Written By:
Date Posted: July 26, 2002

There is a 10 band Graphic Equalizer which will allow you to tune the individual frequencies of your sound. The editing window will allow you to tweak up to 6 tracks at once which can be a great time saver. Editing and applying effects on more than one track at once is possible again saving time. Once you have the sounds as you want, you can then mix them down to a standard stereo WAV or MP3.

For those of you who have not used a sound editing program before, Stomp, Inc. also have a very comprehensive HTML help file covering everything that the program can do and how to do it (and in most cases why). There are also some great tutorials from how to load/import a file to editing the soundtrack of an .AVI using the preview window for the video. This is an important thing to note as whilst the GUI is nicely laid out and very intuitive using familiar symbols for control, the more advanced features may not be grasped as quickly and easily by all. I did find myself hovering the mouse pointer over certain buttons waiting for a popup to explain its function but alas none was forthcoming. This would be a useful addition and allow user's to learn more quickly all of the program's GUI functions, instead of having to continually go back and read the help files all the time if you get stuck.

Where this program really shows its usefulness however is in its soundtrack editing capabilities. I imported an MPEG1 movie that I had created about 3 months ago (basically a 13min mpeg for my Quake III Arena gaming clan) into MySoundStudio. It displayed the video as a snapshot timeframe above the soundtrack entries below. I was then able to edit the soundtrack in the video how I wanted, in this case, add fade in and out at the appropriate places, some reverb here and there, pan the sound from left to right etc, etc. Having a resizable preview window of the actual video is a great help, in that there was little need to keep previewing it all to make sure that I had edited the sound in the correct place. Once I was happy with the sound, just export the finished article back out as .AVI and it's ready to go. From there I can use any basic video program to convert the finished .AVI to any format I like such as DivX or VCD. Certainly a lot quicker than using a more basic program, and having to make a lot of notes about what the exact time is to adjust it, test it, reload it, adjust it again &&&&. you get the idea :) (Loading in a DivX film is possible but the higher the quality of the film the more resources it will need to be played, which if your trying to edit it is going to slow down your system quite a bit). Having the extra effects there such as the reverb and pan also lets you use your imagination more and isn't as limiting as just simple fades. MySoundStudio is a very easy and powerful tool to use, giving you some very nice effects that can be individually tweaked to your liking and preferences to create a unique sound or atmosphere of your own.

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