HIT ‘N’ MIX INFINITY

When science and creativity collide, the results are invariably interesting. Let’s see if this long-running audio dissection editor can make sparks

In the decade since Hit’n’Mix’s audio software first appeared, it has come on leaps and bounds and not only grown in terms of features but also sounds a whole lot better. Somewhere along the way it acquired the Infinity name and now, at version 4.7, could finally be ready for a much wider audience.

Basic concepts

Billed as the world’s first atomic audio editor, Infinity is a standalone application (OS X 10.10 or later, Windows 7 or later) that analyses audio (WAV, mp3, Flac, Ogg) and presents it as melodic and noise components. These can be edited in various ways to achieve functional, reparation and creative tasks. Melodic and noise components appear in a typical timeline workspace with pitch/frequency on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. Infinity uses a layersbased workflow, and once it’s finished analysing an audio file, presents what it calls a ‘Rip’ as two

COMPUTER MUSIC

noise elements, Unpitched (Low) and Unpitched (High), and as many melodic Layers as it sees fit. You’ll find these listed in the fold-out Layers panel on the right hand side, and this includes other layer-specific functionality such as mute, solo, note lock, playback level, rename, delete and duplicate as well as various visual options such as colour and width. You can edit notes directly in the workspace and apply a number of real-time changes including volume and pitch correction via the dropdown Effects menu. Further destructive processing is accessed via the RipScripts menu. Finally, there’s also a Sound Palette feature to draw notes from scratch.

Infinity’s initial analysis is CPU intensive (our 4 core i7 took about four mins per minute of mixed audio). How it separates the file is also quite important. A simple monophonic sound will be presented as a single melodic Layer with two noise Layers, whereas complex audio files will have more melodic Layers, and we’ll look at the implications of this later. Infinity also uses a user editable script-based system for much of its editing and processing functions (see box out).

“Note Editor lets you paint, erase, smooth and adjust different types of harmonics across selected notes”

What can it do?

Infinity lets you modify the pitch, amplitude, timing and harmonic content of the analysed audio. Pitch editing is assisted by an optional