WireTap Studio: Interview With Andrew Welch of Ambrosia SW
WireTap Studio is being released to the world next week and I was lucky enough to speak with Andrew Welch to find out about all the new features in WireTap Studio and how Ambrosia went about incorporating them into the app. We also learn how Ambrosia Software began developing audio software and of some new features in Ambrosia's upcoming programs. Don’t nod off because at the end of the interview Andrew leaves a surprise gift for one lucky MacApper reader.
First off, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this interview with us.
No problem, glad to be here!
Can you remember the first audio app that Ambrosia developed?
That depends on what you mean by audio app. I guess you could say Snapz Pro, because it could record system audio along with video as part of a recording. Very useful for doing video game trailers, and the like.
And from there you decided to have an app dedicated solely to sound with WireTap right?
Actually, the way it happened is we needed to work on the Mac OS X native version of Snapz Pro X. For that, we needed the ability to record system audio again, and because it was an entirely new operating system, we had to totally rewrite the way we captured system audio. So in order to test this audio capture engine properly, we wrote a little free application called WireTap which used our audio capture engine, and released it to the world.
We never intended it to be a product, but rather just as a cool free tool for people to record audio with, and a way for us to get our audio capture engine tested properly. It was only after the overwhelming response that we realized we might want to take this a bit more seriously, and make a product out of it! The original WireTap was pretty limited; we came out with the $19 WireTap Pro later on that offered more robust recording capabilities, file formats, etc.
And in less than a week you will be releasing you latest audio app WireTap Studio, can you tell us what kind of improvements you have made since WireTap Pro?
Here’s how we approached the product. I spent a month talking to people who record audio. What I found was that people fell into two categories:
1) They used ridiculously low end solutions like QuickTime Pro to record directly to mp3. If anything was wrong, too bad. They didn’t edit anything.
or
¨
2) They used ridiculously high end solutions, like Peak. But they only used a very small subset of the features the product offered, and in general, were frustrated by the difficulty of using the product.¨
So we went for the sweet spot in the middle. Every feature we have in there is a result of talking to people. LivePreview, for instance. We asked podcasters, people who ripped CDs, etc. what format/compression settings they recorded to. Most didn’t know, or if they did know, didn’t know why they chose that format. So we tried to figure out a way to let them intelligently decide what format and compression settings they might want to use, and how large it would be before they even recorded anything. That’s how LivePreview was born. We tried to work backwards in terms of the way the product works, not just make yet another sound recorder.
With LivePreview (which is patent pending technology), you can be listening to audio coming form any source, then you can change the compression settings on the fly, and instantly hear the difference in the compression level, and see the difference in terms of how large the audio will be. I think it’s a really groundbreaking feature, because when you can compare audio side by side, you can really tell the difference between different compression formats, and figure out what recording settings you want for your audio.
This is just one example of many that I can give you. Everything was designed by looking at what people did with audio, and figuring out how we could best solve that problem. We wanted to do the hard work for the end user.
WireTap Studio’s editor is well designed and one of the easiest editors I’ve used next to the new iMovie editor, did you create this simplistic interface from feedback?
What we tried to do with the editor is make something that did 90% of what people do with recorded audio extremely well. We’re not competing with Peak or other high end audio products. Again through interviewing people, we determined what things people did with their audio. We then set out to make an audio editor that was really, really good at the things these people did most of the time. Here’s a really good example I think. Just about every audio recording product on the market makes you tell it what file format, compression level, etc. That you want before you record anything.
To me, this is backwards! It’d be like Photoshop making you choose the file format and compression level before you can draw a single brush stroke. So we thought about it from the average user’s point of view. If they choose a higher bitrate for their audio, they expect it to sound better. They don’t know anything about re-compression issues, etc. They just know they want it to sound better. So WireTap Studio records a losslessly compressed master recording that all of the edits you make work from. This allows you to choose a high quality recording even after you’ve recorded it. You can even take something you recorded as “mono” and get stereo out of it, just by clicking on a popup menu.
Let’s say someone recorded something in a format that sounds bad. They either throw out their hour-long recording/interview and redo it, or they ship it sounding bad. With WireTap Studio, they can just change the quality level, and boom! There it is, it sounds better. This is one of the many ways that we tried to re-think the concept of recording and editing audio. This all takes place transparently to the user.
Most audio apps let you record and edit, but WireTap Studio lets you store your audio in a library, just in case you decided to re-edit your recording. What made you decide to add a library to the program?
We approached the product from the point of view that we wanted to solve four problems for people who recorded audio. The bullet points we came up with were:
¢ Record.
¢ Organize.
¢ Edit.
¢ Export.¨
We wanted WireTap Studio to be really good at those 4 basic things. The reason we went with a recording library was to let people easily manage their recordings. No need to dig around on their computer to see where a particular recording is, it’s always there in a nice iTunes-like Library. This has the added convenience of being able to search/sort on whatever you like, file name, size, date, even mp3 tags. The Library also allows us to do some smart things behind the scenes. As I mentioned, we have a lossless original master recording, but we actually do a dual encode when we record. We record in the format people say they want, and then also record the lossless master recording. If you make changes to the recording, by say, cropping it a bit, or changing the format, we re-encode the file behind the scenes so it is always instantly available for exporting/uploading/whatever. The Library allows us to present a single file to the user, and do some fantastic magic “behind the curtain” to make their life easier.
Another new feature to WireTap Studio is recording sessions, which lets you time-shift the recording of your audio. Will you ever bring this feature in to Snapz Pro for time-shift recording of your video?
The Recording Sessions feature of WireTap Studio essentially lets you encapsulate everything about a recording into a neat little package. The file format, compression settings, audio source, etc. And have it start and stop on a schedule. This is fantastic for doing things like recording internet radio shows when you’re not around. You can launch any media player from WireTap Studio automatically, have it start the feed, and WireTap Studio will record it for you. It’ll even wake your computer up from sleep to do it!
As for bringing it into Snapz Pro X, I will say this. Many of the paradigms that we’ve incorporated into WireTap Studio are absolutely going to be rolled into a new version of Snapz Pro X (which we’re working on already). Hopefully I can touch on some of those features of the editor in WireTap Studio a bit to explain what I mean.
Speaking of the WireTap Studio editor, I played with it for a few hours and it is very easy on the eyes. How did you manage to create great features in the editor that look so good?
We can’t compete with high end editors, nor did we want to, so we wanted to be really, really good at what people do most often when editing audio. So the number one thing was picking the audio format. We have that nailed with LivePreview and being able to change the format/compression even after the fact. The number two thing people do is they crop audio. In a traditional editor, what this involves is you select the audio, you listen to it, you hit delete, then you add a fade in so the audio doesn’t “pop”, and if anything is wrong, you hit “Undo, Undo, Undo and you do it all over again.
With WireTap Studio’s editor, all you do is drag the left or right crop marker. Audio that you’re cropping out is still visible, it just appears grayed out, and an automatic fade follows the crop marker. It’s that easy! If you’ve cropped too much to too little, you just drag it again, no need to undo anything. You can also change the duration of the fade just by dragging, and even change the type of fade. It all works in such an easy, natural manner that it makes it fun to edit audio.
We also do everything “live” in the editor, so you can see the waveform distort as you drag the fade, and if you delete audio, you actually see that audio gradually shrink from the recording. It’s not like other editors where you hit delete, and things just disappear, and you have no idea what happened. The animation isn’t just gratuitous. Sure, it makes it look cool, but it serves the purpose of visually showing people what happened to their audio when they made a change.
Another very cool aspect of the editor is that you can see every edit you’ve made to the audio. You don’t just see one big blob of a waveform, and have no idea what you changed or where, you can see every edit. And not only that, you can change the edits at any time. Delete some audio, and we’ll automatically put a fade out/fade in there for you, but if you deleted too much or too little audio, just click on the disclosure triangle about the cut mark, and you’ll see the audio you deleted, grayed out, visible in the editor. Then just drag the crop markers to change how much or how little audio is deleted! We really tried to make audio editing so easy that it’s fun again. Because the editing is completely non-destructive, you can really edit without fear, and dive right in to playing around with the audio, tweaking Audio Unit effects, whatever, without ever worrying about destroying your recording.
After you release WireTap Studio, what are your plans for the future?
My plan after releasing WireTap Studio is to issue a huge sigh of relief, and have a beer. Any recommendations? Victoria Bitter?
Haha, being an Australian I would have to go with a cold VB. How about future software updates? Any plans there?
Oh absolutely. We’re working on major updates to Snapz Pro X, using many of the lossless/non-destructive paradigms that you’ve seen in WireTap Studio. We also full expect to work on updates to WireTap Studio based on feedback from users. It’s great to ship a 1.0 product, but that’s always a starting point in some sense.
And of course, we also are working on updates to iToner to make sure that it works properly with Apple’s new iPhone 1.1.1 OS. We are also working on other secret projects that I’m not allowed to share. Suffice it to say that we are EXTREMELY busy with some software that I hope is really fantastic. We’re working hard on engineering tools that work naturally, and do the hard work for the user.
Sounds great and I hope the release of WireTap Studio goes well!
Thank you, and if you’d humor me, let me ask you a question now. You’ve used a pre-release version of WireTap Studio for a bit. What do you think?
I think it does what other audio apps can do but does it better, and with a whole lot of style. It also does a few things other audio tools can’t do. All the features are easy to use from capturing to editing and then exporting. One feature I had lots of fun playing with was LivePreview. Being able to hear what the final result will be and change the compression settings to improve your final result is really exciting. WireTap Studio won’t be easily outdone, and I personally can’t wait to buy it!
Thanks, I very much appreciate the feedback. We really did try to make the whole process fun and easy, rather than frustrating and tiresome. I appreciate your time, and thanks for giving me a chance to ramble on about our new baby!
Thanks to Andrew for sharing Ambrosia's new app with us! You can learn more about WireTap Studio by checking out these videos Ambrosia has posted.
And now for the free schwag I mentioned above. If you'd like to win a copy of WireTap Studio (and who wouldn’t?), leave a comment below telling us, “features you'd like to see in WireTap Studio. Winners will be announced in a week.
[...] christian@morlotte.com wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptI guess you could say Snapz Pro, because it could record system audio along with video as part of a recording. Very useful for doing video game trailers, and the like. And from there you decided to have an app dedicated solely to sound … [...]
All I can say is WOW this is Awesome! This is exactly what I have been looking for in audio capture and editing. Amazing! I love the lossless editing (No more Edit, Undo), auto fade-in & out, Livepreview, library w/exporting and recording on a schedule. I can’t wait to buy it. The only thing I could suggest at the moment is offer more tracks up to 4 at least. I’ll keep thinking about it though.
“features you'd like to see in WireTap Studio
To be perfectly honest it looks like Ambrosia have already got most of, if not all, of my needs covered already. As long as normalization is pretty straightforward and removing pops and hiss is not too painful then i’d say they were on to another winner.
Actually I can’t think of one thing I would add. It has everything I need and more. Another excellent product from Ambrosia.
Wiretap Studio does sound very impressive! The feature I like best is LivePreview. I’m not a sound technician and LivePreview sounds like it was designed for people just like me. I never could understand all the compression lingo of other sound apps. I’m really excited to see what Wiretap Studio can do for me!
Snapz Pro has always been my favorite screen recording software. It is great to know that they’re working on similar functionality with that.
As for features for WireTap Studio….
* run automator or applescript after scheduled recording is completed
* stream over wifi connection to iphone or ipod touch.
* include the ability to add notes or annotate the recording.
I’d like to see some sort of RSS integration.
“But isn’t that the point of a podcast?”
Well, a lot of sites (particularly big companies) only offer their stuff as an RSS feed with no enclosures where you have to click through to the webpage and listen to it in your browser with some crazy flash or realmedia player that you would need to download manually and convert before you could play it in iPod/iTunes.
What would be cool is the ability for the application to look at new entries in an rss feed, and scan the page linked from the feed for any sort of audio file, and immediately begin to record that. This way, you’d have an automated system of recording things that need to be recorded/converted on a regular basis.
I am excited about this, as I use Peak and it’s way more than I need. Will we be able to also join files? That would be my suggestion.
I would like to see a one-button “add to .mac web gallery” functionality. Even without that, this is looking like my first foray into the world of serious audio software.
We don’t want no stinkin’ updates in Wiretap Studio. What we NEED is Andrew to get cracking on that pending update to Black Box! It’s been almost 20 years and with the new dock in Leopard he TRULY needs to deliver us from THAT evil
Sorry, couldn’t help it. Andy’s name will be forever linked, in my mind, with the wonderful Black Box he did back when I was in the university. Not only was it a beautiful hack but, in some unexplainable way, allowed to bypass license restrictions in the network and launch Applications in network servers that were in use by other people (something truly important for the student on a deadline).
Ability to Join and edit any type of audio file. This would be awesome!!
Looking forward to the release. As for features, integration with other audio applications?
[...] can read the entire interview at MacApper. WireTap Studio is available online at Ambrosia Software for $69.00. There is a trial download [...]
WireTap Studio sounds incredible; I can’t wait to try the demo version. I record a lot of old vinyl records, and would love to see you add a good click repair utility within WireTap Studio, to remove the sounds of the needle hitting scratches and other problems on the vinyl. Even without this utility, I just know I’ll love WireTap Studio!
WireTap studio and I am basically commenting because I would love a free copy of this program. May be I can win?
1. Permanent free functionality at a low level of service, like Wiretap Pro. Of course everybody wants something for nothing. But besides that, my very limited use (eg recording A Prairie Home Companion once a year) is not sufficient to justify buying.
A simple workaround for this issue would be for you to pick my name in the drawing.
Another possible way limit free use might be a limited time function as is the trial for OmniWeb. Omni counts days of actual use rather than calendar days elapsed since first use. That way if the new user tests OW one day and puts it aside for six months, when he returns the rest of the test period has not expired.
I do pay for what I use, as you will notice in your database of shareware purchases.
2. The ability of the installer to remove all pieces of earlier versions of this and related programs such as Wiretap Pro.
“features I´d like to see” in this app? I don´t know- I think Wiretap Studio is one of the best apps I have ever seen for working with audio files and therefore I wondered if I bought this app. But then I saw the price: 69$????????
In my opinion Wiretap Studio is great, amazing and simply beatiful but 69 bucks are very expensive for an app that I only use sometimes…..
As far as I am concerned I would buy it for the half price but not for almost 70$!!!
So I hope to win this very, very amazing app
I’d like it to be able to route sound easily. I am a podcaster (http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com) and one thing that’s not really easy right now is to be able to route sound from one application to another cleanly. I own Audio Hijack Pro, and it’s great at what it does, but Soundflower, the virtual sound devices, is a real pain in the butt. If someone could do what Soundflower does, only with a nice interface and a reliable driver, that’d be real nice.
Features?
Obviously, having not played with it firsthand it’s hard to see if these features are already integrated, but some useful features I could envisage are:
– being able to change/remove the length of the automatic fade in/out easily (in real time or by default)
– save directly to an FTP server
– integration with the update methods of various blog & wiki modules (or maybe just a browser plugin that gives you direct access to the “Library” from your browser?)
Christopher, have you tried Jack?
http://jackosx.com/
-Blake
Great, but how about combining two recordings?
Thanks for the update.
I have a few ideas that might serve to make this new favorite application even better:
Place the “WireTap Studio Library” inside a folder of its own. Everything else that I have one level down inside that Documents folder is in a containing folder. I say this not for my own consistency and organization purposes but to set up the possibility of providing multiple libraries like iTunes or iPhoto offers. Maybe even giving the option of putting a password on a library since these master lossless recordings will be sitting there permanently.
Another thought I had was to allow for a third or even a fourth track – certainly useful for Skype/Gizmo recordings along with one or maybe even two line-ins … and then maybe even adding a Finder track or even an iTunes track to go along with those interviews or whatever. 3 or 4 should do it anyway. Then animate the controller drawer for each track added – having it slide down a bit more automatically to keep one open track selector available for selection all the time – until you hit the track limit; thereby keeping the controller size at its absolute minimum.
In reference to the controller, if you could cram another button into the small space (or maybe give us a menu item and keystroke instead, because I like the design of the controller as it is) to give us the ability to temporarily switch the controller to a wide mode or something so that we could view, in its entirety, the scrolling animation that has the format specifications… and then also stretch out the track selectors down below in the controlelr so that they can hold the full application names of some of those longer titles. Yeah, we could switch back and forth between condensed and extended with the press of a key command.
Well, these are my ideas anyway. In the grand scheme of things they’re not very necessary. They would simply act as a nice little addition to an already great program. A program I would probably buy anyway if I didn’t win it here. Hope I do win it though.
Oh, one more idea! In thinking forward to Leopard’s Back To My Mac feature, is it possible to make it compatible with it. Maybe this is something that is already possible but it might be nice to be able to access the library across computers like this. I suppose you could tie the first feature request I mentioned into this. You know, maybe press the option key on start-up or something to get a dialog to pick a library, then navigate the network (IP address) and then to the Documents folder holding the Wire Tap Studio folder with the libraries and choose the library that you may need access to. Maybe its on the office computer and I’m working from home.
OK. I’m done brainstorming for my new favorite app.
Many things to like here in this new Ambrosia product, that’s for sure.
Using some of the new backend features for OS X 10.5, you could make a dynamic library. Lots of people are using laptops now a days, using some of the features utilized in Time Machine you could have Studio automatically send the lossless files to a larger storage system on the network (NAS, fileserver or another computer). To make this system more usable, Studio would have file management options, it could automatically send and delete the lossless files off the laptop when attached to the network or could backup and wait until the user tells Studio it is no longer needed on the laptop (archive files not likely to use everyday when you are away from the network). Now to the user in Studio it would appear all the archive files are still on the system, ready for access. When still on the local network, laptop attached via 1Gbps or draft n would allow usuase as if still on the system. You sould also allow access to the network archives using OS X built in apache system. Granted it would be slower access but would still allow access to the archives if needed.
All of this would happen behind the sceens away from user interaction after the initial setup. This would require a ton of thought on how to make this work without become a nusiance to the user. The features used in Time Machine allow so many new possibilities it could take days of group brainstorming to fully develop and implemitation of this feature I’m envisioning
Some of the information about Time Machine is coming from this article: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/road_to_mac_os_x_leopard_time_machine.html
Wow, I love Wiretap studio! One nice feature would be to combine Wiretap studio with Snapz Pro X. But then it would have to cost a lot more. But other then that it is a great application and I can’t think of anything it needs! The price is a little high for me… a free copy would be nice
.
[...] to Andrew Welch and Ambrosia Software we have 1 copy of WireTap Studio to giveaway from last week’s interview. In order to be eligible to win, you had to post a comment telling the guys at Ambrosia [...]
[...] Studio is a rewrite of the Wiretap Pro application and is aimed as a mid-range solution for anyone who records [...]
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