Soundboard by Ambrosia Software
I think it's safe to say that most podcasters on the Macintosh platform are probably familiar with Ambrosia Software, if they're not, they're missing out. Although their software development is not strictly audio, you can tell it is a passion of theirs because of how simple-to-use and intuitive their audio applications are. I've been using Ambrosia's WireTap Studio for some time now, and it is my go-to application for recording, cropping, trimming, normalizing, and adding effects to my audio for the MacNerdNews. My workflow would truly suffer without it. One really nice thing about their applications is that editing your audio is non-destructinve, so you can always get back what you've just cropped, trimmed, faded, or normalized. Allison Sheriden loves non-destructive editing, and so do I.
Right about now you're think, I thought the review is of Soundboard, not WireTap Studio. Well the reason I had to tell you a little bit about WireTap Studio, and why I will also mention WireTap Anywhere a little later, is because although these applications on their own are valuable and useful tools, Ambrosia was really clever to make software that has it's full potential for use when it's used with their other applications.
So what is Soundboard. Simply put it's a page of audio clips that can be triggered by either a click of the mouse, a key stroke, or a MIDI device such as a MIDI keyboard. If you chose keystrokes, there is no need to memorize which key it is because each audio sample is labeled with it's appropriate key. You can drag virtually any type of audio file into Soundboard. You can colour code each audio clip, you can also choose how it will react to your trigger, for example you can have it continually loop after being triggered or stop when it's finished. You can make it stop when you release the trigger or continue when you're holding down the button, and you can make so if it's trigger again while playing to have it start over or simply stop. Moving around sound clips is easy, and looks kind of cool actually, you can also create multiple Soundboards. You can import and export Soundboards allowing you to share them with others.
One thing I have to say is that Ambrosia's support is great. I sent a twitter message to them and with an hour I had a reply. I did find a few things I didn't like about Soundboard. One is that although you have the option to add FX to the entire Soundboard, you can apply them to individual clips. This of course you CAN do with WireTap Studio, and then drag the file into Soundboard. An interesting note here is that you can't drag a file out of WireTap Studio library onto your desktop you have to export it, BUT you can drag a file straight from the WireTap Studio library into Soundboard. When you start discovering things like this you realize why the apps work better as a group like I mentioned before. You also can't move audio clips between Soundboards, and this is something they claim is at the top of their list for a future update, I found this out when I posted a message on Twitter. One thing I found odd is that the Master Output window which allows you to add effects to the Soundboard as well as pan left and right if you want to, is a floating window. This means that it always floats above other windows. To be honest, I'm not sure why....you can't even trigger soundboard unless it's in the front, so why have the Master Output window float in front of everything else. Maybe it will still be triggered if you're using a MIDI keyboard, I didn't test this out. I'm sure there is a reason, I found it kind of annoying, but it definitely isn't a deal breaker. Update: One thing I didn't notice at first was that the Master Output has an option to be "Always visible" or not. The default after installation is to make the window float above all applications, but un-checking the "Always visible" option in the preferences fixes this. (Thanks again to Ambrosia for support!)
It is a great tool for podcasting, but one short fall it has is that Garageband or other software can't recognize it as an input, so there is no way of sending the audio to other software. You can record it with WireTap Studio, along with one other source, but here's where another piece of Software from Ambrosia comes in handy and that is WireTap Anywhere. WireTap Anywhere lets you send audio to any application, and it's recognized by the software as an audio source. I don't have WireTap Anywhere but I definitely can see the value in it.
So who might use Soundboard. Well I'm sure you can think of a list of people, DJ's, Podcaters, and Live Performers. I found an interesting way to use it with the MacNerdNews. For those of you that listen to the end of the MacReivewCast you 'll know that Darren and I usually do a skit. What I do with the individually recorded audio is chop it up into each of our lines, then piece it together so it flows like a conversation. One trigger after another, capture the audio with WireTap Studio, then I export all my audio files onto the desktop and piece it all together in Garageband. The screencast demonstrates this.
If you think you could use this application in your podcasting, DJ'ing or, live performances, check out Soundboard by ambrosia software, it's only $29, that's right $29.
