Sweep 0.9.1 review

Sweep is an audio editor and live playback tool for GNU/Linux, BSD and compatible systems

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Conrad Parker

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Sweep is an audio editor and live playback tool for GNU/Linux, BSD and compatible systems. Sweep project supports many music and voice formats including AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, Speex and MP3, with multichannel editing and LADSPA effects plugins.

Here are some key features of "Sweep":
Extreme ease of use:

Unlimited undo/redo with a fully revertible edit history
Multithreaded background rendering and file import/export: effects processing is not disabled during playback, providing instantaneous feedback.
Precise, interactive scrubbing
Multichannel file support: Sweep provides complete editing and processing for multichannel sound files.
Customisable keybindings available for all operations
Translations for French, Hungarian, Italian, German, Russian and Polish.

Support for many PCM and voice file formats via libsndfile by Erik de Castro Lopo:

at least 14 PCM sound file formats formats including WAV, W64, AIFF/AIFF-C, IFF/SVX, AU and raw PCM files.
PCM audio encoding formats including 8/16/24/32 bit PCM, 32 and 64 bit floating point, u-law, A-law and ADPCM
voice encoding formats including GSM 6.10, G721/G723 ADPCM, 12/16/24 bit DWVW

Support for Ogg Vorbis format audio files:

an exteremely high quality, free, open and unpatented perceptual audio codec.
supports intuitive variable bitrate encoding, where the Vorbis encoder makes low-level encoding decisions.
provides access to average bitrate controls, including bounds on minimum and maximum bitrate usage.
Sweep provides sensible defaults and remembers encoding options between sessions.

Support for Speex files:

a free, open and unpatented speech codec designed for Voice over IP (VoIP) and file-based compression.
supports optional variable bitrate and control over encoding complexity and frame packing.
Sweep provides sensible defaults and remembers encoding options between sessions.

Support for LADSPA effects plugins, including:

the Computer Music Toolkit by Richard Furse, containing high and low pass filters, compressors, delays, and a port of the popular Freeverb reverb unit.
SWH plugins, over 30 effects plugins by Steve Harris, including overdrives, comb filter, ring modulator, pitch scaler, chorus, flanger and various distortions.
more listed at ladspa.org

Powerful editing operations:

Cut, copy and paste insert: conventional cut or copy selected regions of a sound, and paste into the same or other sounds.
Discontinuous selections: select multiple regions of a sound and operate on these regions simultaneously
interactive moving and merging of selection boundaries
Selection invert, selection double/halve and selection shift left/right

Intuitive visualisation:

Multiple views per clip
Variable zooming to below 1:1 with mouse wheel support
View Center, Zoom to Selection, Zoom Normal
Easy differentiation of multiple files with 6 standard colour schemes including Decoder Red, Orangeboom, Coogee Bay Blue and Blackwattle.

Versatile playback modes:

Standard transport features: play/pause, stop, rewind, fast forward, scan reverse/forward, go to end/beginning.
Simultaneous playback of multiple files
Play all, play selection, and looping playback
Interactive reverse playback: includes reverse previews and reverse looping

Flexible recording:

independent record and playback heads
"tape loop" style recording
reverse recording

Device handling and portability:

Support for Open Sound System compatible audio devices (eg. stock Linux kernel), ALSA 0.6.0 and Solaris audio.
Intuitive control of application latency
Support for both little and big endian CPU architectures

Live playback "DJ" features:

Two-handed interactive scrubbing
Independent gain levels per file
+/-10% pitch slider
Piano-style sample playback

Requirements:
libsndfile
TDB
libvorbis
MAD
Secret Rabbit Code
Speex
SWH Plugins

What's New in This Release:
This maintainance release fixed a bug that prevented ALSA devices from being populated in the settings.
The bug was only apparent when you built with ALSA and didn't have a previous installation that used ALSA.
Upgrading is recommended if you have had problems getting any sound output.