[MW Forums]

Fission is the best tool I’ve found for identifying gaps in a variety of audio files and splitting those files into individual tracks. Its ability to edit files in their native format is a godsend. more

[Nobody]

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Fission is the best tool Ive found for identifying gaps in a variety of audio files and splitting those files into individual tracks. Its ability to edit files in their native format is a godsend.

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I too was excited when I first heard about Fission... there haven't been many tools for editing mp3, AAC, or Apple Lossless files. However, Fission's functionality is pitiful compared with its price. Macworld must have friends at Rogue Amoeba, or they're a good advertiser, because Fission should be freeware rather than $32! I just tried out the latest release, and although there are some improvements, there's still nothing that's worth awarding four stars to.

If, as you say, you're most impressed with Fission's ability to identify gaps in audio files and split those into individual tracks, you should check out a cool freeware product called AudioSlicer. Compared with Fission, its main drawback is that you can only work with mp3 files, but the developer plans to add support for more formats soon. AudioSlicer eschews the unnecessarily elaborate and complicated user interface of Fission--which looks like it can do a lot more than it can--and instead uses a simple, straightforward, and very easy to comprehend approach. It analyzes mp3 files and suggests splits, just like Fission. You can audition the split area and the audio around them. Unlike Fission, when you click "split" (there is no simple "split" function in Fission... try it, and you find you're not done yet), you can then easily re-merge the pieces (without using Undo).
AudioSlicer also lets you edit the ID3 tags for the newly split mp3 files and saves them to disk. Like Fission, that about sums up its talents. The only "audio editing" Fission can do beyond splits is adding fades, but presumably if you're splitting at a silence in the audio you don't need fades anyway...
For a freeware tool, it's also surprising that AudioSlicer has a nicely done Help manual in PDF that gets downloaded with the software.
Check it out... I haven't put it through all its paces yet, but from what I've tried so far, it's a bargain compared with Fission.
And no, I have no connection whatsoever with the developer of AudioSlicer. I just admire excellent freeware and disdain bloated shareware like Fission.
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[Chris Breen]

You're joking, right? No? Let's run it down:
1. AudioSlicer requires that you work with MP3 files. So if I've captured something as an AIFF file I have to use a lossy compressor to smush the thing just so I can split my files?
2. I tested a file captured in AAC format and converted to MP3 in iTunes. The MP3 version plays fine in iTunes. In AudioSlicer it's distorted at peak volumes.
3. AudioSlicer offers no waveform view -- nothing more than a list. So there's no way to eyeball that it's really slicing where it should. Instead I muck with a couple of fields and sliders in the hope that I come up with the right setting that accurately reflects what will happen when I split the files. And then I have to audition each file to make sure it got it right.
4. Tagging? The Export command's dialog box doesn't cut it.
5. No simple "Split" function in Fission? How about selecting the Split tool and clicking in the waveform where you'd like to create the split? Seems pretty simple to me.
6. When I finally attempted to export my file, the app crashed.
Sorry, llscotts, but I think you're barking up the wrong tree. For a free hunk of software AudioSlicer has a lot of potential, but it's no Fission.

[jhillestad]

I have been using Fission BUT I did get the upgrade price for having Audio Hijack Pro so it was a lot cheaper to buy. It works great. The only other program that comes close for me is mp3 trimmer - its like $10 and will do lossless splits but NO edits.

[Eytan]

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And no, I have no connection whatsoever with the developer of AudioSlicer. I just admire excellent freeware and disdain bloated shareware like Fission.
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I think you ignored one of the most useful features of Fission which is definitely NOT in audio Slicer - it lets you edit an AAV or MP3 without adding one more level of compression - at this point, no one can touch that and that alone is worth 32 (in my case 18).

[uchuugaka]

It's absolutely a fair price. They make good software that does exactly what it claims to do. If you need to compare prices, look at Sound Studio 3. More money, more function, not more expensive than the old SoundEdit 16 was in the OS9 days.
You could get the same with the free Adobe SoundBooth beta, if you have an Intel mac, and it is beta..

[RiversideGuy]

For taking a "continuous" recording of, say a vinyl album, I use Sound Studio. While you do manually mark the splits, you can "name" each split for the upcoming song and end up with files that are song titled. So I wouldn't look to Fission for that purpose. Besides, isn't it's major "feature" that it can resave edited AAC files without having to recompress the audio?
I DO have an issue (personal preference) for what I call excessive dead air between songs. So I want to open an AAC file, cut some stuff the front and back (i.e. leave what I consider a proper gap) and resave it without re-applying compression. BINGO, Fission fills that bill.
HOWEVER, the IS a deal-breaker. Open a file, make the cut I want and then I need a ton of clicks. I should be able to hit save and go on. Hit save and you get a dialog about choosing a format. Huh? I opened an AAC, I want to save it as a AAC. If I wanted to change formats, I'd use "Save As." Basic, standard Mac experience going back to 1984. So I am forced to choose AAC. Then I get a "do you want to replace this file?" dialog that I have to respond to. D/oh, I said save, why force me to respond to ANOTHER dialog.
Think we're done at this point? No way. Try and close the file and guess what? Another frakking dialog, this one a "do you really want to close this file with unsaved changes." Huh? I just DID save the frakking file with my changes.
None of this seems to be pointed out in this "review." ALL of this is a major barrier to using the product. Sure sounds to me that this is actually a bit of marketing, not an evaluation of actually using the product.

[Chris Breen]

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Open a file, make the cut I want and then I need a ton of clicks. I should be able to hit save and go on. Hit save and you get a dialog about choosing a format. Huh? I opened an AAC, I want to save it as a AAC.

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Huh? Just hit Return. The Save dialog clearly shows you that the default save setting saves the file in the original format. You don't need to choose another format unless you want to -- and having it in this dialog box is helpful in that you don't have to dash to some Export command to do the same thing.
As for the second Save, you're saving two different things here -- the first is the files you've split. The second is the original file, which you may wish to return to in its original state (so don't save) or save in its edited state (so proceed with save). How would you do it better?

[Nobody]

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You're joking, right? No? Let's run it down:
1. AudioSlicer requires that you work with MP3 files. So if I've captured something as an AIFF file I have to use a lossy compressor to smush the thing just so I can split my files?

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Nope... not joking at all. Fission is the joke, my friend. You need to think about what the use case for Fission might be. Clearly, you have a need for something like Fission. Presumably, you need Fission because you record long passages of audio that need to later be split up... For example, recording an LP to a digital format, you'll later want to split the track into individual songs. Quite reasonable, and there's no question that Fission does this. Only problem is, that's ALL it does.
I suggested AudioSlicer only because it does basically the same thing but is free. As I said, at the moment it only works with mp3 files, so that's a big limitation. If you're going to keep your songs in AIFF, you'll need something that edits AIFF. If you're working with vinyl, you'll also likely need something that does the following common audio editing tasks:

[*]Removes pops and clicks.
[*]Normalizes the sound level.
[*]Applies fades to the end of tracks.
[*]Enables other kinds of repairs that sometimes are necessary... for example, if you have a record that's perfect except for one skip, you'll need to slice the track apart and splice it back together. You may even need to insert a section of audio that you copy from one part of the song to another.
[*]Save the song in your chosen format.
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Those are just the basics. Now, which tasks does Fission do? I count 3 of the 5. This means if you pay $32 for Fission, you're still going to need another tool to do the rest of this for you.
I haven't tried Amadeus in years, but in a quick test just now, I'd say it does everything you would need, and it costs $2 less than Fission. HairerSoft is developing a "pro" version of Amadeus, now in a late beta test, that will be $40. Wouldn't you think that would be a better software package to recommend to Macworld's readers than Fission?

It's hard to imagine a scenario where a user would need to do nothing but split a long section of audio into pieces and possible add a few fades. If you know of one, I'd be curious to hear about it.


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2. I tested a file captured in AAC format and converted to MP3 in iTunes. The MP3 version plays fine in iTunes. In AudioSlicer it's distorted at peak volumes.




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Why would you ever capture audio into AAC? You wouldn't. You'd capture into a lossless format like AIFF or WAV and then convert it. In any case, the only AAC files I have on my system are protected file from the iTunes music store, so I did you one better... I converted an MP3 copy of "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot CP, which was downsampled from an AIFF original, to AAC, and then I converted it back to MP3. Talk about the potential for degraded audio!

Still, when I played it full blast in AudioSlicer, it sounded perfect. The file you were working with must have been recorded with clipping originally, and perhaps iTunes is compensating for it in playback.


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3. AudioSlicer offers no waveform view -- nothing more than a list. So there's no way to eyeball that it's really slicing where it should. Instead I muck with a couple of fields and sliders in the hope that I come up with the right setting that accurately reflects what will happen when I split the files. And then I have to audition each file to make sure it got it right.




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Again, let's think about your use case. Why do you need a waveform view if you're not going to be given the tools to edit the waveform? It's just for looks in a case like Fission. Audioslicer does its slicing much more simply and easily, and you can use your ears, rather than your eyes, to confirm that it's chosen a valid split point. With AudioSlicer, you already have the split points set up, with little audition icons to listen to the separate tracks, as well as to the audio just before and after the silence. This is, after all, audio, and your ears are a better judge of what's happening than your eyes.

Waveforms are only needed and useful if you're magnifying them greatly in order to make fine adjustments, or if you're trying to select a passage to copy it somewhere else, etc. But you can't do any of those things in Fission. Heck, you can't even do a basic copy and paste operation!


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4. Tagging? The Export command's dialog box doesn't cut it.




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I was referring to AudioSlicer's Info pane, which lets you edit the ID3 tags for each segment. Just click the big "I" icon in the toolbar, and select a segment. Of course, you can also enter this stuff in iTunes, so the ability to add ID3 tags is just icing on the cake... it's not a core requirement for audio editing. iTunes is, in fact, one of the best ID3 editors you'll find... and it's also free. :-)


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5. No simple "Split" function in Fission? How about selecting the Split tool and clicking in the waveform where you'd like to create the split? Seems pretty simple to me.




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Since we were talking about automated split functions (that's the feature you emphasized about Fission, which I quoted originally), I was referring to Fission's "smart split" tool. I set the sensitivity and then clicked on "Split," but at that point I found the interface confusing as to what I was seeing. Since AudioSlicer's whole functionality is splitting tracks, it (a) suggests splits when loading the track without having to be asked and (b) makes very clear what the segments are what you can do with them. You can't, for example, inadvertently drag a correctly positioned split mark, which is so easy to do in Fission.

That said, I agree that Fission's split functionality is pretty clear, and I'm not arguing that point.


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6. When I finally attempted to export my file, the app crashed.




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The same thing happened to me when I tried to export segments from Fission, but that was with the 1.0 release. I think Rogue Amoeba has improved Fission now, and I'm sure AudioSlicer will improve as well.


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Sorry, llscotts, but I think you're barking up the wrong tree. For a free hunk of software AudioSlicer has a lot of potential, but it's no Fission.



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I wasn't suggesting that AudioSlicer was the equivalent of Fission... I was suggesting that it meets your stated requirements: "Fission is the best tool Ive found for identifying gaps in a variety of audio files and splitting those files into individual tracks." I think AudioSlicer--once it can handle more than mp3 files--is fully comparable in that narrow requirement.

What galls me about Fission is that for the same price or not much more, you can get excellent, well established audio editing tools that will grow with the user's needs. Fission is $32 spent on a tiny part of an audio editing workflow, and is simply not worth it. When I moved to Mac OS X in 2001, I bought Sound Studio and was pleased with it for many years. At that time, Sound Studio was only $40 or so, I think, and it was the tops in its class. I haven't fully researched today's market for audio editing tools on the Mac, but just my quick look at Amadeus made me realize things have come a long way since Sound Studio was first released.

Another longstanding audio tool that many Mac users swear by is Audacity, which is a free open-source product that fully matches the functionality of Amadeus and a lot of what Sound Studio can do. Its interface isn't as nice, but it's skinnable, which might make up for that. I haven't tested the latest beta of Audacity, but I was pleased to see it can now natively edit mp3 files, and it's got a nice, usable waveform editor as well!
I just think Macworld is doing its readers a disservice by rating Fission so highly. There are a lot of people who'll buy it on your recommendation and realize they can't actually edit their audio files. I haven't tried it (since I use Soundtrack Pro for my audio editing nowadays), but I'll bet GarageBand can split audio files for you. Fission would be worthy of four stars if it were actually an audio editor that could natively handle both AAC and Apple Lossless... which is what I originally thought it was.
No disrespect intended... I just think your exuberance for this particular product is unwarranted. Users who actually shell out $32 are going to try to convince themselves that it's great, but eventually they'll be royally [bleeped] when they realize it can't do a simple task like merging two tracks, or laying one track down on top of another, or applying a core audio effect, or... and the list goes on.
Regards,
Leland
Musings from Mars

[Dan Frakes]

I'm chiming in here because I've been using Fission quite a bit lately, along with some of the other tools mentioned, as I've been converting older music formats to digital.

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I suggested AudioSlicer only because it does basically the same thing but is free. As I said, at the moment it only works with mp3 files, so that's a big limitation.

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To be fair, that's a huge limitation, and one that makes AudioSlicer useless to people working with formats other than MP3.

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If you're working with vinyl, you'll also likely need something that does the following common audio editing tasks:
Removes pops and clicks.
Normalizes the sound level.
Applies fades to the end of tracks.
Enables other kinds of repairs that sometimes are necessary... for example, if you have a record that's perfect except for one skip, you'll need to slice the track apart and splice it back together. You may even need to insert a section of audio that you copy from one part of the song to another.
* Save the song in your chosen format.
Those are just the basics. Now, which tasks does Fission do? I count 3 of the 5. This means if you pay $32 for Fission, you're still going to need another tool to do the rest of this for you.

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As someone who's been doing just such conversions recently, I can tell you that you can go cheap or you can do the job right. So far, I've found Fission to be the best tool for splitting tracks, and the $35 ClickRepair excellent for cleaning up noise without adversely affecting audio quality. Taken together, these tools aren't dirt-cheap, but their results for these specific tasks have been better than with other tools.

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I haven't tried Amadeus in years, but in a quick test just now, I'd say it does everything you would need, and it costs $2 less than Fission. HairerSoft is developing a "pro" version of Amadeus, now in a late beta test, that will be $40. Wouldn't you think that would be a better software package to recommend to Macworld's readers than Fission?

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Amadeus is a great app; we've recommended it to Macworld's readers several times, most recently in our August feature, where it received a 4.5-mouse rating, higher than Fission's 4. In fact, Chris actually mentioned Amadeus in the second paragraph of this review. That said, Amadeus doesn't do what Fission does as well as Fission does it.

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It's hard to imagine a scenario where a user would need to do nothing but split a long section of audio into pieces and possible add a few fades. If you know of one, I'd be curious to hear about it.

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You provided just such a scenario above: recording LPs, cassettes, MiniDiscs, and other analog sources to digital audio files. That's what I've been doing lately, and I've personally found Fission, when compared to CD Spin Doctor, Amadeus, Audacity, and other such tools, to be the best of the lot when it comes to splitting the resulting audio file into tracks.

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I just think Macworld is doing its readers a disservice by rating Fission so highly. There are a lot of people who'll buy it on your recommendation and realize they can't actually edit their audio files.

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Keep in mind that Chris didn't represent Fission as a full-featured audio editor. He described it, accurately, as "an audio editor that makes dividing long audio files into individual tracks as easy as possible." He reviewed it as such, and rated it based on the fact that it does what it claims to do very well and is -- at this point in time -- a truly unique product on the Mac platform. That doesn't mean it's the best audio editor on the Mac, nor does it mean it's the most full-featured. In fact, if Amadeus, Audacity, or other similar products included Fission's feature set, Chris might not have rated the latter as highly. But nothing else currently does.

[Halfdan]

re #Why would you ever capture audio into AAC? You wouldn't. You'd capture into a lossless format like AIFF or WAV and then convert it.#
i record a lot of internet radio directly into AAC using Audihijack pro. Often there are echoey bits (especially during applause)
IS ther an advantage to recording/capturing FIRST in Aiff and then converting to AAC?
re Fission - a good, albeit expensive product. I'm using it and its satisfactory SAVE FOR you can't
1. cut and paste
2. join tracks (mp3 trimmer does with mp3 files
If Fission upgrade the product to include those 2 elements/suggestions THEN the product is worth EVERY cent!
I've written to them twice on the point of 'joining' and all i receive back is a brush off not at this time - (but thanks for the money!)
- hope they're reading this!

[Fixx]

Now I would like to have Fusion too. Fission could also combine tracks to one without recompression. That would be useful.
BTW, there is not much sense worrying about Fission's lack of support for AIFF... for uncompressed audio it is best to use real audio editors. Of course, if Fission did it easily and it would fit to your workflow, then why not...

[Chris Breen]

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BTW, there is not much sense worrying about Fission's lack of support for AIFF

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Just to be clear, Fission supports AIFF.

[Nobody]

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I'm chiming in here because I've been using Fission quite a bit lately, along with some of the other tools mentioned, as I've been converting older music formats to digital.

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I suggested AudioSlicer only because it does basically the same thing but is free. As I said, at the moment it only works with mp3 files, so that's a big limitation.

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To be fair, that's a huge limitation, and one that makes AudioSlicer useless to people working with formats other than MP3.

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No argument there. If I were recording an LP into AIFF and needed to split it into 5 tracks, it takes all of 15 seconds with an editor like Audacity, Amadeus, or Sound Studio to do the trick. I do this all the time with 45s, recording one after another and then splitting them afterwards. If something like AudioSlicer eventually supports AIFF, I might open the recording and use it. In the meantime, it's a heckuva lot easier to just use the audio tool you record with to do the editing. But of course, Fission can't do the recording part.

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If you're working with vinyl, you'll also likely need something that does the following common audio editing tasks:
Removes pops and clicks.
Normalizes the sound level.
Applies fades to the end of tracks.
Enables other kinds of repairs that sometimes are necessary... for example, if you have a record that's perfect except for one skip, you'll need to slice the track apart and splice it back together. You may even need to insert a section of audio that you copy from one part of the song to another.
* Save the song in your chosen format.
Those are just the basics. Now, which tasks does Fission do? I count 3 of the 5. This means if you pay $32 for Fission, you're still going to need another tool to do the rest of this for you.

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As someone who's been doing just such conversions recently, I can tell you that you can go cheap or you can do the job right. So far, I've found Fission to be the best tool for splitting tracks, and the $35 ClickRepair excellent for cleaning up noise without adversely affecting audio quality. Taken together, these tools aren't dirt-cheap, but their results for these specific tasks have been better than with other tools.

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Absolutely. ClickRepair is a true MacGem (but I don't remember MacWorld ever covering it, and in a search just now I couldn't find a mention of it in your review pages). I wrote a long, quite positive review of ClickRepair back in October 2005, and it's even better now than it was then: "Vinyl Record Lovers Rejoice! ClickRepair Is a Must-Have Audio Cleaner".

But aren't you forgetting something? You still need some software on the front end of the vinyl-to-digital conversion process: Software to record with. So now you've got users hopping around in three different applications to do a simple task that could be done quicker and easier in any of the other audio editors I've mentioned. To promote Fission at its price tag is to place way too much value on that step in the process. I wouldn't feel nearly as strongly as I do if Fission were priced as a supplemental utility, for $8-$10. As it is, once you tack on the cost of time in saving, switching apps, saving, switching apps, over and over, most people would be better off with Sound Studio and will have paid no more for the privilege. What irks me about Fission is that Rogue Ameoba is pricing it as if it were a full-fledged audio editor, when it's not. MacWorld's constant promotion of it takes dollars from consumers who would be much better off with a software package that could do the whole life cycle.

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I just think Macworld is doing its readers a disservice by rating Fission so highly. There are a lot of people who'll buy it on your recommendation and realize they can't actually edit their audio files.

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Keep in mind that Chris didn't represent Fission as a full-featured audio editor. He described it, accurately, as "an audio editor that makes dividing long audio files into individual tracks as easy as possible." He reviewed it as such, and rated it based on the fact that it does what it claims to do very well and is -- at this point in time -- a truly unique product on the Mac platform. That doesn't mean it's the best audio editor on the Mac, nor does it mean it's the most full-featured. In fact, if Amadeus, Audacity, or other similar products included Fission's feature set, Chris might not have rated the latter as highly. But nothing else currently does.

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Speaking as someone who's been converting vinyl to audio for well over 5 years now, and not just as a hobby (I also developed and run the website Classic 45's), awarding 4 stars to Fission and covering a point release of it after you've already run a glowing article on its 1.0 version, is misleading to users by overemphasizing the need for and value of this particular step in a vinyl-to-digital workflow. If you have a good audio editor like Sound Studio or Soundtrack, Fission is a step that takes more time than it's worth. At the most, it's decoration on the icing of the cake, not even the icing itself (that would be something like ClickRepair).
Doesn't your point system for software grades include some consideration of value? I guess I always thought it did. Part of what I'm suggesting is that if value is part of your grading system, someone forgot to include that factor in this assessment.
In any case, thanks for listening and considering my viewpoint. I don't usually weigh in on Macworld's software opinions, but in this case it's a field I know a little something about, and I worry that a lot of readers who are struggling to figure out how to convert vinyl to audio will waste money on Fission that would be better spent on other aspects of the process.
Cheers,
Leland