Wave Agent X from Sound Devices released (and still free)

[Jim Feeley]

[Note that I'm not connected to Sound Devices other than as a customer and acquaintance of some people there. --Jim]

 

"Designed for Production Sound Mixers and Post Production Editors, Wave Agent X provides a comprehensive and indispensable toolset for reviewing, editing, and preparing audio files for problem-free passage through complex production workflows. Available for Mac and Windows."

 

It's been a loooooong wait, but we can finally download Wave Agent X here: 

 

https://www.sounddevices.com/product/wave-agent-x/

 

 

 

[Izen Ears]

This looks like it's 97% stuff I'll never use, but apparently it can be used to refresh iXML. Does anyone know how to do this? I guess I need to do this to merge Deva files using Bouke's BWF Merge.

 

Also - why does this version automatically say 24FPS when the files are all 23.98?

 

Dan Izen, dummy

[Philip Perkins]

Am glad to see support for more channels (32).  The group/ungroup siblings feature is cool.  It still does the other things I liked (split/combine, batch change of frame rate etc).  Snazzier graphics, and a mixer with waveforms too.  It's cool for me to be able to record as mono files then be able to "sibling" them so I can play all the files of that take at once and mix them during playback.  And still FREE! 

 

thanks again, SD!

[PMC]

Thanks Sound Devices!

This will be useful. I have used the beta version many times for many years. The updated GUI and visualization is appreciated.

 

Now, can I get a version with automix?

[Mungo]

Huh! That's a surprise!

The previous release was called beta all the time since 2009! But it did the job well until now, under each and every OS version that came up.

[Bouke]

6 hours ago, Mungo said:

But it did the job well until now

No, it did not. It did not support 32 bits nor RF64, and the timecode calculation was buggy.

So an update was definitely in order.

[Philip Perkins]

3 hours ago, Bouke said:

No, it did not. It did not support 32 bits nor RF64, and the timecode calculation was buggy.

So an update was definitely in order.

And, anymore, not enough tracks.  But good now!

[Derek H]

This is great for us but I’m sure a huge frustration for the guys that just released new WAV utility apps in the last year. 

[Bouke]

3 hours ago, Derek H said:

but I’m sure a huge frustration for the guys that just released new WAV utility apps in the last year

Not really.
I cannot speak for the others, but the market for these kind of things is less than needed for eating out once a week (alone).
 

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

What's your bread and butter Bouke?  I'm glad you make all the utilities that you do in any case.

[Bouke]

2 hours ago, The Documentary Sound Guy said:

What's your bread and butter

I'm running a small hotel. (In my house, that I bought in 2002, not to live in, but for my studios, and to rent out space to a multi-media producing company as well as a free lance artist that were old contacts. At that time we worked together so often that we were visiting each other at least twice a week, bringing zip / syquest drives, so being in the same building on the same network was very practical.)

I only have two rooms for guests, one double room, one apartment suitable for 5. But I'm at a top location in my city so that's a living nowadays.
Washing, making beds and cleaning op shit after other people, so it's not that different from regular post work.

Reading the recent rant thread made me realize I totally don't miss those days.

Well, I knew that before also.

On a very prestigious documentary job from an old PBS hotshot I met the producer. Old lady, her last job before retirement, she came all the way to my studio (I"m located at the far side of the country) to pick up some materials after the job was done, and I helped her putting some boxes in her car.
I thanked her for her good care during the work. She fell in my arms, crying.
In her entire career, no-one had ever said something like that.


 

[Aprikot]

14 hours ago, Bouke said:

I thanked her for her good care during the work. She fell in my arms, crying.
In her entire career, no-one had ever said something like that.

 

Absolutely heartbreaking.

 

[inspire]

I’ve installed Wave Agent X and I’m very happy to have both Wave Agent X and Wave Copilot.

Although some features overlap, I don’t see them as competing tools. Wave Agent X is a very capable free WAV/metadata/multitrack utility, while Wave Copilot has some more specialized production features, such as audio-based sync between recordings without TC.

So for me, they complement each other rather than replace each other. I’m definitely keeping both.

[JohannesH]

One big advantage of Wave Copilot is its customer support. I run into a bug and got the fixed version within hours! Matthieu is very responsive and adds new features quite fast. 

[resonate]

Something is funky with the X version. Files from my Nomad recorded at 25fps Tc also "show up" as 24fps in Wave agent X. Or maybe the GUI is misleading, because it shows fps as a drop menu? Ready to fix the fps tc rate after the lazy sound mixer ? ;-) anyway the iXML and bEXT tabs show proper fps, which is 25.  

[paul isaacs]

7 hours ago, resonate said:

Something is funky with the X version. Files from my Nomad recorded at 25fps Tc also "show up" as 24fps in Wave agent X. Or maybe the GUI is misleading, because it shows fps as a drop menu? Ready to fix the fps tc rate after the lazy sound mixer ? ;-) anyway the iXML and bEXT tabs show proper fps, which is 25.  

Will be fixed in next release. In the meantime, you can batch convert FPS.

[resonate]

5 hours ago, paul isaacs said:

Will be fixed in next release. In the meantime, you can batch convert FPS.

While we have you here Paul ;-)

nice change would be for MS linking to be changed as follows:

 

Right now when you link the channels in MS mode, you can still move faders individually, which is cumbersome. They should be linked as in stereo link mode. For width adjustment i suggest the balance control of the second channel (first channel set to C, second channel would control the amount of side signal)
edit: i just saw it works that way. But the volume faders are not linked, that would be still nice.
 

Thank you for your software! 

p.s. would be also great if mixpre 3 would link all three channels, so much easier for DMS. got a reply from support that it's the box limitation ;-)