NGWave Audio/Sound/MP3 Editor: Test 1: Interface
The first test sets out to both familiarize you with NGWave's interface, and shows that it is often faster and more efficient than other editors. NGWave's wave-form drawing is unmatched anywhere, using highly efficient code to update the display.Action: Bring up the Open File dialog by clicking the Open button, or choosing File, then Open from the menu bar. Note that you can preview any WAV or MP3 files right within the Open dialog.
Go ahead and open a file. Try to choose one that is roughly equal to a full song in CD quality to perform the rest of these tests. If you don't have any files to test with, you can snag a beat we put together from our downloads page.
Opening Files
NGWave may take a bit of time to open the file. Some editors work directly on the original sound file, so they are able to open files faster; NGWave doesn't do this, ensuring that your original file is never affected until you choose to Save your work.Some "professional" editors call this "non-destructive editing", but we don't like to use the term, since it implies that it's doing something special. In reality, this practice is pretty much standard; your file should never be modified until you save it.
While opening your file, NGWave is performing the following operations:
- Reading in (and decoding, if MP3) the sound data
- Converting to NGWave's internal 32-Bit format
- Analyzing peak levels (every 64 and 4096 samples)
- Writing the data to temporary files
Working with the File
Tip: Selecting a portion of audio is done with the left mouse button. Clicking near the vertical center of the display works with both channels of a stereo file; clicking near the top or bottom selects only the left or right channels, respectively.You can also move either end of the selection by clicking on that edge; you will see your mouse pointer change when you are near a selection boundary.
Action: Using the middle mouse button (if you have one), click on the wave-form display area and drag the display to the left and right.
Action: If you have a mouse wheel, use the wheel to zoom in and out. Notice that NGWave does not limit you to a power of two zoom ratio. Also note that when you zoom with the wheel, the data is centered so that the point under the mouse pointer remains under the mouse pointer.
The amount that the wheel zooms in and out is configurable.
Action: If you have a five button mouse (such as the Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer), click the Back and Forward buttons to stop and start audio playback.
Controlling playback is the default setting, but you can configure these extra buttons to zoom in and out, start and stop playback, or function as Undo/Redo buttons.
Action: Press CTRL + J -- this puts the zoom ratio at 1:1 (each pixel represents one audio sample).
Action: Press CTRL + L -- this zooms out fully. The actual zoom ratio depends on the size of the file.
Action: highlight an area (Click 'n' Drag with the left mouse button), then press CTRL + K. This zooms the display to view the entire selection.
Notice where the J, K, and L keys are located on your keyboard. The shortcut keys correspond with Zoomed Fully In, Zoomed to Selection, and Zoomed Fully Out, respectively.
Action: Zoom out to just above 64:1, and start audio playback. You can press the space-bar to toggle playback, or you can use the audio control toolbar underneath the wave display.
Depending on your video card and CPU speed, NGWave scrolls the wave data as smoothly as is possible, with no tearing (typically seen as horizontal and diagonal distortions or rips in the display) if your adaptor supports vertical sync (most any modern video card will perform nicely).
Other Interface Features
NGWave lets you drag the display using your middle-mouse button, but you can also click and drag the bottom section of the wave-form display with your left button.You can also manually key-in your Selection start, end, and length fields, as well as the zoom ratio. Simply click on those fields in NGWave's status area. See the help file for more details on this feature.
There are many more unique display and interface options available, and the help file describes them in detail.
