Viewing and analyzing waveforms on a Mac

[theSeaHawk]

there are a lot of theories why modern music, when viewed as a waveform, is basically a rectangle. in addition to the loudness wars, i think a lot of it has to do with keeping a song audible in a wide variety of listening environments: in the car with the window down, piped into a store or restaurant, as a bed under video, fighting street noise when played from an ipod. with some older material, there are times where the quieter parts just disappear. i guess they figure it's too much trouble for us to reach for a volume knob

Listen to some of the better recordings of the 1970's and 1980's with sound engineers who knew what they were doing... The process of manipulating the spatial and dynamic characteristics of the overall mix to produce a superb listening experience is referred to as "sweetening". Not sure if you've heard this expression... but sweetening is almost a lost art these days.

This unfortunate trend in audio mastering is something I'd like to examine more closely.

I'd like to be able to examine the waveforms of CDs of classic rock mastered and issued in the 80s (like early Atlantic pressings of Genesis and Led Zeppelin mastered by Barry Diament) and compare them to the brickwalled "remasters" done later. Over at the Steve Hoffman forums members on PCs use EAC to provide screenshots of waveforms like this, so my question here is

which Mac program(s) would let me rip tracks and then view the audio as waveforms? and to see figures for peak values, dynamic range, etc.

Example below: the left channel of the 1973 Genesis song 'Cinema Show' from, top to bottom:
Virgin/Charisma CD - ca. 1984
Definitive Edition - 1994
Platinum Edition - 2005
Mail On Sunday sampler CD (the mastering for the forthcoming 1970-75 boxset) - 2008

 

[jackmileshunt]

audacity should do the trick, it is also open source meaning that it is free.
if you wanted to do any audio manipulation work, ableton live is very good.
hope it helps

 

[junior]

Almost any DAW in existence will show you the waves.

 

[Luap]

I use Sound Studio. Not free, but very cheap for what it does.
But yes, there is a multitude of apps available which will show you waveforms.

While im here.. Im very much against the loudness wars too. We have all this amazing technology capable of great sound quality. but the quality is all squandered away in favour of loudness.

And.. Looking at that Waveform. it is a good example, but perhaps later I will post a better example of 'rectangular music'

 

[theSeaHawk]

thanks for the replies, I think I'll go ahead with Audacity.
Luap, looking forward to the example, hopefully it's not from one of my favorite bands

 

[Killyp]

Audacity will actually let you modify the individual samples in the waveform which is actually a relatively unique feature, or at least I haven't found a way of doing it in most other DAWs, although Audacity isn't really a DAW.