Inserting silence in ALL dead spots

[MrPinaglore]

I'm doing this audiobook and wanting to insert silence in every dead spot where there's a breath. Am I a totally naïve noob in thinking there's a shortcut to auto-insert silence in these sports, or is my only route the poor-man's process of inserting silence on each and every one of these things?

Thanks in advance.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

I'm afraid that this is going to sound a bit harsh, but there's no getting away from it:

There is no shortcut for inserting silence wherever there's a breath, not least because it's a completely unnatural idea. If you do this, you will make the whole thing really hard to listen to.

When people speak, they breathe. People are used to that, because they do it themselves. If you get rid of that, and even worse, replace it with silence, you're going to get the background noise leaping up and down each time anybody breathes. This is going to sound amazingly distracting. If you really feel that you want to reduce the sound between sentences, then use dynamic expansion, and don't overdo it. And even that can produce ambience shifts as well, although they sound more like pumping sounds than leaping.

The real technical skill in making voice recordings is to get all this stuff as good as possible at source - when the read is happening. Anything at all you do after that in terms of the way it sounds is going to be compromising the material.

[MrPinaglore]

Don't worry, Steve, sometimes there's no way around harsh. Going by the template of "real" audiobooks, they seem to only include breaths maybe every 10 or so statements. My breathing is pretty good, but there's the tiniest sniff or click or spittle or stomach gurgle on nearly every break. The tedium of editing...ugh.

Chris, someone had mentioned to me about Izotope. Does seem like a lifesaver.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

MrPinaglore  wrote

Going by the template of "real" audiobooks, they seem to only include breaths maybe every 10 or so statements.

That's partly why I don't listen to them. Just because tools are available to achieve this sort of thing doesn't in the slightest make it a desirable thing to do. One of the most important things to learn about audio in general is when not to do things...

[_durin_]

You can reduce breaths or low-level signals through proper use of Gating/Compression AND it can sound more natural than complete silence.

In Audition, there are several options, but take a look at the Dynamics or Dynamics Processing effects.  It depends on your recorded levels, of course, but something like this typically works well for me:

or

In both cases, what I'm doing is reducing the amplitude of any signal quieter than around -42dB.  Adjusting the "Attack" settings will adjust how quickly it responds to suppress those sounds.

[chrisw44157881]

izotope's dialogue isolate is almost magical. i got rid of breathing without even realizing it. it has one slider, to isolate by artificial intelligence.