APPLE SOUNDTRACK
Jan 1, 2004 12:00 PM, BY MARKKUS ROVITO
Will video kill the audio star or just create more wanna-bes? Hopefully neither, but when Apple introduced Final Cut Pro 4 in 2003, it also ushered in FCP's companion audio-arranging software, Soundtrack. Designed with the efforts of novices or even non-musicians in mind, Soundtrack presented digital-video editors with the simple means to create musical beds for their projects using prepackaged loops, regardless of the tempo or key of those loops. Soundtrack is now a stand-alone application that costs about 30 percent of the entire FCP4 package.
The question remains: Is Soundtrack a newbie program for audio dilettantes to try their hand at composing, or is it a legitimate tool for serious musicians? The truth is probably somewhere in between the two. Just as low-cost, pattern-based music software enabled many more people to attempt music making, the ongoing integration between video and audio software (seen not only with Final Cut and Soundtrack but also with Adobe Premiere and Audition, among others) certainly will encourage videographers to try to score their own work. It's so fun, you can't really blame them, and video and audio software share many linear-editing traits, such as the use of clips, envelopes, timelines and playheads. Hopefully, this type of software will nurture new multimedia artists rather than spawn another crop of half-baked musicians.
Famous Apple user-friendliness gives the traditionally sterile multitrack audio interface an iconographic flair, and Soundtrack does as seamless a job converting audio clips to various tempos and keys on the fly as any other Mac-compatible program. Users needn't know anything about video editing to use it; Soundtrack is truly stand-alone, which is both good and bad news. Although it's tough to knock Soundtrack for what it does, it's what it doesn't do that hurts. Apple has left out several key amenities that experienced computer musicians may miss, namely the ability to work with other programs through ReWire, ASIO, DirectConnect and so on; support for MIDI and external control surfaces; and, to a lesser extent, MP3-file support.
Soundtrack's system requirements aren't exactly casual, either. I tested the program on a new Apple PowerBook G4/1.25GHz with 512 MB of RAM and was able to build a song with about a dozen tracks and at least as many effects before the performance suffered.
CUE THE MUSIC
Soundtrack benefits greatly from Apple's design prowess. Three distinct sections characterize the interface: the Media Manager to the left, where users browse and preview audio and video clips; the track headers in the middle; and the Timeline, where most of the work takes place. All three elements occupy the same window; however, the Media Manager can break off into a separate window, and both it and the track headers can be hidden.
A Soundtrack session usually begins by dragging audio clips — either loops or one-shots — from the Media Manager to the Timeline. Soundtrack supports AIFF and WAV files and reads file tags within those files. Support for MP3 (or AAC, for that matter) would have been nice, but at least Soundtrack can read the file tags of Acid-formatted WAV files. The Media Manager's file browser lets you search your Mac's folders for any usable audio clips, either your own or from a sample collection.
One of the greatest advantages of Soundtrack is its DVD-ROM stocked with 4 GB of loops and one-shots, most of them tagged to include tempo, key, length, genre and other information. Not only is the size of this collection impressive; the quality of the samples from Apple and PowerFX is consistently high. Although Soundtrack supports 24-bit, 96kHz audio, most of the included samples are of the 16-bit, 44.1kHz variety. Mostly loops rather than one-shots, they range from acoustic and electric bass and guitar to tabla and bodhran percussion in genres like rock/blues, world, jazz, urban and country. There is at least a CD's worth of drum grooves and synth loops intended for electronic or dance music; however, my favorite material is probably the acoustic piano and stringed-instrument loops within the orchestral and cinematic genres. Many of them make excellent beds for dramatic hip-hop tunes or more uptempo club tracks. Acoustic rock, jazz and urban drum loops are also fresh, and some fantastic R&B horn riffs come straight out of the '70s — with the soul still attached. In general, the samples were recorded with supreme clarity and notable musicianship.
To sift through so much material, the Media Manager includes a fairly ingenious Search mode, in which clicking on an icon for a genre, type of instrument or descriptive word, such as dissonant or melodic, gives a list of results that you can sort by name, tempo, key or length. You can also refine the search results with a keyword; if I selected synths, I could refine the results by typing distorted. Once you select a sample, the Media Manager will preview it in the tempo and key of the project either while your project is playing or not. You can also read the tagged data of the sample to see its original tempo, key and so forth.
Soundtrack also includes a small companion application called Soundtrack Loop Utility, which you can use to add tags to your own samples or to change the tags of Soundtrack samples. The utility also lets you adjust a sample's transients, which are the beat markers that Soundtrack uses to calculate the time stretching of a clip.
WORK WITH ME, PEOPLE
Dragging a clip from the Media Manager to the Timeline will create a new track named after the clip. You can then change the track name and drag as many clips into one track as you wish; you can overlap clips, but Soundtrack will only play one clip at a time per track. If a clip is a loop, grab the end of the file and pull it out in the Timeline to repeat the loop as many times as you like. Clips can be split, or separate clips can be joined together. On the whole, however, audio editing is rather limited. Clips can be transposed up or down an octave, cut, copied, pasted and duplicated. You can adjust clips' offsets, or you can replace the source audio of a clip without changing the clip's properties. At this price, a little more freedom with cropping, as well as reverse play and some more advanced beat munging, would be welcome.
Each audio track, a maximum of 127 per session, has standard mute and solo buttons, as well as a button for launching the Effects window for a track and an effects bypass button. Each track has volume and pan sliders, but without a console-style mix window or support for external control, mixing can be a chore. Tracks can also expand to show any number of automation envelopes, including volume, pan and any available effects parameters. Envelope points can be cut, copied and pasted independent of the track's audio.
There are master envelopes for the entire mix's volume, tempo and transposition. A master transpose envelope only transposes loops that include key tagging, leaving one-shots or loops with no key assignment untouched.
If you import a video, Soundtrack creates a video and an audio track for the video. The audio track is not deletable, but it is mutable. Upon song export, the video's audio track can be left off. You can export a full mix, selected tracks or portions of the full mix or selected tracks. You can also create beat or time markers to help you sync audio to video scenes.
ROLL TAPE
As good as Soundtrack's sample library is, you get the hollow feeling that unless you create your own loops, the music isn't really your own. Loops created in other programs can be imported, but, luckily, Soundtrack also features its own recording from external sources. Soundtrack records in either a single-take or a multitake scenario. Windows for both types of recording let users choose the input and monitor source, as well as check input levels.
When recording a single take, the user sets the Playhead where the recording should start, and Soundtrack places the clip there when finished. When recording multiple takes, the user selects a record area in the Beat ruler, and the recording loops back to the beginning of that area to start another take until the musician stops recording. Each take resides in the Takes list, and users can delete takes or save them as loops or one-shots, as well as add them straight to the project. Recorded clips can be edited in the same manner as other imported loops in Soundtrack. For a program with a great interface and performance that is unfortunately limited by lack of third-party hardware and software support, recording is one of Soundtrack's saving graces.
SPECIAL EFFECTS
Also bolstering Soundtrack's appeal are its bundled Audio Units effect plug-ins, many of which offer incredible results. There are a dozen Apple effects, including several filters and EQs, as well as a simple reverb and delay. When adding plug-ins to a track, an Effects window opens that shows the available Audio Units. The window also shows the effects parameters and their controls, all of which can be selected for automation.
The Apple effects give usable results but border on mundane. However, the 19 Emagic plug-ins contain the real action. Most of them include a hardware-emulating interface that opens from an Advanced button in the Effects window. There's really no stinker in this bouquet. Some of my favorites include the powerful compressor, which can turn watery mixes into much chunkier soup, and the flanger, which sounded great while adding some trippiness to strings and horns. The Fat EQ lived up to its name, and the delays, Stereo Delay and Tape Delay, not only sounded excellent but also synched to tempo in several selectable groove values.
THAT'S A WRAP
I used Soundtrack to build a song using a mix of its prepackaged loops, as well as my own loops made in Propellerhead Reason and recorded material. The tempo and key correction was always flawless, whether for the pretagged loops or for my loops that I tagged with the Soundtrack Loop Utility. Aside from the limited audio editing and the lack of a mixer window, Soundtrack was a joy to use; the work flow was smooth and efficient. There are usually several different ways to do any one thing, whether through the menu bar, keyboard shortcuts, interface buttons or through a pop-up menu that appears when you Control-click on a track, ruler or the like.
For a program made by and large for novices, experienced musicians and producers can find a lot of freedom and utility in Soundtrack. In many ways, it lives up to the promise of Acid-style loop mastery on the Mac that earlier programs have struggled to deliver. However, it is difficult to shake the feeling of limitation within Soundtrack if you are used to working in programs that interface with external controllers or run in sync with other music applications. I hope that Soundtrack grows along with the people who dive into music because of it and who get bit by the production bug. For what it does now, it's a formidable loop library that justifies the price.
Product Summary
APPLE
SOUNDTRACK > $299
Pros: Enormous, high-quality sound library. Stable, effective operation. Well-designed interface. Many excellent plug-ins. Multitake external recording.
Cons: No MIDI or external control surface support. Limited audio editing. No MP3 support. Little support for other audio programs.
Contact: tel. (800) 692-7753; Web www.apple.com
System Requirements
Mac G4/500, dual 450 or faster; 384 MB RAM; OS 10.2.5 or higher; QuickTime 6.1 or higher; 5 GB hard-disk space; DVD-ROM
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