The new and free Basic Edition of Acoustica is a good introduction to the program’s commercial and full-featured editions.
The program’s interface is attractive enough, though the lack of color contrasts makes it sometimes difficult to move around the various elements and graphs present in the screen. The selected audio file is presented as a waveform graph – a must when it comes to accurate editing. Times are presented also with an accuracy level down to the millisecond, which will help you to select specific audio fragments easily.
Together with the unavoidable cut, copy, and paste editing functions, Acoustica offers you in this basic edition some volume correction features and three simple audio effects. Volume can be normalized and adjusted in various ways. Probably the one that will grab your attention immediately is the “Draw a freehand volume curve” option. This will allow you to apply various volume levels to the same track in one go. As for the audio effects, reverse, echo, and convolution reverb are the only ones available.
The editing features are somehow limited, though they are certainly enough for the novice user and for those who merely want to have a glimpse of what to expect from the Acoustica commercial range of products. All in all, this free edition of the program will not disappoint anyone looking for good-quality, accurate results, as long as they do not involve highly sophisticated editing functions.
Pros
- Easy-to-use interface with an attractive design
- Excellent recording capabilities complete with clear controls
- Waveform graph for accurate editing
Cons
- Even for a free basic edition one would expect some more editing features