Copying the waveform of an audio file to another??

[yom62111662]

I think this might be a challenge.

I have an audio file of me speaking. The waveform shows where I speak and where I’m not.

Then I have a sound effect, let’s say of ocean waves, and I’d like it to play ONLY while I am speaking.

Is there a way to make the sound effect imitate the waveform of my speech file so it plays while I speak and doesn’t while I’m quiet?

[ryclark]

Well you could copy and Mix Paste the effects track over your speech in the Waveform view but the proper way to do it is to use a Multitrack session with your speech on one track and effects on a second one. You can then use the Volume envelope on the effects track by manually placing keyframes to fade the effects in and out.

It can be done automatically using Sidechaining in Audition where one track is used to control the volume of the other but it is quite complicated to set up if you have never done it before.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

ryclark  wrote

It can be done automatically using Sidechaining in Audition where one track is used to control the volume of the other but it is quite complicated to set up if you have never done it before.

I spent a while trying that, but you can't reverse the side-chain logic, and no amount of inverting the curve produced anything like the correct result...

[Richard M Knight]

Could you add a duplicate clean effects track out of phase to your ducking Multitrack session, the bits between the speech should cancel out leaving the required effects under the speech.

[ryclark]

I managed to get it to work using Sidechaining from the dialogue on Track 2 to control the Dynamics Processor in Expander mode on Track 3 with pink noise on it. The result is shown in the Bounced track.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Well I did think that in theory, this ought to work... just didn't for me!

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

yom62111662  wrote

I think this might be a challenge.

It might well be - you can't invert the drive signal to the side-chain input to the Dynamics Processor, which is what you'd need to be able to do to achieve this. Perversely, you might be better off trying to do this in Audition 3 using the Vocoder, which disappeared after that release - not in the least because it was a bit of a pain to set up, and you needed consistent signals to get it to work well. Even then, it's a vocoder - so it might not produce exactly the effect you're looking for anyway.

Invariably, the best way to do anything like this is to use a volume envelope on the effect, and set it up manually - it will always sound better if you do this, rather than relying on any form of automation.