Audition Workflow on a terrible track

[219inc]

I'm new to Audition. I have a terrible dialogue track, with pops, clicks, A/C and other noises, low input levels, just about every problem that can exist. I understand some of the tools, but in which order should they be applied? e.g. should I remove noise then increase the levels? when should limiters be used? where can I learn more in depth? I have watched videos but i find a lot of general overview type stuff and nothing in-depth. would like to find something in depth about cleaning up dialogue including EQ and ... well from A to Z. any advice is appreciated. thank you

[elkalamar]

hi

I don't think workflow in Audition should differ in any way from what you might do in any other DAW. But in case this helps -

I would in your position probably 1. boost the amplitude of the file to some extent using Amplify (under Effects > Amplitude and Compression) or Normalize (under the same menu) Normalize has the advantage that you can set the level dB you want to boost to without risk of clipping.

Then 2. use the Noise Reduction to see if you can get rid of hiss and hum etc, assuming you can find a suitable section of audio that doesn't have the signal you want to keep in it to use as the noise sample.

Then 3. any other tools, such as Click Reduction, or using the Spot Healing tool in the Waveform editor to remove particular offending sounds.

Then 4. reduce the amplitude back to an acceptable level afterwards.

But in all honesty though you can do some marvelous things with Audition's tools there are limitations, and if your audio is so bad to begin with it may well be a write-off. You'll have to judge yourself!

[219inc]

thanks for the response elkalamar. I should clarify that I am not trying to save/use any one particular audio track, rather trying to learn how to use Audition in general. Thanks again for your reply i'll test that!

[elkalamar]

If you're feeling your way around Audition and noise reduction tools in general, I would suggest (in addition to SteveG's sound advice) making a copy of your dialogue track and having a play with various of the tools - the NR, declicker etc - and get a feel for what sort of results are possible. The NR is really great, multiple passes are the way to go as SteveG says, it does take a little experimentation as there are quite a few variables in the settings and they effect the qualities of the NR

good luck!

[ryclark]

If you go to the Help menu in the latest versions of Audition there is a new option called Audition Learn. This will open some guided walkthroughs on how to use Audition including one on Noise Reduction.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

You have to be somewhat careful about what you do with noisy signals at low levels where there are clicks involved. Since clicks have a particular sonic signature that you don't really want to disturb, then really you shouldn't do NR until you've got rid of them using click reduction, if you can - this always works better this way around, and will definitely give you more accurate results.

And if your file is particularly noisy, then you have to apply NR with some care. Fortunately it's not too fussy about the levels, so you could normalize before doing this without any issues, after you've de-clicked it. We have generally found that taking too much out in a single NR pass is a bad idea - you need to do multiple passes, and change the FFT size between them. With most significant HF noise, you get better results with a high FFT setting, but when it comes to LF noise, the increased window size can make reductions that are more accurate. Basically, don't aim to take off more than 6dB per pass, and do at least two passes, at each extreme of the FFT range. Generally, you will get away with more reduction when you use a higher setting.

[219inc]

thank you! will try all this! appreciate the time you took to respond!