Removing effects (Original raw audio effected)

Report · Mar 02, 2022

Yesterday I used Audition for the first time to take away some background noise for a panel discussion I filmed. I used the Noise Reduction process. I saved the audio as a new file. But now I see it applied the effect even to my orginal audio meaning I dont have the unedited raw audio anymore. I need it now since an audicen member asked a question in the discussion without a microphone and I want to see if it was picked up at all since it's completley gone with the noise reduction effect. I opened up the audition file and now I can't see where I can remove the effect.

It's not under the Effects Rack. I don't understand how it saved this effect to my orginal audio as well and now I can't figure out how to take this effect out.

Any suggestions please?

Report · Mar 02, 2022

You write you saved the audio as a new file, but was this under a new name? In other words, did you choose to "Save as..." or simply to "Save..."?

If you chose to "Save as...", your original file will still be there, unedited, unprocessed in any way. If you chose to "Save...", unfortunately you have overwritten your original file.

As to how to remove applied effects once they are saved to a file in Waveform view: you can't, sorry! That is why you should always work on a copy of your file OR, as soon as you have opened the original immediately do a Save as.. under a new name or with some sort of addition to the name so that you can clearly see this is NOT the original file. Speaking personally, once I have completed work on an audio file I almost always add "_processed" to the file name and then save it.

Report · Mar 02, 2022

Emmrecs is almost correct... 😉 Even if you had used Save As, that would have left the question of what happens to your original file - that's the one you've applied the effect to, so it's not unedited. Audition will know that there have been changes made, and will ask you whether you want to save the changes when you close it. The moment you say 'yes', you've lost your original file permanently - it's only if you say 'no' at this point that it will revert to the state it was in when you opened it. That catches out quite a lot of people.

So like emmrecs says, always edit a copy, never the original.