One of the best solutions I know of is Sound Forge software from Sony. This
product is available in a full professional version that has more bells and
whistles than the Space Shuttle and is a simplified but still highly capable
(and less expensive) product intended for home and less demanding busi-
ness uses. Both Sound Forge 8.0 and the simpler Sound Forge Audio Studio
are available at retailers and direct from http://www.sony.com/mediasoftware. This
product is miles beyond the simple sound recorder and editor usually sup-
plied with sound cards installed in laptops and desktops.Although you can (and should) use Sound Forge as a first-class digital record-
ing software utility, for me the heart of its facilities are on the repair side:
three different types of extremely flexible and capable equalization tools that
allow you to emphasize or deemphasize as many as 20 distinct frequencies in
a file or an infinitely adjustable graphic equalizer; an Audio Restoration tool
that permits you to sample a particular noise and then subtract it from the
sound file, and normalization and volume controls that can repair many sins
caused by weak recordings. In Figure 19-5 you can see a digitized waveform
from an analog recording, along with some of the options in the Audio
Restoration plug-in.Figure 19-5:
Sony’s
Sound
Forge 8.0
includes a
full suite of
repair and
enhance-
ment tools
for audio
files, an
extremely
useful tool
for road
warriors
who need
to edit
sound files
for use in
presenta-
tions or as
a source
for tran-
scriptions.298 Part V: The Software Side of Life