Transcribe! vs Amazing Slowdowner

[glauber]

I'm trying to decide if i buy Transcribe! or The Amazing Slowdowner. Their prices are similar, and the features seem similar too. The Slowdowner seems to have a prettier face, but i'm tending towards Transcribe! for two reasons:

(1) The markers are convenient to use, and the file format is logical, it's nice to add text notes, etc while working on the transcription.

(2) The feature it has, of analysing a sound sample to tell which notes are present, is very cool.

I'm wondering if anyone else here has checked out one or both of these and can tell me anything that would influence my decision. I'm also curious whether there are other applications available (cheaper, maybe?) that have similar functionality.

thanks,

glauber

[jmcgann]

ASD doesn't have the graphic thing, but I use it a lot and love it.

[danmills]

I love and recommend ASD. I hadn't used Transcribe! for a long time, so I downloaded the trial version and played with it for a while. It looks like it has lots of bells and whistles, but the UI looks like a major hassle to me. It's very spread out, lots of clicking to go to separate panes, lots of numbers, do this so you can do that, etc. Looks like it would suit an engineer's mentality, but not mine. I'd have to read the manual repeatedly to use it. In contrast, ASD does everything I need with just a few clicks, almost all in one display, and it's all very intuitive. In my book, that leaves more time for playing.

I mostly use it to play along with songs from my iTunes library after adjusting the pitch, either because the original is slightly off, or because I want to practice playing it in the key that I or someone in my band likes to sing it. It's really easy to go up or down a semitone at a time, or to fine tune the pitch. Sometimes I save the pitch adjusted song and put it on a CD for bandmates to use for their at-home practice.

I also use it to figure out mando details in kicks and breaks. You just count along with the rhythm, hit the "start" button when the break starts, and hit the "stop" button on the same beat at the end of the break. Presto, it plays a rhythmically smooth loop. I'll slow it down a little (or a lot) if I need to. Sometimes I adjust the mix either left or right to better isolate something (a voice or instrument) on a stereo recording. Same with the EQ. That's about it.

The one feature I would like, and maybe Transcribe! has it, would be to save the start/stop information with a name (e.g. "1st mando break") and associate it with the song file somehow, so the next time I open the same file, I could just choose from a menu of one or more loops that I had previously defined for the song. I'd also like to save the pitch adjustment too. As it is now, I can save the adjusted loop as a new sound file, but that's considerably more awkward. Instead, I keep a list of start/stop times in Excel which I can reenter if I want to, but in practice, I don't use this list all that often.

Have fun.
Dan

[250sc]

I use the ASD and it does everything I need but I haven't tried Transcribe so I can't compare them.

Good luck.

[Gary]

I recently downloaded trial versions of asd, transcribe! (version 6), and a few others (i think one was called slow gold or something). Right away I found transcribe to be easier to use than all the others. The interface just seemed more intuitive. Also, with the graphic waveform it seems much easier to navigate around the song. If you can, try downloading all the programs you can and test drive them.

Although i'm not totally sure think that you can name and save start/stop point in transcribe!.

i hope this helps,
gary

[glauber]

Although i'm not totally sure think that you can name and save start/stop point in transcribe!.

You can, kinda. You can define and save 10 loops per song (start/stop points). And you can insert arbitrary text anywhere (e.g.: "first break") in the song; you can use the text as points to jump to.

What ASD does better is to put all the controls in one window, while Transcribe! has several tabs' worth of controls, by type (mono/stereo, EQ, tuning, transposition, speed and misc -- tuning and tranposition are basically the same thing).

Another thing i like in Transpose! is the little "piano keyboard" that you can click on with the mouse, to compare notes against the sound file.

[Jeff Baldwin]

ASD gets my vote....I tried it after researching and trying Transcriber...
I bought ASD ...only use a couple of the feature...slowing down, slowing down on-the-fly (ie from CD) and looping ...great little tool....a clean machine...

jeff

[diamond ace]

ASD! all the way! gret program and very easy to use. Setting loops is a sinch and you can save the songs after you set them up to paly a speed and pitch you want.

great learning tool.

[danmills]

Silly me. I've been using ASD for a year or more, and I only just now figured out that it does exactly what I said in my previous post was missing (i.e. save a loop under a user-defined name associated with a particular song file).
Dan

[Pete Martin]

Audacity is a free download and works fine.