Cedar Audio has announced the release of Cambridge V8, bringing numerous upgrades including video playback, allowing the visual content of up to eight A/V files to be viewed simultaneously while analysing and processing their audio content.
At the architectural level, Cedar Cambridge V8 boasts an expanded file processing system, with powerful new region categories that improve its ability to perform independent processing on multiple regions of the audio and greatly extend its transcription capabilities. The system also offers improved output mapping, an expanded Hot Keys section, and it has been upgraded to play, record and process at 192kHz.
Alongside this, it offers updates within its restoration and other processing modules, such as new tools in the enhanced Retouch 5 and Respeed, the addition of the ITU1770-2 and M-weighted standards in the Power Normaliser, and a revised Adaptive Limiter, which greatly extends the range of limiting and maximising effects obtainable.
Architectural upgrades
Not only can multiple regions be defined within an audio file, these can now be allocated to multiple user-defined categories to differentiate (for example) between multiple microphones or scenes in a soundtrack, between the various speakers in a conversation, or between speakers recorded during the course of a telephone call. Region categories are therefore an aid in the performance of transcription, especially when used in conjunction with the Report Generator. Other updates include a combined waveform/spectrogram view that shows both simultaneously to speed up the identification of audio events, and an increase in the maximum sample rate to 192kHz. In addition, a Midi Note scale now augments the standard frequency axes, harmonic markers aid the use of modules such as debuzz and the EQs, improve rendering and looping, and greater efficiency has been achieved when handling large numbers of edits in modules such as Retouch 5.
Most noticeably, the video playback system allows users to extract and process the audio content from a range of A/V formats and view the visual content in a separate window while processing. Multiple files can be handled up to a maximum of eight audio tracks, and the required number of video windows will be created automatically.
Retouch 5
Retouch 5 introduces Previewing and a new Volume mode, which allows processing and listening exclusively to selected areas of the spectrogram. There’s also a new Pitch Shifter in Patch and Copy modes. This invokes a genuine pitch shift algorithm that takes into account the relative pitch of components within the audio selection, greatly aiding the correction of errors in harmonically rich material. There’s also a new paintbrush mode, and this allows pinpointing of problems and the ability to draw broad sweeps to identify complex sounds such as aircraft flying overhead, or birdsong.
Respeed
With new Hold and Invert functions, Respeed is now capable of creating a speed correction template using one audio file and applying it to another. Among other things, this allows correction of the speed of multitrack material held in separate files before mixing. The new version is also able to invert a template and reapply it, which makes it possible to correct unusual problems such as wandering tones before returning the audio to its original state.
Power Normaliser 2
Featuring two further loudness standards, the Power Normaliser is now more flexible for broadcast and cinematic production. ITU1770-2 uses a ‘gated loudness’ approach that omits quiet passages (such as the gaps between utterances) from the gain calculations, making it particularly suitable for speech. In addition to this, there’s now an M-weighted calculation, the standard being adopted by the film industry to assess audio loudness when listening at cinema playback levels.
The new version of the system runs on legacy Cedar Cambridge Q systems as well as the latest Cedar Cambridge Series III hardware running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Users are advised to upgrade to the latest specification to take advantage of all the new features.
Software upgrades to both the core system and to existing modules are provided free of additional charge to existing users. A full set of OS and hardware upgrade options are also offered.
Cedar Cambridge V8 is available immediately.
More: www.cedaraudio.com
