Problem regarding delay time of Audio in 2 Mics (Interview/Podcast Setting) - How to fix in Audition

[Yey]

Setup: 2 wave-files of 2 Mics, the Mics were mounted on table and 2 Persons had a discussion about a topic, they were sitting next to each other on the table and talking into their mic.

I created a Multitrack-Session in Adobe Audition and Synced the 2 wave-files whitin it (head slate/clap). They are synced perfectly but now if I listen to the discussion we have a slight but very noticably echo / reverb because the sound of Person 1 recorded in Mic 1 gets into Mic 2 some milliseconds later and quieter and vice versa. This creates a echo / reverb in the Master Out of Multitrack Session for both Persons.

My question now is: How to "automatically" mute an audiotrack in multitracksession, when I have a specific decibel level where below it, the track should be muted and above it the track should be active (not muted)? That could fix the problem. Or does anybody else have a great idea how i can fix this problem?

Thank you very much for you help, I'm pumped for your replies/solutions.
And btw: I love Adobe CC Products 😉 .... and this is my first-ever post in an Product Forum of Adobe Products 😄

[Mike Russell]

Great question and this is for certain a common issue especially when recording with more than one mic in the same room.

The effect you're looking for is in Effects > Amplitude and Compression > Dynamics...

Tick only the AutoGate box you can then change the Threshold to be the dB level you desire. The other settings can remain on default for most use cases. You should only need to alter the other settings if something doesn't sound quite right.

You're essentially setting a Noise Gate on your tracks. I've made a video with more detail on the effect here:

[Yey]

Thank you very much for your competent and fast reply! It's your solution that fixes the issue. For that I'm really thankful! But one more question: Now I processed the audio with the Dynamcis/Auto Gain Effect but, I did finetuning to the parameters as good as I can (took me 2 hours haha) but I'm experiencing another problem with the gated audio. The sound that shouldn't be gated is fine, but at the start end at the ends of words in a sentence its like very abrupt and harsh and doesn't feel natural (it's like a sort of a hard-cut). I tried to fix this with the 4 parameters but couldn't smoothe it out completely. What am I doing wrong? My settings are: Person 1: Threshold -41, Start 1ms, End 100ms, Keyframe 10ms; Person 2: Threshold -42, Start 1ms, End 100ms, Keyframe 10ms. Would be really great if you can tell me what I'm doing wrong. Thank you very much!

[Mike Russell]

Thanks! It is for sure a tough thing to setup and clipping of words is a common issue if the noise gate is too aggressive. You can try increasing the "Hold" time in ms. Alternatively using the "Expander" which is located in the same effect is another way to go about this and get a similar but less harsh impact. Here's a video on setting an Expander: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2aLCVrxTi8

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Hi Yey. You said:

"I created a Multitrack-Session in Adobe Audition and Synced the 2 wave-files whitin it (head slate/clap). They are synced perfectly but now if I listen to the discussion we have a slight but very noticably echo / reverb because the sound of Person 1 recorded in Mic 1 gets into Mic 2 some milliseconds later and quieter and vice versa. This creates a echo / reverb in the Master Out of Multitrack Session for both Persons."

If these people were really sitting next to each other, then there's no way that the time difference between them is going to be that great, which makes me wonder whether they really are sync'ed - if you see what I mean. I suspect that something else is going on here, and it's this really that you ought to be fixing. For a start, is it a single repeat that you're getting? If you slide one channel so that the repeat sits exactly with the other channel, does it go away completely, or is there still an echo?

If the echo is still there, whatever you do, then I suspect that you may have a monitoring issue, where the feed from one channel is being looped around and getting fed into the other. If this is the case then you need to look carefully at how Audition is set up. Trying to repair the damage after the event is all very well, but a) you'll hear the gating and b) it's always best to try to fix the problem at source so you don't have to go through any extra steps, isn't it?

[Yey]

Thank you, I'm also 100% for fixing a problem at its source. Before I tried the Auto Gate, as mentioned above, I tested your solution, but turns out, that it's really the Gate thats requiered. But thank you anyway for your competent help!