No Hiss in Waveform, Hiss in Multitrack?

[jeffreym35135158]

I'm editing a program for my local radio station. I am working with a .aiff file and when I edit this file in the waveform editor, the speaker sounds perfect and the gaps between his sentences are absolutely silent. But, when I bring this .aiff file into the multitrack editor, all of a sudden there are these hisses in the gaps where there was only silence in the waveform editor. How can I remove the hissing when I edit in the multitrack editor? Is the hissing created in the multitrack editor?

[Bob Howes · Accepted solution]

It shouldn't be anything to do with Multitrack itself but one thing to look at is to see if you accidentally have the playback levels cranked up in mutitrack--it's easy for this to happen because there are multiple ways to adjust level in Multitrack:  the mixer, the controls in the information panel at the left end of each track, the head up display if you have it enabled, and the volume envelopes.

The other thing to have a look at is to actually check one of your silent bits and see what the actual noise level is--zoom in the vertical scale and see what level the noise is at.  If it turns out to be around -60dB or less then you do have potentially audible noise which may just be covered up by a lower monitor level in Waveform view or something.

Finally, you don't mention what audio interface you're using but if it's one built into your computer, some of those have auto gain controls that try to turn up silent bits.  It's conceivable that you have things set so Multrack gets hit by this "feature" but Waveform doesn't.

[ryclark]

Also make sure that you don't accidentally have any Effects selected in the Effects Rack for that track. Having a Compressor or similar level processing effect could raise the low level noise in absence of any other audio signal.

[jeffreym35135158]

Thanks for the input, I'll keep that in mind in the future!

[jeffreym35135158]

Hey Bob,

Thanks to you, I found the problem: the clip gain in the multitrack was at 0, so I tweaked it and we're good to go. Thank you so much!

[parris.ink]

Just wanted to add in my personal solution.

I created a "New Multitrack Session" for "Podcasts", and it must have automatically added the "Effect" called "Speech Volume Leveler". You can find it by going to your multitrack session and clicking on the "fx" icon to the left of your tracks. Hit the green power icon to toggle it on and off so that you can hear the difference.

[emmrecs]

@parris_ink

What you have discovered is but one of the reasons why the advice here is often stated: Avoid the Podcast template at all costs!!

Jeff

[FASiddiqui]

Worked for me--thank you!