Peak Pro 6 debuts

BIAS today debuted Peak Pro 6, a major upgrade to its pro audio editing, processing, mastering, and delivery software for Mac OS X that runs natively on Intel-based Macs. Peak Pro 6 offers an enhanced playlist featuring new cross-fade options as well as volume envelopes; new DSP sound design features; editing and delivery enhancements; user interface improvements; and more. Feature improvements to the latest revision of Peak Pro affect advanced playlist editing & mastering; editing, processing, and sound design; voiceover ducking; delivery tools; and user interface enhancements. Peak Pro 6 is slated for shipment early in the third quarter of this year for $600, while Peak Pro XT 6 will ship for $1,200 and Peak LE 6 for $130.

Playlist editing, mastering

Peak Pro 6 adds fully customizable real-time volume envelopes to the playlist, as well as sample level zooming and editing alongside overlap/gap or centered cross-fades for mastering or "classical"/take style workflows. The update also features new navigation and audition controls, enabling users to prepare tracks for commercial CD replication or arrange sections of a remix.

Editing, processing, sound design

The latest release of Peak Pro adds DSP processing, editing, and sound design features such as a 'Perpetual Looper' that ensures "beat free" sustained loops of single line instrument samples. 'Pitch Envelope' allows users to change pitch via a customizable envelope, and 'Convolve Envelope' provides dynamic control over the amount of convolution applied over time.

Voiceover ducking

Peak Pro 6 can analyze amplitude of a voiceover and automatically adjust volume of mixed background source to dip the music volume during voiceover. Vbox Link offers new cross-synthesis between virtual instruments, effects as well as live input with real-time mix, convolve, vocode, modulate, and magnitude multiply modes to provide special effects and processing options for advanced sound design or live performances.

Change Duration offers algorithm selection for optimizing results when adjusting audio speed/length while retaining pitch of solo vocals versus music mixes, according to BIAS. Cache in memory provides a fast editing option that stores audio in memory to avoid disc access bottlenecks when working with large files, increasing processing speed of some DSP commands by up to 500 percent.

Delivery tools

Peak Pro 6 adds new export capabilities while streamlining integration between other applications. The software features enhanced PQ sheet/text export that generates user-configurable playlist reports with track durations, indexes, CD-TEXT, notes, and more that users can print or save as PDF documents. Peak Pro 6 also supports quick export of playlist regions directly to iTunes, and offers bi-directional drag-and-drop integration for individual songs as well as regions.

Integrated podcasting enables users to author and upload podcasts directly from Peak Pro 6 as RSS feeds without requiring a separate podcast application. Default 'Save As' stores frequently-used file type, bit depth, and compression settings in the Save as dialog. The software also offers comprehensive reading and writing of metadata for most major file types, including Broadcast WAVE.

User interface

Peak Pro 6 features a sleek new user interface design with a global contrast control, scroll bars, buttons, and more. New high-resolution logarithmic meters with user-configurable standard calibrations accompany the new transport and 'magnetic' windows that snap together for easier screen management.

The included new Vbox effects and instruments matrix offers additional preset viewing and selection controls, as well as MIDI channel assignments. Additionally, the playlist features an improved and disclosable cross-fade control area along with a new stereo view and user adjustable waveform to list view ratio.

by MacNN Staff