Record, edit, and apply effects to audio clips, as well as record and adjust multitrack sessions in Adobe Audition and work directly with audio tracks in Adobe Premiere Pro.

• Certain tools are only available in Multitrack mode such as the Razor tool. Others like the Marquee tool only work when you are using the Spectral display. Normal editing in the Waveform view is done using the I-beam tool to position and/or select the cursor and selct portions of the waveform to work on.
• How to use Spectral Frequency Display in Audition Adobe Audition tutorials Use the Spectral Frequency Display to clean up your audio Remove beeps, hisses, and other noise by visually editing waveforms with Spectral Frequency Display in Adobe Audition. September 6, 2013.
• Adobe Audition Audio recording, editing and mixing software. Audition is a comprehensive toolset that includes multitrack, waveform, and spectral display for creating, mixing, editing, and restoring audio content.
• Adobe Audition is an incredibly powerful, rich tool for editing and mixing your sound for film and video projects. Sometimes something doesn’t sound as great.

I’ve been meaning to start a blog series covering basic Audition workflows and tools for some time now. Our documentation and promotional teams do a great job showing off what’s new in each release, but we don’t offer a lot of in-depth training material for Creative Cloud members just getting started. It is my goal with this ongoing series to cover the topics that help our readers become masters with Audition and audio editing.

Audition is a deep application with a long history and a wide variety of users, so it’s no surprise that its terminology and interface can feel intimidating to artists and professionals from other disciplines. But apart from a few new words and slight conceptual differences with other production tools, crafting incredible-sounding audio with Adobe Audition can be a simple and fun experience!

WAVEFORM vs. MULTITRACK

Audition has two primary editing environments. Multitrack offers a non-destructive clip-based workspace, where you arrange new or imported audio files on a timeline, blending and fading between tracks, and adding real-time processing effects like Reverb or Compression to your clips. (We’ll cover Compression in another post, so don’t worry about it yet.) Multitrack editors re-arrange pieces, modify timing, and adjust loudness levels for each piece until perfect, then render their project into a final audio file – often WAV or MP3. This workflow only uses existing media or creates new media, but never makes changes to the original files. Multitrack view is often the workspace of choice for video post-production, podcast and radio show creation, and musical composition.

Waveform view, on the other hand, is a destructive waveform editing workspace capable of in-depth analysis and sample-accurate selections and processing. Many effects and tools available in this workspace require multiple passes or are not real-time compatible, and result in changes to the actual data recorded in an audio file. This means that if you make a change to a file in Waveform view and click Save, you are usually overwriting the contents of the file you edited. This distinction can be tricky for users used to non-destructive NLE or DAW applications to wrap their heads around.

Now, why on earth would Audition support modifying your files? Surely someone must be off their medication to allow such a tool! Not really. One of earliest adopters of Audition (and its predecessor, Cool Edit Pro) were radio journalists under exceptionally tight deadlines. These folks had no time for creating multitrack projects, importing assets, or rendering a mixdown before exporting to the particular flavor of MP2 or WAV their playback automation system supports! Recording a single report quickly, deleting the “umm”s as fast as possible, and exporting directly to disk enabled them to work as fast as the news happened. In forensics and archival industries, Audition’s Spectral Frequency Editing environment allows selecting specific sounds and manipulating recordings as easily as using Windows Paint. Restoring bad recordings into usable or even good, clear audio files can mean proving an alibi in court, understanding Edison’s voice, or hearing a whale’s song.

These two worlds collide when double-clicking a clip in Multitrack opens it in Waveform view. You can make destructive edits to your assets in Waveform view, that directly change the content in Multitrack view. In most cases, this is good! Perhaps there’s a bad hum or background noise, or a production assistant’s cell phone chime occurred during the best take of a scene. Maybe you want to create an effect where a sound effect speeds up and slows down. Or you might need to remove some or all of the clicks and pops from a drum loop captured from an old vinyl record. If you make a change to an original file used in a Multitrack session, Audition will ask if you wish to save the edited file the next time you save your session.i

But if you want to avoid any possibility of destructively modifying your media files, consider working from backup copies of your assets, keeping the originals on a separate storage device. Then you can always restore the file and revert any changes made to an audio file. Also, before double-clicking a clip to open in Waveform view, right-click and choose Convert to Unique Copy. This will render the contents of the clip to a new file and relink the clip. (Similar to Render and Replace in Premiere Pro.) Any edits performed in Waveform view will only be applied to the copy.

Have a question about editing or mixing audio? Share it in the comments or via email to audbugs@adobe.com and we’ll try to answer it in an upcoming Audition Basics article.

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There are always going to be imperfections in your production audio. Instead of scrapping it, use these tips to clean it up in Adobe Audition.

No matter how experienced your audio crew, there are always issues that will find their way into your recording. It happens. But resist the urge to scrap your audio and go straight to ADR, because you might be able to salvage that audio. There are several options you can utilize in order to save this audio, but one option that’s gaining steam within the industry is Adobe Audition.

With that said, here are five tipsfor cleaning up your audio in Adobe Audition. For each tip, we’ll run through how you can fix the issue and then post a helpful professional tutorial to guide you step by step. Let’s get started.

1. Fix Distorted Audio

There may be moments in post when you discover that your field recorder settings were simply too hot. This is a problem that frequently rears its ugly head in documentary film work, especially for those working as a one-person crew. When your audio is too hot, it’s going to distort — but fear not. It can be fixed.

1. Access the Waveform of your audio by double-clicking on the track.
2. Head over to Window > Amplitude Statistics.
3. A new window will open. Click on the Scan option in the lower left-hand corner.
4. Once it scans, find the section that says Possibly Clipped Samples.
5. Click on the small Diamond Shaped Node next the number. This will take you to where your audio is clipping.

For an in-depth look at how to use the technique above, check out the great tutorial below from Mike Russell. He’ll run through the Amplitude Statistics process, then show you how to fix distortion in two different ways.

2. Use the Spectral Frequency Display

Adobe Audition Spectral Editing Tool

Have you ever been out on location filming and some secondary interference messed with your audio? Maybe someone on set sneezed or had their cell phone ring. Maybe an airplane flew overhead. Noises like these can be taken out of your audio with the Spectral Frequency Display.

1. Open your audio Waveform by double-clicking it in the Files Panel.
2. As the Waveform opens in the Editor Panel, look toward the bottom of the panel.
3. There is a small divider. Click and Hold to pull that divider up, revealing the Spectral Frequency Display.
4. Now you have a visual reference to find the noises you need to take out.

Check out the tutorial below where Maxim Jago from Lynda.com takes us through the step-by-step process of using the Spectral Frequency Display to clean up your audio.

3. Use Adaptive Noise Reduction

Another way to reduce unwanted noise from your audio is through the use of the Adaptive Noise Reduction effect. This effect works really well at removing ambient background noise and wind noise. This effect can be applied in real-time through the Multitrack Editor, which is really handy. Here’s how to get started using the Adaptive Noise Reduction effect.

Adobe Video Editing Software

1. Activate your Waveform by double-clicking your audio source in the Files panel.
2. With your Waveform selected, head over to either the Effects Rack or the Effects Top Menu.
3. Then go to Noise Reduction/Restoration > Adaptive Noise Reduction.

Now that you know how to access the Adaptive Noise Reduction effect, let’s find out how to precisely use the effect to clean up audio. Here’s another video from Lynda.com that runs through the process.

4. Remove Echo

Echo is another issue that you may hear in your audio from time to time. It happens, especially when you’re filming at a location with a lot of reflective surfaces. Surfaces like concrete, tile, brick, and metal will reflect sound and bounce it all over the space, which in turn can give you some unwanted reverb.

Adobe Audition Audio Editing Software

Unfortunately, Audition doesn’t include any really polished effects that can handle this issue. However, there are several plugins you can purchase that won’t break the bank. Two great plugins you can use: Acon Digital’s DeVerberate and the SPL De-Verb plugin from Plugin Alliance.

In the tutorial below, Curtis Judd gives us an in-depth tutorial on how to utilize both of the above plugins to reduce and remove echo issues from your audio. Now, you should be completing your audio mix in something other than your NLE, but if it’s a quick video project and you have echo issues, know that you can use these plugins with Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

Adobe Audition Spectral Editing Software

5. Use Frequency Analysis

Another way to locate noises in your audio is by using the FrequencyAnalysis option. By activating this window, you’ll be able to see the frequencies in your audio file, which then allows you to find where random issues of clipping, excessive bass, and other noises are located. Here’s how to access this menu option.

1. Go to the Window top menu, and click the Frequency Analysis tab.
2. Choose Logarithmic from the Scale drop-down menu.
3. Start your playback. To Freeze, click one of the eight Hold buttons.

Now that you know how to access Frequency Analysis (as well as how to apply frequency holds), let’s turn to a full tutorial (once again from Mike Russell) on how to effectively use this feature for audio clean up.

Adobe Audition Spectral Editing

Were these audio tips helpful? What else do you want to know about Audition? Give us your feedback in the comments below.