Audio Producer Tools is a suite of dashboard widgets for OS X designed to aid in common recording studio or live sound tasks. The widgets have been developed to be as intuitive and simple as possible, each performing one specific task. If more complex tasks are required, then the widgets can be used together in a chain. For example the BPM Calculator can be used to find the tempo of a piece of music, which can then be converted using the Audio Unit Converter into the time duration of a musical division. This would allow quick and easy configuration of delay times. There are lots of different problem scenarios in a studio or live environment and these widgets offer solutions to many of them. Once you've used them you will wonder how you ever did without!
Instructions
All of the widgets are contained in Zip archives. After downloading, decompress the archive then double click the widget
icon to install it.
Requirements
These Widgets have been produced to run in Apple's Dashboard environment, not Konfabulator or Yahoo!. You will need a Mac
running OS X 10.4.3 or above.
Audio Unit Converter
Ever needed to delay sound sources in a multi-channel setup or wanted to work out the delay between the close mic on a snare and the overheads? How about finding out the frequency of a problematic bass note or converting Hexadecimal MIDI strings into their decimal equivalent?
This widget allows you to effortlessly convert between many common units that you may encounter while working in a studio or live sound situation. The conversion units in the current version are:
- Distance (m) - Time (ms) - Frequency (Hz)
- Time (ms) - Samples (@ 44.1KHz, 48KHz, 96KHz, 192KHz)
- Binary - Decimal - Hexadecimal
- Note Name - Frequency (Hz)
- BPM - Note Duration (Whole, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64 note)
You can convert to and from any unit in each of the main conversion groups.
BPM Calculator
Need to work out the tempo of a track? Confused over the many possible ways to work it out yourself? Simply play the song, load this widget and start tapping! The BPM of the track will be refreshed every four beats. It is that simple!
Automatic BPM calculators that process audio may seem very fancy and efficient, however they are prone to serious error and their success can vary wildly depending on the type of programme material used. The only variable when using this widget is your ability to tap a steady beat!
Musical Assistant
Have you found yourself in a situation where the band you are working with know absolutely nothing about musical theory or chord composition? As the engineer do you sometimes need reminding which notes belong to a certain musical scale? Maybe you just want to prove to a certain smug musician that they are not the only one who knows the composition of a "A# minor major 7th add 13" chord...
Choose a root note, then a chord type or scale, and the notes that belong to the selected item will be represented on the keyboard below in a clean and clear manner. The chord compositions are shown in a way that allows them to be easily read and understood. As a result the voicing of some chords will not be the most logical or pleasant sounding.
Audilectric Calculator
The Audilectric calculator is the single solution for all of those troublesome and time consuming calculations in the audio world. Use the Audilectric Calculator to work out the required power of a sound system, the reduction in volume due to the Inverse Square Law, the total dB output from two sources of different volumes and more!
The Audilectric Calculator has been designed to make these calculations as simple and efficient as possible so give it a try, it's guaranteed to save you time and effort!