Frequency – Music Studio
A serious music app for not-so-serious money
$2.99 Developer Valentino Frati, sites.google.com/site/frequencyquentinapps Requirements OS X 10.10 or later
The first thing we noticed about Frequency was the price, which puts it firmly into novelty-app territory: serious software doesn’t cost three bucks. But then we used it, and all that changed.
If you’ve ever wrestled with complex audio software when all you want to do is combine a couple of files, fade out a track, or tweak the sound a little bit, you’re going to love Frequency. It’s a multitrack-capable audio editor and mixer that enables you to make big changes to sound files with little effort.
It’s the sort of app that will have podcasters in particular jumping with joy, because it makes combining multiple pieces of audio, equalizing them, and positioning them exceptionally quick and simple, but we can see the possibilities for musicians and movie-makers too.
The app’s layout is simple enough. There’s a ten-band equalizer at the bottom, and the various audio tools are set to the right. The track or tracks you’re working on appear as waveforms in the main window, and you can move them around with the mouse or trackpad as needed.
You can import M4A, MP4, MP3, AIFF, and WAV, and you can extract the audio from MOV, MP4, and M4V videos. You can also drag and drop from iTunes, or directly from the Finder. It’s all very intuitive.
Once you’ve got your audio file(s), the fun can begin. You can use the sliders to fade tracks in or out, boost the low frequencies, apply high or low pass filters, or adjust the pitch and/or speed of the track.
You can adjust each track’s stereo position and volume, apply reverb and boost the low frequencies, and if you find a combination you like you can save it as a preset for later, or just copy it to the other tracks. Once you’re happy you can export as AIFF, MP3, or WAV, and you can also automatically add it to your iTunes library if you wish.
If you’ve used the open-source audio editor Audacity you’ll be familiar with this kind of thing, but Frequency’s user interface is much more friendly: it looks like it came from the same place as GarageBand, and that means you’ll get the hang of it in no time.
It’s fast, too, handling multiple long AIFFs on an aging iMac without breaking sweat. In a market where apps are often frighteningly expensive, Frequency is an exceptional value.
THE BOTTOM LINE. Cheap doesn’t always mean cruddy. Frequency is exceptionally good value for money, and ideal for podcasters and musicans