Ferrite Recording Studio, also known simply as Ferrite, is an downloadable app notable for its audio-editing capabilities. According to the app’s summary on the Apple Store, Ferrite promises a variety of editing features, including “move, crop, slice, fade in and out, or crossfade between clips just by overlapping them.” My motivation for downloading the app is my career aspirations, as podcasts are one of the many media platforms that media and film critics take advantage of-outside of online journalistic articles. As someone who is not particularly well versed in audio editing, Ferrite provided an easy outlet to gain some basic knowledge about audio editing.
Overall, Ferrite has a highly usable interface. From one’s own phone, it is effortless to import audio files as well as create new ones within the app. While playing around with the app, I discovered that Ferrite also allowed the importing of songs from Apple Music. Not only were the creation and importation of audio content not too much of a challenge, but the audio editing tools themselves were also relatively easy to decipher-with one exception.
A majority of the audio editing tools-i.e., cutting audio, linking to unconnected audio pieces together, deleting audio clips-can be found by double tapping an audio track. Control over the volume and audio pan of each track can be found in the pop-up menu, as well as additional settings. Trying to separate cut audio tracks was a pain initially as even when I cut an audio clip, the entire track would still be selected and as a result, the two new tracks would always move together. Despite this, the interface is extremely welcoming to both pros and non-audio experts such as myself.
The free version of Ferrite only permits three separate audio tracks at a given time, and a total recording length of ten minutes, so the content I was able to produce with it was a mini-podcast created out of an audio interview I did with Matthew Kowalski for the first blog. While admittedly not the best example of podcasting, it is still relatively well organized and does feature music from Phillip Phillip’s song, “Home.” You can check out the podcast here.
Overall, I found Ferrite to be an incredibly useful tool for audio editing. I will most certainly continue using the app well after my college career given its friendly interface. In a journalistic setting, I will most easily be able to use this app to edit interviews together, as well as generate podcasts in which I can explore various media-related subjects in-depth.
Mark Burbridge 