www.audiosignal.co.uk

Links

Academic

www.aes.org

Many of my articles for Hi-Fi News and Stereophile reference papers published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society or preprints of papers delivered at the AES’s twice-yearly Conventions. The AES website has search engines for both and allows you to purchase hard copies or Acrobat downloads online. Credit to the AES for having extended its electronic document archive to the earliest of its conventions and journals, and for keeping its prices reasonable (particularly if you become a member). Would that you could say the same of all other academic institutions.

Software

www.soundtechnology.com

For high-resolution FFT analysis I use Sound Technology Inc’s SpectraLAB software. It is versatile, easy to use and allows simple exportation of spectral data via the clipboard if you need to manipulate its appearance for publication, or other purposes, using graphing software. I’d be lost without it.

www.iowegian.com

I have found Iowegian International Corporation’s ScopeDSP a very useful piece of software for performing inverse FFTs, particularly when designing digital filters that are out of the ordinary. I also have Iowegian’s ScopeFIR Pro for conventional FIR filter design. Both programs are notably good value.

www.exactaudiocopy.de

I haven’t investigated Exact Audio Copy’s claim to be a more accurate CD ripper than competing programs but I can confirm that it works just as you would hope. It is also free, which clinches the deal.

www.goldenhawk.com

Goldenhawk’s CDRWIN CD authoring software is also free in Demonstration form, although this restricts it to 1× writing speed. It is the only program I have found for the PC which provides a level of control for audio CD creation to rival Digidesign’s MasterList CD (Mac only and expensive). Note that research by Digidesign has shown that CD writers generally perform better at their maximum available writing speed, not at 1× as you might expect. This is a good reason to splash out and buy the full version of CDRWIN.

www.adobe.com/products/audition/main.html

In May 2003 Syntrillium Software – creator of the Cool Edit line of audio editors – was acquired by Adobe Systems Incorporated. Cool Edit Pro is now Adobe Audition and Cool Edit 2000 has, shamefully, been discontinued, although attractive upgrade prices are being offered. With the proviso that I don’t use it professionally in a recording or broadcast studio environment, Cool Edit Pro/Audition is far and away the best audio editing software I’ve laid hands on, although to be fair I have not had an opportunity to try recent versions of Sound Forge. What I like about it are its ease of use (I’ve hardly ever had to refer to the manual), the range of features it offers out of the box (spending a small fortune on plug-ins appeals less when the money is your own) and its reliability in respect of doing things right. Its sampling rate conversion, for instance, is as clean as a whistle whereas many other audio editors I’ve measured are nonlinear and alias badly on downsampling. CE2000 was a bargain – almost as versatile as CEP but without its multichannel recording capability.

www.discwelder.com

I have found the ability to author DVD-As for listening and player tests extremely useful, not least because you can put tracks of different sampling rate and bit depth side by side on one disc. I reviewed Minnetonka’s discWelder Steel and Chrome when they were released in 2003, since when the keenly priced Bronze has been added to the line-up and new versions of the two more fully featured packages have been released. I experienced some compatibility problems with Steel and certain Pioneer players in the course of the review but I presume these have now been fixed. I have used Chrome (and now Chrome II) for numerous magazine projects since and wouldn’t be without it.

www.ramsete.com/aurora

Professor Angelo Farina is one of the unsung heroes of the audio academic establishment, not least for creating the range of Aurora plug-ins for Cool Edit/Audition. You can do some clever things with these, and at a fraction of what it would otherwise cost you. Note that I am not talking here about ways to create a funkier bass sound.

www.powerbasic.com

As an occasional programmer I find it much easier to write code in Basic than ‘terse’ C. PowerBASIC’s compilers are my choice: they generate fast, compact Windows 32-bit executables and DLLs with full access, if you want it, to the Windows API. I use Console Compiler v4 for console (text driven) executables and Compiler for Windows IDE v8 for GUI executables and DLLs. I also have Forms v1.5 for drag and drop dialog design. To enhance the appearance and functionality of console applications I use Perfect Sync’s Console Tools Pro.

Magazines

www.hifinews.co.uk

www.autocarmagazine.co.uk

www.racecar-engineering.com

www.stereophile.com

None of the magazines I have written for on a regular or frequent basis – Autocar, Hi-Fi News, Motor Sport or Racecar Engineering – has an extensive web site, although things are slowly improving. In early 2004 I became a Stereophile contributor and went up a league in respect of web backup, theirs being far and away the most impressive web edifice of any specialist audio magazine.

Friends and colleagues

www.goodimprint.com (or www.goodimprint.co.uk)

As well as being a fellow contributor to Hi-Fi News, Ivor Humphreys is a good friend from our days working together on Gramophone’s audio section (he as audio editor, me as audio consulting editor). In addition to his continuing journalistic activities he has diversified since leaving Gramophone into audio CD mastering (he masters the monthly cover discs for both Gramophone and Classic FM magazine), academic book typesetting and web page design. You’ll find his site a good advert for his skills and taste in the latter department.

www.photopartners.co.uk

David Prakel and I go back even further to what many regard (with rose-tinted spectacles) as the golden era of hi-fi journalism in general and Hi-Fi Answers in particular, initially under the editorship of Paul Benson. In fact we traded jobs on HFA – twice! After a distinguished career as an audio writer and providing desktop publishing services before most people knew what DTP was (as Benchmark Press), he has returned to a much older passion, photography, by setting up the Centre of Britain PhotoWorkshops Partnership with his wife Alison, who for many years worked at Kodak. After the better part of a year getting the premises and facilities just as they want them, they are now open for business. If you are interested in honing your photographic skills – film or digital – then check this out.

www.milleraudioresearch.com

Paul Miller, a fellow Hi-Fi News contributor, is the UK’s pre-eminent technical reviewer. Within the audio industry he is almost as well known for the audio test solutions he has created, both for review and production line QC purposes, beginning with the original Jitter Analyser. You can learn more about this aspect of his work here. As far as I’m aware he was the first reviewer to hit on the, in retrospect, obvious but nonetheless inspired idea of publishing review measurements on his web site that had to be omitted from the printed version due to space restrictions. Although I review less than Paul, I plan to do the same.

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