Editing Large Audio Files

[[email protected]]

I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.

I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load and/or save the files.

Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors that are relatively quick?

Thank you in advance,
TomC

[Nil[_2_]]

On 26 Oct 2016, wrote in rec.audio.pro:

> I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
>
> I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load
> and/or save the files.
>
> Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors
> that are relatively quick?

Adobe Audition can take a while to open large files the first time, but
it creates an auxiliary index file that makes subsequent openings very
quick.

[John Williamson]

On 26/10/2016 21:53, wrote:
> I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
>
> I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load and/or save the files.
>
> Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors that are relatively quick?
>
> Thank you in advance,
> TomC
>
Audacity takes a long time to start the first time it opens a file, as
it splits files it records and edits into small blocks which it
reassembles when it saves the file for a number of reasons, including
converting them into a high bit depth uncompressed format for editing.
Once it's done this, it opens the files again much quicker the next
time. Saving as a .wav or .mp3 involves rendering the file to its
required format from the internal format used, so is processor intensive.

Another possibility is that your computer is getting old and needs
refreshing due to a general accumulation of background services and
fragmentation of the hard drives. Is this a sudden, new problem, or has
it been creeping up for a while? Sometimes OS updates foul up perfectly
good systems, no matter what the OS is. A sudden problem like this can
also be a warning of malware on your system.
--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[Mike Rivers[_2_]]

On 10/26/2016 4:53 PM, wrote:
> I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
> I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load and/or save the files.
> Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors that are relatively quick?

Size matters. One of the things you can do is get a faster disk drive.
They tell me that solid state drives, with the appropriate CPU and
operating system, can load file noticeably faster than mechanical hard
drives. And a fast CPU with a fast graphics processor can get the
editing program ready to go to work faster than a slower CPU using just
whatever graphics hardware is on the computer motherboard.

One of the things that adds to the "ready-to-go" time is creating the
file that draws the waveform on the screen. Sound Forge saves that data
along with the audio file (updating it as you work) so that as long as
the program knows where to find that file, the graphic display comes up
much quicker than the first time you open the audio file. But you can't
take advantage of this if you only open a file once, or come back to it
for further editing after you've moved it someplace else and the
waveform graphic file has to be rebuilt.

Have you considered making a cup of tea right after you push the "File
Open" button? If you don't have time to do that before the file is
loaded and ready to edit, then you're too impatient!

Are you talking ten minutes here? Or 30 seconds, when you wish it would
take only 5 seconds?


--

For a good time, call http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com

[geoff]

On 27/10/2016 9:53 a.m., wrote:
> I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
>
> I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load and/or save the files.
>
> Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors that are relatively quick?
>
> Thank you in advance,
> TomC

What do you call large, or a long time ?

With SF I just opened a 500MB+ 16/s/44k1 WAV file (a whole CD) on an
old clunker Pentium 4 with 2GB RAM and IDE hard drives in way less than
6 seconds including the peak-file-building.

Saving is of course a different case if any processing is required.
Saving the same as a 320kbps MP3 took a little longer - around 40
seconds - which would be way quicker on a more powerful PC. Similarly
saving as a different spec WAV (especially if involving dithering to a
different bit-depth, or moreso sample-rate conversion) was slower still.
Remember the very low specs of this PC !

But none of the above slow slow to cause me stress even if having drunk
waaaay to much coffee.

Maybe you have a computer problem (HDD speed )?

geoff

[[email protected]]

On Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 6:14:52 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> On 27/10/2016 9:53 a.m., wrote:
> > I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
> >
> > I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load and/or save the files.
> >
> > Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors that are relatively quick?
> >
> > Thank you in advance,
> > TomC
>
> What do you call large, or a long time ?
>
> With SF I just opened a 500MB+ 16/s/44k1 WAV file (a whole CD) on an
> old clunker Pentium 4 with 2GB RAM and IDE hard drives in way less than
> 6 seconds including the peak-file-building.
>
> Saving is of course a different case if any processing is required.
> Saving the same as a 320kbps MP3 took a little longer - around 40
> seconds - which would be way quicker on a more powerful PC. Similarly
> saving as a different spec WAV (especially if involving dithering to a
> different bit-depth, or moreso sample-rate conversion) was slower still.
> Remember the very low specs of this PC !
>
> But none of the above slow slow to cause me stress even if having drunk
> waaaay to much coffee.
>
> Maybe you have a computer problem (HDD speed )?
>
> geoff

I think that part of the problem with MP3s is that most editors will have to convert an MP3 to WAV before it can edit it. You might want to look for programs that can edit MP3s natively, I don't even know if such a thing exists or is even possible, other than simple cutting.

m

[Trevor]

On 27/10/2016 7:58 AM, Nil wrote:
> On 26 Oct 2016, wrote in rec.audio.pro:
>
>> I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
>>
>> I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load
>> and/or save the files.
>>
>> Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors
>> that are relatively quick?
>
> Adobe Audition can take a while to open large files the first time, but
> it creates an auxiliary index file that makes subsequent openings very
> quick.

Ditto Sound Forge, and more importantly makes waveform display while
working quicker, which is the whole point.
Any modern computer with a fast CPU and solid state drive should open
very large files quick enough to not be a problem.

Trevor.

[Trevor]

On 27/10/2016 11:46 AM, wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 6:14:52 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
>> On 27/10/2016 9:53 a.m., wrote:
>>> I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
>>>
>>> I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to
>>> load and/or save the files.
>>>
>>> Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors
>>> that are relatively quick?
>>>
>>> Thank you in advance, TomC
>>
>> What do you call large, or a long time ?
>>
>> With SF I just opened a 500MB+ 16/s/44k1 WAV file (a whole CD) on
>> an old clunker Pentium 4 with 2GB RAM and IDE hard drives in way
>> less than 6 seconds including the peak-file-building.
>>
>> Saving is of course a different case if any processing is required.
>> Saving the same as a 320kbps MP3 took a little longer - around 40
>> seconds - which would be way quicker on a more powerful PC.
>> Similarly saving as a different spec WAV (especially if involving
>> dithering to a different bit-depth, or moreso sample-rate
>> conversion) was slower still. Remember the very low specs of this
>> PC !
>>
>> But none of the above slow slow to cause me stress even if having
>> drunk waaaay to much coffee.
>>
>> Maybe you have a computer problem (HDD speed )?
>>
>
> I think that part of the problem with MP3s is that most editors will
> have to convert an MP3 to WAV before it can edit it. You might want
> to look for programs that can edit MP3s natively, I don't even know
> if such a thing exists or is even possible, other than simple
> cutting.

Right, you can only cut MP3's losslessly, and even then only on block
boundaries. And change block gain. Anything else requires
decompressing/recompressing. However there is not much difference
opening an MP3 in Sound Forge, to a wave file anyway. Both are quick
enough for me on my system.

Trevor.

[Rasta Robert]

On 2016-10-27, > wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 6:14:52 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
>> On 27/10/2016 9:53 a.m., wrote:
>>> I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
>>>
>>> I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load
>>>> and/or save the files.
>>>
>>> Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors that
>>> are relatively quick?
>>>
>>> Thank you in advance,
>>> TomC
>>
>> What do you call large, or a long time ?
>>
>> With SF I just opened a 500MB+ 16/s/44k1 WAV file (a whole CD) on an
>> old clunker Pentium 4 with 2GB RAM and IDE hard drives in way less than
>> 6 seconds including the peak-file-building.
>>
>> Saving is of course a different case if any processing is required.
>> Saving the same as a 320kbps MP3 took a little longer - around 40
>> seconds - which would be way quicker on a more powerful PC. Similarly
>> saving as a different spec WAV (especially if involving dithering to a
>> different bit-depth, or moreso sample-rate conversion) was slower still.
>> Remember the very low specs of this PC !
>>
>> But none of the above slow slow to cause me stress even if having drunk
>> waaaay to much coffee.
>>
>> Maybe you have a computer problem (HDD speed )?
>>
>> geoff
>
> I think that part of the problem with MP3s is that most editors will have to
> convert an MP3 to WAV before it can edit it. You might want to look for
> programs that can edit MP3s natively, I don't even know if such a thing
> exists or is even possible, other than simple cutting.
>

The freeware MP3DirectCut does that: <http://www.mpesch3.de1.cc/mp3dc.html>

"mp3DirectCut is a fast and extensive audio editor and recorder for
compressed mp3. You can directly cut, copy, paste or change the volume
with no need to decompress your files for audio editing. This saves encoding
time and preserves the original quality, because nothing will be re-encoded"

[Scott Dorsey]

> wrote:
>I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
>
>I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load and/or save the files.
>
>Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors that are relatively quick?

The problem is that the first time you open it, it's converting everything
over to a different format, and that format in both cases consists of a
whole lot of different files which all have to be opened. It's not just in
memory. So you're getting a lot of that initial overhead.

Putting the intermediate stuff onto an SSD will speed it up dramatically.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[JackA]

On Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 8:46:43 PM UTC-4, wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 6:14:52 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > On 27/10/2016 9:53 a.m., wrote:
> > > I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
> > >
> > > I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load and/or save the files.
> > >
> > > Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors that are relatively quick?
> > >
> > > Thank you in advance,
> > > TomC
> >
> > What do you call large, or a long time ?
> >
> > With SF I just opened a 500MB+ 16/s/44k1 WAV file (a whole CD) on an
> > old clunker Pentium 4 with 2GB RAM and IDE hard drives in way less than
> > 6 seconds including the peak-file-building.
> >
> > Saving is of course a different case if any processing is required.
> > Saving the same as a 320kbps MP3 took a little longer - around 40
> > seconds - which would be way quicker on a more powerful PC. Similarly
> > saving as a different spec WAV (especially if involving dithering to a
> > different bit-depth, or moreso sample-rate conversion) was slower still..
> > Remember the very low specs of this PC !
> >
> > But none of the above slow slow to cause me stress even if having drunk
> > waaaay to much coffee.
> >
> > Maybe you have a computer problem (HDD speed )?
> >
> > geoff
>
> I think that part of the problem with MP3s is that most editors will have to convert an MP3 to WAV before it can edit it. You might want to look for programs that can edit MP3s natively, I don't even know if such a thing exists or is even possible, other than simple cutting.
>
> m

Correct, converted to (temporary) .WAV. If you need a fast way to save, I'd avoid .MP3 and use .FLAC, maybe even .WAV. Seems MP3 required more intense CPU activity while saving.

Jack

[Edi Zubovic]

On Wed, 26 Oct 2016 13:53:14 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

>I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
>
>I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load and/or save the files.
>
>Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors that are relatively quick?
>
>Thank you in advance,
>TomC

-- in Sound Forge's "Preferences" dialog you have an option not to
delete *.sfk files at exit. These indexing, or peak files make
reopening really faster as that "Building Peaks" wait time is skipped.
It can help with really large files. But actually people often ask how
to get rid of them after exiting the program.

I don't like saving really large files on a SSD. My operating system
is still Windows XP 32-bit (why, it served me well for decades) so I
installed 16 GB of RAM to build a RAM drive by installing a Super
Speed LLC RamDisk Plus driver. So XP takes about 3,5 GB and the rest
is RAM drive. It's about 6 - 7 times faster than the fastest SSD today
BUT if the system crashes during work, you have virtually nothing
left. So where time is money, one should consider this. No temp files
to try to rescue past work!

To avoid repetitive writing a large amount of data to SSD, I have a
standard hard drive for saving intermediate work onto.

Edi Zubovic, Crikvenica, Croatia

[david gourley[_2_]]

Edi Zubovic <edi.zubovic[rem >
said...news:ehj41clbh6op4cnoq9v3i5m5eveqkleeil@4ax .com:

> On Wed, 26 Oct 2016 13:53:14 -0700 (PDT),
> wrote:
>
>>I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
>>
>>I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load and/or
save the files.
>>
>>Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors that are
relatively quick?
>>
>>Thank you in advance,
>>TomC
>
> -- in Sound Forge's "Preferences" dialog you have an option not to
> delete *.sfk files at exit. These indexing, or peak files make
> reopening really faster as that "Building Peaks" wait time is skipped.
> It can help with really large files. But actually people often ask how
> to get rid of them after exiting the program.
>
> I don't like saving really large files on a SSD. My operating system
> is still Windows XP 32-bit (why, it served me well for decades) so I
> installed 16 GB of RAM to build a RAM drive by installing a Super
> Speed LLC RamDisk Plus driver. So XP takes about 3,5 GB and the rest
> is RAM drive. It's about 6 - 7 times faster than the fastest SSD today
> BUT if the system crashes during work, you have virtually nothing
> left. So where time is money, one should consider this. No temp files
> to try to rescue past work!
>
> To avoid repetitive writing a large amount of data to SSD, I have a
> standard hard drive for saving intermediate work onto.
>
> Edi Zubovic, Crikvenica, Croatia
>

I'll add that a SSD will gain you very little if anything on a system like
XP anyway. Using AHCI instead of IDE may be helpul but in the end there's
also no Trim support, either.

A crash notwithstanding, the ramdisk sounds like a great idea for the
purpose at hand.

david

---
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https://www.avast.com/antivirus

[James Price[_5_]]

I use Samplitude 11 and can load a 650MB wav file in approx. 6 or 7 seconds using an external (USB 3.0) HD. Samplitude creates an index file on the initial load which makes subsequent load times practically instantaneous.

[James Price[_5_]]

What are your system specs?

[JackA]

On Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 4:53:17 PM UTC-4, wrote:
> I regularly edit relative large audio files - wav or 320kMP3.
>
> I find that both Sound Forge and Audacity take a long time to load and/or save the files.
>
> Can anyone share helpful experiences with Digital Audio editors that are relatively quick?
>
> Thank you in advance,
> TomC

I use Goldwave (audio editor) on an old Acer laptop w/ XP Home. It loads .WAV files the quickest while .MP3 and 24bit .FLAC load slower (even though smaller files size).

Jack