Audition 3 spectral display

[TKA86]

Hello! A long time ago I used Adobe Audition 3.0. It had wonderful spectral phase display. I try to understand what it means? There are different coloured curves. What does their colour mean? 

[Mod note: moved to a thread of its own, as it wasn't relevant to the one it was originally posted in]

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

It wasn't really very meaningful at all, in any sort of helpful way. To a first approximation it shows the difference between the two channels and on a complex signal, and the further the display got from the centre, the more out of phase the two channels were - but it displayed different frequencies as different colours - the redder they got, the higher the frequency. The brightness related to the relative amplitudes. So on a complex waveform, like yours (which has to be zoomed in quite a way to look like that) it's showing you that... it's a complex waveform!

[TKA86]

Thank you for your help. I've already imagined that those lines represent separate instruments. And i wish we could erase separate lines so we could make karaoke or jam tracks or even isolated instruments.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

No, they don't represent separate instruments - you can't separate audio out like that. The best you can do with any software is a harmonic analysis, for instance the way that Melodyne does - but even that can't separate instruments out; that technology (unbaking a cake, if you like) doesn't exist at all.

[TKA86]

And what is the way to see all discrete harmonics in a mix? It seems that some harmonics are covered by another and cannot be discriminated.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Yes that's correct - any harmonics that are identical in two different sources can't be discriminated at all. How do you see them? Actually you have an advantage in Audition 3 - you use the Spectral Frequency display, and the Spectral Controls in the Window menu to optimise what you can see (start with altering the resolution upwards from the default). Why an advantage? The spectral display, and control of it, is better in Audition 3 than any of the later versions!

[TKA86]

And one more question: is it possible to see spectrum in some regions of stereo panning? Let's say between 0 and 15 degrees or between 20 and 65. The ideal case is if we could see different tracks (guitar, vocals, percussion) like layers. I tried Spectralayers but that program can display separated tracks only for mixing. It cannot split mixed song for vocals and underlying instruments.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

No, you can't separate the separate display into phase regions. Apart from any other considerations, that would be very heavy on processing time and anyway, any display like that would be completely messed up by any reverberation in the sound field.

And like I said earlier, you cannot separate out the individual instruments in a mix anyway; that is akin to unbaking a cake - you simply can't do it, because of the harmonic overlaps.

[TKA86]

Maybe you have seen that video. https://player.vimeo.com/video/32221161?app_id=122963

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Yes I've seen it - it's easy with early Beatles tracks, becaue there's hardly anything in them, and one part doesn't obscure another. If you try doing it with the tracks on Sgt. Pepper it's a different matter altogether.