Product: Fission 2.1
Author: Rogue Amoeba
Price: $32.00US; Fission 2 and Audio Hijack Pro bundle: $50.00
Requirements : OS X 6 or higher
Test Rig: MacBook Pro 2009, 8GB RAM, 240GB SSD
When I was young, back when dirt was all the rage, I was a musician. I was absolutely anal about tone . A perfectionist. Particularly, the bell of a cymbal. An aural orgasm.
Unfortunately, health problems shortened my career (much to the relief of many). I veered into computers, for whatever reason. And, naturally, I gravitated towards audio programs (oddly enough, not towards music apps).
I was just starting to write reviews for developers who didn’t have deep pockets for marketing. One such developer was Rogue Amoeba. They gave me a beta copy of their new program, Audio Hijack Pro. Not only did I get to review the first version, I became a beta tester.
Cut to 32 years later. This brings us to the newly released Fission 2.
“Crop and trim audio, paste in or join files, or just rapidly split one long file into many. Fission is streamlined for fast editing. Plus, it works without the quality loss caused by other editors, so you can get perfect quality audio even when editing MP3 and AAC files.
If you need to convert formats, Fission can do that, too! You can rapidly export or batch convert files to MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, FLAC, AIFF, and WAV formats.”
You can edit lossless formats? I want to try this.
THE JUICE
Fission 2 is the painless installation that we’ve all become used to. Once you remove the wrapping, enter your lisence number and receive your certificate, then you enter the WonkaWorld of lossless editing. And what a cornucopia of features!
A whole new UI, support for editing all lossless formats, chapter use AAC files (in fact, you can produce an nice podcast using Fission 2 in conjunction with Audio Hijack Pro), batch formatting, and exporting to Soundcloud.
You can use Fission 2 from editing your podcasts to creating custom ringtones. Thanks to it’s simple UI, editing is intuitive, saving you lots of time and numerous headaches.
A little overwhelmed by all this? Lucky you. Fission 2 comes wit a built-in manual that will get you through any situation in minutes.
THE PULP
Yes, you could argue that Audacity is free. But the beauty of Fission 2 is that it is integrated seamlessly with one of RA’s other companion apps – Audio Hijack Pro. And if cost is your concern, you can buy the two of them as a bundle. But Fission 2 is more than that.
It has a beautiful UI, pure Apple. The editing controls (like split, crop, normalize, etc.) are all in the Menu Bar. You can change the color of the waveform and the background to what best suits your eyes, light or dark.
But the real beauty is in it’s intuitiveness. I was able to start editing ringtones, splicing musical passages, and listen to my .flac files (incredibly rendered might add) without once clicking on the manual. All that you really need to do work with Fission 2 is to launch it. If you know why you need this app, you’ll find no learning curve!
Producing podcasts? You’re covered every which way. You can even create chapters within your AAC files. Just remember that Fission 2 is dual-channel, not multi-channel like Garageband.
THE RIND
I’d like to make it my dedicated .flac player, but it would like to have an equalizer.
SUMMARY
Fission 2 continues the tradition of quality that Rogue Amoeba has always delivered. This is a simple to use, powerful tool. Add the seamless integration with their own Audio Hijack Pro and you’ve pretty much covered your audio bases.
But more importantly, I’m not officially a lackey in Rogue Amoeba’s eyes. Paul?
©2012 Frank Petrie / ympnow.com
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