor, TwistedWave opens right away with the document window ready to work. In fact, loading a file is handled internally exactly as any other effect, and can be done in the background.

TwistedWave keeps track of where the sound data comes from at any time, even after it has been copy/pasted multiple times. Imagine the following scenario: you are working on a document, and want to insert a part of a very long file in it. You open the long file, copy the relevant part, paste it, and close the file. Now, TwistedWave knows that the file was needed for the data you pasted, and will continue loading it in the background.

Saving

Now that you have applied many effects, and that your song sounds really good, it is the good time to save it. This is the only time where TwistedWave needs to have all the effects processed completely. When you save your document, a progress bar appears, indicating that TwistedWave still has some tasks to complete before it can save your file.

Completing current tasks

When all the effects are processed, TwistedWave then proceeds to saving the file.

This is the place where you can find news related to TwistedWave, including updates, major bug fixes, special offers or any other kind of announces.

I will also occasionally post articles that may help you use TwistedWave more efficiently, describing how to take advantage of the more unusual features.

Stay tuned.