Hokusai Audio Editor 4+

Very frustrating to use

I wanted something to trim long audio files, taking out gaps etc and making loops. This seemed to be ideal but it has taken me so long to do easy tasks that I can’t recommend it
Trimming is very good, but if you use the Loop function to help get this find tuned there is always a glitch as it restarts. This caused me to waste so much time as I thought it was me not getting it right. There is a loop fx that works well, but you have to go in and out of this. Not productive at all.
I can find no way to move or nudge the audio once it’s in a track. I’ve read the help manual, it doesn’t help at all.

Developer Response ,

Hello! You can move audio within a track by selecting some audio to move, then dragging upwards with two fingers. This "lifts" it from the track, and you can then move it around. Thanks for your feedback!

Professional Results

I have been a working voice actor for about six years now. In that time I have created numerous home studios with expensive processors, computers, microphones and acoustic treatment.

One thing I have always found to be near impossible is to put together a portable at a reasonable price. I’ve used my old Zoom H2 and a laptop at times and the results have been good but the laptop has always been a pain in the neck to cart about.

I’ve had Hokusai for a year or two and it was clear from the start that there was potential to use this app to make money from my voice no matter where I was in the world. The limitations though were that the iPads I had previously were difficult to connect to microphone and didn’t really have the grunt to cope with the intensive audio editing required in my work.

All this changed with the iPad Pro 2017. Now I can hook up my H2 via the usb 3 connection kit and it will record directly into Hokusai. The sound quality is good enough for professional purposes.

The processing power of the iPad Pro turns Hokusai into as good a tool as the Adobe Audition software I use at home and the cherry on the cake is IOS 11 which allows me to deliver, store and archive the audio I record and edit with Hokusai.

The effects such as noise removal are superb. I would go so far as to say better than Adobe.

If you are looking for the best in IOS audio recording and editing, don’t waste your time elsewhere, Hokusai is everything you need and more.

Looking good

I briefly tried the freebie version on a test file and finding it workable, went for the paid version. All my previous years of editing audio files have been done on a desktop box, so this interface needed a little familiarisation but eventually got there. Second file was a recently unearthed 48 year old vinyl recording of my late mother, so this software got a decent workout. A lot of useful features and I think it will take some time to use/try them all, some certainly need careful thought. This is not software for those that need instant gratification but for those who are happy to work for good results.

Only improvement I’d like to see is knowing what will be undone/redone at the point of hitting the icon.

As I really prefer a desktop app, it would be great to see this ported by Catalyst to macOS.

Excellent app, if you need to edit audio files.