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Cool Edit is a sound editor for Windows 95. It's the most feature packed
one I have seen, and in fact, may easily surpass several retail only ones.
If I tried to list everything Cool Edit can do - the whole SharePaper wouldn't
be enough. You may as well call Cool Edit a "sound processor".
Am I overly enthusiastic about Cool Edit? Read on. I'll try to point
out what I've found fantastic about this piece of software, and what in
my opinion still needs improvement. Let's start with the interface. Cool
Edit can open only one stereo wave at a time, but it's possible to have
several instances of Cool Edit running on your system. The editor supports
mixing through copy/cut and paste. It's primary purpose isn't that of a
mixer, however. What I don't like is a toolbar with plenty of hard to decipher
icons. They all have pop-up help lines, but I'd prefer an option to replace
them with clearly labeled buttons. The rest of main Cool Edit window contrasts
sharply with somewhat amateurish toolbar - menus, control panel at the
bottom and scale indicators are neatly organized and are very functional.
Cool Edit supports a lot of sound file formats - PCM, Microsoft ADPCM,
IMA/DVI ADPCM WAV, Sound Blaster VOC, raw PCM, SMP, ASCII Text, AU, Apple
AIFF being only few of them. It can adjust sample rate, bit rate, number
of channels and do byte swaps so I could play any sound file I come across
on my old battered 8-bit IBM sound card.
Playing and editing waves is what Cool Edit excels at, but it's only
a part of the performance. In fact you can generate your own tones (including
DTMF phone) and noises or apply numerous effects and filters to existing
sounds. Cool Edit does flange, reverb, echo, stretch and more. You've got
frequency analysis and spectral view that are way too professional for
an occasional user like me. Even if I'd use only 5 to 10 per cent of all
Cool Edit features, I like the fact that a lot more is there when I need
it. One can even write plug-ins to Cool Edit to extend editor's capabilities.
For times when you've got a lot files to process there's also a batch processing
capability.
I've been sifting through Cool Edit commands and features for quite
some time, and I still don't know what some of them do. Fortunately, the
editor has decent online help.
Evaluating Cool Edit can be cumbersome at times. In an unregistered
version all features work, but not all in the same session. This means
much exiting and re-starting.
Two registration options are available. Lite, which has some features
disabled, costs $25 and full is $50. If you're only going to do some simple
editing, you might be better off with GoldWave, however, for more advanced
users I wholeheartedly recommend this product. Shareware/demo |
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