BBC's music editing software

Do you know what software does the BBC use to edit audio files? They managed to get an A Capella version of a version of "Unchained Melody" for local radio promos, the instrumental version of "'Till the End" for the Royal Wedding promo, and managed to match the pitch of the final bit of "Cry Me a River" to the rest of the song for their coverage of Vancouver 2010 winter Olympics.

Could be any number of Digital Audio Workstations such as Pro Logic, Cubase or Sony Acid.

I think it all depends on which BBC office you are in. Regional radio stations often use some quite poor software.

So they probably have to make do with something like Audacity...

But that local radio campaign was the nationwide one. I remember it was called "Be part of it".

From what I recall, it was even worse than that. I didn't recognise the name of the one of those I've heard, and it was vastly inferior to Audition which I'm used to.




You'll probably find it wasn't made at the local station.

You've asked two questions there really. The physical hard/software used to edit has been answered above, but the source of things like instruments and acapella mixes has not. The BBC has a blanket license with record companies to use pretty much any music it likes on any of its output. This includes licenses with record labels to get things like instrumentals which otherwise aren't available to the general public.

Got it. That's how it worked...

By the way, I've heard about Melodyne's fantastic function to separate vocals and individual instruments from an audio file, and it's even able to edit individual notes. But will there be quality loss or something?

Yes, it's a clever bit of kit, bit you can generally hear when a track has been altered. As I said, the BBC will have the instrumental versions of songs they use, rather than trying to remove the vocals from a track.

No Melodyne DNA is absolutely fantastic for picking out different bits and pieces, I've seen it be used before and the vast amount of editing you can do it on it is outstanding.