Sweep

Development Lead: Conrad Parker

Sweep is an audio editor and live playback tool for GNU/Linux, BSD and compatible systems. It supports many music and voice formats including WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, Speex and MP3, with multichannel editing and LADSPA effects plugins.

Features:
  • Extreme ease of use:
    • Unlimited undo/redo with a fully revertible edit history
    • Multithreaded background rendering and file import/export: effects processing is not disabled during playback, providing instantaneous feedback.
    • Precise, interactive scrubbing
    • Multichannel file support: Sweep provides complete editing and processing for multichannel sound files.
    • Customisable keybindings available for all operations
    • Translations for French, Hungarian, Italian, German, Russian and Polish.

  • Support for many PCM and voice file formats via libsndfile by Erik de Castro Lopo:
    • at least 14 PCM sound file formats formats including WAV, W64, AIFF/AIFF-C, IFF/SVX, AU and raw PCM files.
    • PCM audio encoding formats including 8/16/24/32 bit PCM, 32 and 64 bit floating point, u-law, A-law and ADPCM
    • voice encoding formats including GSM 6.10, G721/G723 ADPCM, 12/16/24 bit DWVW

  • Support for Ogg Vorbis format audio files:
    • an exteremely high quality, free, open and unpatented perceptual audio codec.
    • supports intuitive variable bitrate encoding, where the Vorbis encoder makes low-level encoding decisions.
    • provides access to average bitrate controls, including bounds on minimum and maximum bitrate usage.
    • Sweep provides sensible defaults and remembers encoding options between sessions.

  • Support for Speex files:
    • a free, open and unpatented speech codec designed for Voice over IP (VoIP) and file-based compression.
    • supports optional variable bitrate and control over encoding complexity and frame packing.
    • Sweep provides sensible defaults and remembers encoding options between sessions.

  • Support for LADSPA effects plugins, including:
    • the Computer Music Toolkit by Richard Furse, containing high and low pass filters, compressors, delays, and a port of the popular Freeverb reverb unit.
    • SWH plugins, over 30 effects plugins by Steve Harris, including overdrives, comb filter, ring modulator, pitch scaler, chorus, flanger and various distortions.
    • more listed at ladspa.org

  • Powerful editing operations:
    • Cut, copy and paste insert: conventional cut or copy selected regions of a sound, and paste into the same or other sounds.
    • Discontinuous selections: select multiple regions of a sound and operate on these regions simultaneously
    • interactive moving and merging of selection boundaries
    • Selection invert, selection double/halve and selection shift left/right

  • Intuitive visualisation:
    • Multiple views per clip
    • Variable zooming to below 1:1 with mouse wheel support
    • View Center, Zoom to Selection, Zoom Normal
    • Easy differentiation of multiple files with 6 standard colour schemes including Decoder Red, Orangeboom, Coogee Bay Blue and Blackwattle.

  • Versatile playback modes:
    • Standard transport features: play/pause, stop, rewind, fast forward, scan reverse/forward, go to end/beginning.
    • Simultaneous playback of multiple files
    • Play all, play selection, and looping playback
    • Interactive reverse playback: includes reverse previews and reverse looping

  • Flexible recording:
    • independent record and playback heads
    • "tape loop" style recording
    • reverse recording

  • Device handling and portability:
    • Support for Open Sound System compatible audio devices (eg. stock Linux kernel), ALSA 0.6.0 and Solaris audio.
    • Intuitive control of application latency
    • Support for both little and big endian CPU architectures

  • Live playback "DJ" features:
    • Two-handed interactive scrubbing
    • Independent gain levels per file
    • +/-10% pitch slider
    • Piano-style sample playback