Digital audio is currently exploding into the marketplace due to a couple of important market phenomena. The first is HD Audio, which features 24-bit, 96 kHz quality levels, and the second is a proliferation of consumer electronics genres that leverage digital audio specifically. These include digital automobile dashboards that run apps, iTVs that feature both HD and UHD high-definition screens and high-quality digital audio, home appliance devices, remote home control devices, drones, robots, affordable gaming consoles, interactive set-top boxes, digital home theater systems, home media centers, and similar new gadgetry that includes high-quality digital audio, which is what this book is all about. Of course, I will also cover your standard PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, e-book readers, notebooks, and netbooks that currently populate the marketplace today.
Digital Audio Editing Fundamentals
was intended for HTML5 web site developers, multimedia producers, Android 6 application developers, HTML5 application developers, Java and JavaFX application developers, social media entrepreneurs, podcasters, digital audio user-interface designers, digital audio user-experience designers, or social media users of audio-centric web sites such as
SoundCloud
,
Dubbler
,
Eevzdrop
,
DigiSocial
, and
MySpace
. In fact, just about anyone who is interested in generating high-quality, digital audio music, vocals, or other audio assets, such as special effects, delivered using popular MPEG-4, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, AIFF, AMR, or MP3 digital audio file formats, will be interested in this
Digital Audio Editing Fundamentals
book.
This book covers digital audio editing and compositing. In the early chapters, this equates to fundamentals: terms, topics, concepts, and definitions. Every subsequent chapter builds upon the knowledge of the previous chapter, so the editing chapters in the book have readers creating advanced digital audio editing moves, using audio filters, analysis tools, and algorithms to apply special effects, create tracks, and the like.
There’s even coverage at the end of this book regarding digital audio data footprint optimization, as well as creating digital audio compositing pipelines using open source platforms such as Java 8, JavaFX, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Nyquist 3, and Android Studio 2.0, as well as information covering platforms and consumer electronics devices.
This digital audio fundamentals title will bring you from someone who has no real knowledge of how analog audio or digital audio works, much less how to bridge the two, to teach you about the history, concepts, and algorithms that encompass digital audio.
Chapter
focuses on a foundation of digital audio—the sound wave—and makes sure that you have a professional digital audio editing and compositing software package called Audacity 2.1.1 installed on your multimedia production workstation.
Chapter
covers the fascinating history of digital audio and the emergence of digital audio on personal computer systems with the advent of MIDI keyboards. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, and you will see how it worked with synthesizer keyboards, and later sampling keyboards, until powerful modern-day sound design workstations and digital audio editors finally came into their own.
Chapter
covers audio data sampling, allowing the reproduction of highly accurate digital audio samples. You will learn about sample resolution and sampling frequency, as well as the mathematics of digital audio and how to use Audacity 2.1 to record your own digital audio sample data.
Chapter
covers digital audio transmission and the data formats that are used to stream and to play digital audio over the Internet, as well as in multimedia application development using platforms such as Android Studio, Java 8, or JavaFX, and HTML5 operating systems, such as Google’s Chrome OS, Mozilla Firefox OS, Canonical Ubuntu Touch OS, Jolla Sailfish OS, Opera OS, and Tizen OS.
Chapter
covers the clean-up of digital audio using noise removal algorithms, as this is the first step that you want to take in your sample recording and editing work process to remove background noise and hiss, and all the extra data footprint the hiss and noise brings along.
Chapter
covers digital audio editor tools, including Audacity 2.1 Trimming tools, Data Selection tools, Alignment tools, and real-time audio data preview tools, such as the Digital Audio Scrubbing tools. This chapter gets you closer to the core Audacity editing tools.
Chapter
gets into the more manual labor (by not using any algorithms, which do editing “moves” for you). I call it “sample surgery” for fine-tuning your digital audio editing work process and for removing artifacts within your digital audio data samples, whether they are outside of your waveforms (manual editing) or an integrated part of a waveform (algorithmic editing).
Chapter
covers the automation of audio editing work using digital audio editing algorithms. Audacity allows hundreds of these algorithms to be added to your toolset by using plug-ins that you can download and install from the Internet. You can add processing power to your digital audio editing software any time that you feel like it.
Chapter
uncovers the visualization of digital audio sample data using Audacity spectral analysis tools, which use the Nyquist 3 programming language, so that more of these spectral analysis tools can be added to Audacity 2.1 using the plug-in architecture.
Chapter
10
discusses Audacity 2.1’s capabilities in creating digital audio compositing pipelines using the Tracks feature, which is like the Layers feature found in digital image compositing software like GIMP 2.8 and Adobe Photoshop CS6. Audacity 2.1 Tracks allow you to layer your digital audio assets to create a complex digital audio asset creation pipeline.
Chapter
11
gets into the fascinating area of digital audio synthesis through usage of Nyquist Generator plug-ins, which I show you how to load into Audacity using Internet search. I double the amount of synthesizers in Audacity during this fun and informative chapter, making the digital audio editing software even more powerful than it is already.
Chapter
12
covers audio data footprint optimization and what the work process should be to see how much system memory your digital audio samples require, as well as how to ascertain which digital audio codec and data format is the optimal one to utilize for your multimedia production purposes.
Chapter
13
covers how all open source computer programming languages factor into digital audio compositing, both inside of Audacity 2.1.1, as well as with popular open source content delivery platforms, such as Java 8, JavaFX 8, Android Studio 2.0, HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, and Amazon Kindle Fire and EPUB 3 for e-book content publishing.
Chapter
14
covers content publishing platforms that support popular digital audio data formats. It also covers the different consumer electronics devices that support digital audio, including those that are most likely to support HD digital audio formats.
If you are interested in digital audio editing, synthesis, sampling, or sound design, and you want to learn the fundamentals and how everything works in the digital domain—from analog sound waves, to MIDI, to synthesis, to navigating a digital audio compositing pipeline, to special effects, to audio data spectral analysis, then this is book for you. Although it is a “fundamentals” book, it covers quite a lot of detail regarding a large spectrum (no pun intended) of digital audio concepts, work processes, terminology, content platforms, digital audio data formats, open programming languages, and digital audio content publishing opportunities.
Chock full of tips, tricks, editing tools, topics, concepts, terminology, techniques, algorithms, and work processes, this
Digital Audio Editing Fundamentals
book can help you to transition from a digital audio editing amateur to the knowledgeable digital audio synthesis, sound design, and audio compositing professional that you seek to become. Improve your digital audio editing, special effects, spectral analysis, and compositing production skills today using this complete, yet concise fundamentals title.