BIAS Inc. has started shipping Peak 3.1, a new version of the company’s digital audio editing application. The update adds support for QuickTime 6, encoding audio with Dolby’s AAC and more.
Peak 3.1 is native for Mac OS X and fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.2 (“Jaguar”), which will go on sale this weekend; it will also run under Mac OS 8.6 through 9.x. The 3.1 update is free to owners of Peak 3 as a download from the BIAS web site.
Peak 3.1, which has a suggested retail price of US$499, also includes a Duplicate command, which enables automatic repetitions of audio material within a file for tasks such as loop-based composition. The update adds user-definable contextual menu support and enhanced WAVE file support. And it supports Broadcast WAVE files with Broadcast Audio Extension chunks and 24 bit WAVE files.
QuickTime 6 is included as part of Jaguar or as a separate download from Apple’s Web site. AAC is a new standard for high-quality bandwidth restricted audio delivery; its proponents say it offers more efficient compression and equal (or even superior) quality than older formats such as MP3.