3 ms·

> An experienced engineer can look at a waveform in a DAW and identify specific consonants, vowels, specific words, etc quite fluently. As an experienced DAW a

> An experienced engineer can look at a waveform in a DAW and identify specific consonants, vowels, specific words, etc quite fluently. As an experienced DAW author, I very, very much doubt this. What can be done relatively easy is to "see" or rather "follow along" in the waveform when listening to the audio. But I read your claim as being that someone could look at the waveform (which is already decimated from the original) and identify words or phonemes without hearing the associated audio. I am extremely skeptical that there is anyone anywhere in the world who can do this.

CGMthrowaway 1y ago
I started in music but have since edited thousands of hours of podcasts. I cannot transcribe a track by looking at the waveform, except the word "um" haha. But without playing the audio I can tell you where words start and end, whether a peak is a B or a T or an A or an I sound... And melodyne can add layers to that and tell me the pitch, formants (vowels), quantize the syllables etc. If I can do all this, a computer ought to be able to do the same and more
- spudlyo 1y ago
  Hundreds of hours here, and I can't even always reliably spot my own ums. I edit as many out as I possibly can for myself, my co-host and guest, as well as eliminating continuation signaling phrases like "you know" and "like". I also remove uninteresting asides and bits of dead air. This is boring and tedious work but it makes the end result considerably better I think. I feel like there should be a model that can do much of this for me but I haven't really looked into it, ironically due to laziness, but also because I edit across multiple tracks at this stage, and I'm afraid to feed the model an already mixed stereo track. I'm curious why you still do it manually, if you still do and if you've looked into alternatives.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
    > I edit as many out as I possibly can for myself, my co-host and guest, as well as eliminating continuation signaling phrases like "you know" and "like". I also remove uninteresting asides and bits of dead air. Hopefully using Ardour's "Ripple - Interview" mode :))
  - vvolhejn 1y ago
    I use Descript to edit videos/podcasts and it works great for this kind of thing! It transcribes your audio and then you can edit it as if you were editing text.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
      Yeah, that stuff is just freaking amazing. I don't know what the transcription quality is like, but if I was doing this as a job, and it was good at transcription, I'd definitely be using that all the time.

CGMthrowaway 1y ago

I started in music but have since edited thousands of hours of podcasts. I cannot transcribe a track by looking at the waveform, except the word "um" haha. But without playing the audio I can tell you where words start and end, whether a peak is a B or a T or an A or an I sound... And melodyne can add layers to that and tell me the pitch, formants (vowels), quantize the syllables etc. If I can do all this, a computer ought to be able to do the same and more

spudlyo 1y ago
Hundreds of hours here, and I can't even always reliably spot my own ums. I edit as many out as I possibly can for myself, my co-host and guest, as well as eliminating continuation signaling phrases like "you know" and "like". I also remove uninteresting asides and bits of dead air. This is boring and tedious work but it makes the end result considerably better I think. I feel like there should be a model that can do much of this for me but I haven't really looked into it, ironically due to laziness, but also because I edit across multiple tracks at this stage, and I'm afraid to feed the model an already mixed stereo track. I'm curious why you still do it manually, if you still do and if you've looked into alternatives.
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  > I edit as many out as I possibly can for myself, my co-host and guest, as well as eliminating continuation signaling phrases like "you know" and "like". I also remove uninteresting asides and bits of dead air. Hopefully using Ardour's "Ripple - Interview" mode :))
- vvolhejn 1y ago
  I use Descript to edit videos/podcasts and it works great for this kind of thing! It transcribes your audio and then you can edit it as if you were editing text.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
    Yeah, that stuff is just freaking amazing. I don't know what the transcription quality is like, but if I was doing this as a job, and it was good at transcription, I'd definitely be using that all the time.