Pro 4.0
by Jeffrey Powell
Once you select your song, it pitch by two semitones, and reduce appears in the play list in the lower the vocals on the same track. left corner of the interface. Click on the song in the list, and after a brief To aid you in working with the audio processing time, the song will be files, Riff Master Pro has a few other loaded into the waveform display. features. In the waveform view, you Now you’re ready to manipulate the can zoom in certain sections of audio playback of the song. Riff Master Pro and then set it up to loop that can do three different basic segment of audio. This is very useful manipulations to the song. First, and to focus in on a certain passage or most important, of all, you can solo that you want to work on. You change the playback speed of the can also place text notes on the song without changing the pitch. As waveform view to mark significant noted on the website, you can slow portions of the song. You’ll also find down the audio from 99% to 25% of a built in 10-band EQ (with preset the original speed of the song. While loading and saving capability) to help it’s not necessarily clear why it would better hear the frequencies you need be helpful, you can also speed up the to hear. audio from what appears to be 101% to 175% of the original speed. Of course, once you’ve got all these Secondly, you can change the pitch settings just like you want them, it of the song without changing the would be nice to be able to make a playback speed. With the interface, copy of it to listen to while you’re you can shift the pitch up to two away from the computer. octaves higher or lower. You can Fortunately, you can export the change the pitch by semitones or by modified version of the full song or of cents (if you wish to make small a selected audio loop in MP3 (128 or adjustments). Lastly, you can use 320 kbps) or WAV format (44KHz, the “Super Vocal Reducer”, which 128 bit). This is definitely a handy does basically what it says even feature! though it behaves somewhat mysteriously. Of course, you’re My Initial Thoughts allowed to mix and match these effects so, for instance, you can So, now that you have some idea of lower the speed by 25%, raise the the features, here’s my take on whether or not these features have August 2012
been successfully implemented. First, let me mention the interface. I love it. The color scheme is great, and the controls are responsive and easy to understand. Additionally, the interface has some ability to be resized, and this is helpful when screen real estate is in short supply. Installation was quick and painless, and I had no trouble running the program. It’s worth pointing out here that Riff Master Pro is only a standalone program. I didn’t find this a hindrance, but it might be useful to have a plugin version of it in the future. How well do the “big three” manipulations listed earlier work? Let’s take them one at a time. I found the speed changes in the program to be quite good, and honestly, I had fun trying to push them to their limits. You haven’t really lived until you’ve listened to James Taylor’s version of “How Sweet It Is To Be Loved by You” 50% faster than its original speed. It’s almost a dance song. Overall, I found the quality of the speed changes to be quite good. Of course, at really slow speeds, snares and high hats begin to sound quite a bit different, but as promised, the speed-changed audio files maintained their pitch. What I find www.WusikSoundMagazine.com
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