Ambrosia Software is probably best known for its Mac OS X games, and its professional screeenshot recording utility, Snapz Pro. WireTap Studio used to be called WireTap Pro, but that first shot at audio recording wasn’t too successful, mainly because it offered too little in the area of podcasting capabilities. That has changed dramatically with WireTap Studio, which has everything a podcasting pro may ever need, and more. The only thing I didn’t applaud was the bundling of sound effects: I would have liked to have more of those, but to be honest: the one that comes with the application is of a rare quality (Camel Audio)—almost on par with what Apple cooks up with Logic Studio.
The first time I launched WireTap Studio, I felt a bit overwhelmed. This is a recording utility with at least three windows to be opened simultaneously: the Recording Sessions, the Editor, and the Library window. The fourth window, which indeed should be open at all times, is the Controller. After scanning the manual, I found out I could start with the Controller opened and the other windows closed. That saves a lot of screen real estate, as the Controller is no bigger than about one segment of an Adobe InDesign palette.
The Controller has most of the functionality you will need when making a recording. The other windows come into play when the recording has been finished. One exception is when you want to make use of WireTap Studio’s Live Preview feature. That feature is unique to WireTap Studio and allows you to hear the audio as it will sound when edited, effects have been added, etc, all while recording. Effects include all of Apple’s Audio Units and the Camel Crusher plug-in. Effects can be added from the Controller.
Recording Two Channels Simultaneously
The Controller also allows you to set the audio format, the file name and recording group to which the recording must be added in the Library, and more. What I found especially appealing to WireTap Studio is that it enables you to record from two input channels simultaneously without any effort at all. Simply select the first channel from the Controller’s top most drop-down menu, and the second from the bottom menu, and you’re set to go. If you want, you can see the mix of the two channels to optimise recording.
I tested this by using a microphone as the first input and iTunes as the second. With the mixing levels setup, I could see the levels of each source relative to one another. However, in this case, I did find that WireTap Studio wasn’t as easy to use as I would have liked it to be. For example, when iTunes sounded too hard in relation to the microphone input, I couldn’t do much, except turn the volume on iTunes down. I could also change the mixing by adding an Effect to the iTunes channel alone.
The latter capability—that you can add effects to each of the recording channels separately—earns Wire Tap Studio good marks. In fact, while a true mixing board as you find it in Apple’s SoundTrack Pro might seem easier to work with, the approach taken by WireTap Studio is every bit as good in terms of ease-of-use and output quality. The only problem is that working with each channel separately is not as well documented as it should be.
At first, the Editor looks like it is not giving you control over each channel separately. The Editor shows your two channel waveforms laid on top of each other. It would appear as if this prevents you from editing each channel separately—for example, set the volume of each channel individually. At first, I was tempted to state that this is one of those things that sets a Pro application like SoundTrack Pro apart from WireTap Studio.
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A True Sound Editor?
But it turns out WireTap Studio is worthy of the “Studio” addition to its name more than I at least would originally have guessed from its appearance. Not only can it record from pretty much any audio source, including a microphone, an USB Skype phone handset, the Finder or any other Mac OS X application, it can mix these signals with any other supported input any way you like—and directly from the Editor window by dragging its control handles. The first channel’s control handles are at the left of the window, while the second channel’s are at right. Squeezing them makes the channel lose output power, while expanding them makes it sound louder.
Another Studio quality feature of WireTap Studio, and a feature that sets it apart from competing products in the same price range, is the non-destructive quality of the Editor. You can experiment with audio removal, effects, fades, and some four fade types, and never lose the original file. The Editor furthermore offers an easy way to mark locations in an audio file, and it doesn’t matter whether the audio has been recorded by WireTap Studio in the first place. As long as the file format is supported by WireTap, the Editor will function. The only thing you can’t do is have individual fades for each channels without the help of some effect.
Needless to say this feature alone makes WireTap Studio a serious contender for even more expensive programs, if podcasting and audio recording by itself (as opposed to synchronising with video) is what you need.
WireTap Studio also has robust session capabilities, meaning you can have recordings start and stop at pre-determined times of the day. You can even start up the Mac to start a recording session. Recordings can be split using a time-based approach or based on silence appearing in the recording. Sessions can have pre- and post-processing files (scripts, whatever) added to them.
The Library window holds all the recordings you’ve made and chose not to remove. The Library can be organised with recording groups, and from the Library you can drag recordings to a local folder, a server, an e-mail message, and more. This part of the program works much like Ambrosia’s Dragster program.
And so, WireTap Studio’s windowed interface approach makes sense after all. In fact, it allows you to really process those audio recordings in the best possible way, given the overall concept of the program. To podcasting publishers, WireTap Studio is an inexpensive and serious alternative to Pro applications like SoundTrack Pro. They can effectively record an interview with some background music while interviewing—saving time in the process. If you want to create a video podcast, then WireTap Studio will fall short. To be honest, that does surprise me. After all, Snapz Pro has video recording capabilities, so I guess Ambrosia would be able to integrate WireTap Studio with Snapz Pro.
Perhaps they’re working on this. If they are, WireTap Studio can only become an even more powerful, better recording utility than it is today.
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