Inside Sound

The Spectral Frequency Display in Adobe Audition is beautiful to look at, to be sure. But it gives you insight into your audio clips that a waveform view can’t match. For example, in the Spectral Frequency Display, you can see individual harmonics and overtones, and their relative strength. You can see noise. Best of all, you can edit what you see using graphic editing tools with which you’re probably already familiar, and make edits to your audio with near-surgical precision.
If you’re dazzled by brilliant colors, you might miss some of the more useful tools offered by the Spectral Frequency Display. While in the Waveform Editor, let’s take a look at several different types of sound in the Spectral Frequency Display. Frequencies are displayed from low at the bottom to high at the top, and in all cases, the yellower the color, the louder the sound.

Example 1. Here are seven different sounds, as seen in the Spectral Frequency Display. The frequencies along the vertical ruler on the right are in linear mode. It seems that most of the loud frequencies are very small, down at the bottom, and probably difficult to edit. Click on the screen shot for a larger view of it.

If you wanted to zoom in on those lower frequencies in order to edit them, you certainly could. But there’s a more powerful tool available to help you with this. Option-click (Mac) or right-click (PC) in the vertical ruler on the right, and the following menu appears. From this menu you can configure the vertical scale of frequencies from all linear to all logarithmic, which will make the lower frequencies much more visible. You can also adjust the resolution, to make the Spectral Display more precise.

Example 2. Option-click or right-click in the vertical ruler to bring up this menu. Settings such as More Logarithmic and Full Logarithmic will make the lower frequencies more easily visible. Increasing Spectral Resolution makes individual harmonics within a sound easier to see.

The following screen shot shows the exact same audio file as in Example 1, but with Full Logarithmic selected as the scale in the vertical ruler. Note the huge difference in the appearance of the loudest sounds, which for the most part includes the fundamental pitch of an instrument or voice, or the main element in noise. Much more information about these particular sounds is revealed when the scale is logarithmic: You can see the individual notes of the bass in the power trio, the dialogue, and the tuba. You can see the Doppler effect of a passing jet in the airport taxiway. In all cases, you can clearly see frequencies even below the fundamentals.

Example 3. This is the same audio clip as in Example 1, with frequency set to logarithmic scale. The individual notes and harmonics are much more visible. It's as if the audio clip has just given up all its secrets! Click to view a larger version.

With the logarithmic setting, most of the sounds that concern audio editors stand out in relief: fundamentals, overtones, and even noise. The Marquee Selection tool, Lasso Selection tool, Paintbrush Selection tool, and Spot Healing Brush tool are very easy to use and are uniformly effective with all of these sonic elements. But there are a couple of other tools that come up in a contextual menu when you option-click or right-click on the Spectral view itself, such as Capture Noise Print (the first step to automatically removing noise from a clip) and Auto Heal Selection (dramatically reduces a particular sound or noise without eliminating the surrounding background ambience).

Example 4. Option-click or right-click in the Spectral Display iteslf, and this menu appears. Click for a larger view.

The copy command works just as you’d think, letting you make a copy of any area you can select. What do you do with copies of audio data? Do some sound design by pasting part of one sound into another, for one thing. In the following screen shot, we copied the approaching police siren on the left (the oscillating pitch of which is highly), and then pasted it onto the dialogue clip. The result: A dialogue with a passing siren, but without the whoosh of the tires and body noise.

Example 5. Copy and paste in the Spectral Frequency Display works just as it does in any image editing program, such as Adobe Photoshop. But in this case, it takes only the frequencies that you select, and blends the associated sounds as well as the images upon pasting. Here we've copied the sound of an approaching police siren on the left, and pasted it onto the dialogue clip on the right.

You can make even more precise selections with the Lasso Selection or Paintbrush Selection tools. In the following screen shot we use the Lasso Selection tool to select and delete the annoying squeak of a shutting door without disturbing the shutting sound. The result: a door that shuts without squeaking.

To learn more about the power of the Spectral Frequency Display, watch Jason Levine’s excellent video demo by clicking on this link.

Many people overlook one of the most powerful tools that Adobe Audition CS5.5 offers: The ability to configure the interface so you can focus on the tasks you need to perform most, and switch quickly between the tools most important to you.

If you’ve spent time with any of the CS products, you are probably familiar with how easy it is to customize panels in the application window by dragging, resizing, grouping, docking, and floating them.

If you haven’t yet tapped in to this extremely useful technique, you can quickly learn how to do it by clicking on the link at the bottom of this post, “Customizing Workspaces.”

Audition goes one step farther by letting you configure multiple arrangements of panels, called workspaces. Here are examples of two of the default workspaces, one designed for mastering a video session, the other aimed at configuring an interview for radio broadcast.

This workspace has analysis tools such as the Frequency Analysis and Phase Meter panels ready to go.

This workspace has the Markers and Playlist panels open, so the editor can mark sections and rearrange them easily.

As different as these two workspaces are, you can quickly switch between them by selecting Window > Workspace, then choosing the workspace you want.

If you have your own configuration of panels that suits your workflow, you can save it as a custom workspace by selecting Window > Workspace > New Workspace. . . . Workspaces appear in numerical and alphabetical order in the Workspace menu.

For the ultimate in flexibility, configure a custom workspace for each of your most common tasks. Then assign a Keyboard Shortcut to each one, so you can switch between them instantly. You can assign Keyboard Shortcuts to as many as nine different workspaces. Just select Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts, then open up the Workspace category at the bottom of the Edit Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.

You'll find the Keyboard Shortcuts menu item near the bottom of the Edit menu.

Workspaces are located at the end of the list in the Edit Keyboard Shortcuts dialog. You can see key commands that have already been assigned to workspaces, and you can edit or remove commands easily.

You can assign keyboard shortcuts to the first nine workspaces in the Workspace menu, so consider numbering your workspaces so they appear at the top of the list.

Taking advantage of the flexibility of workspaces in Audition CS5.5 can make a significant improvement to your audio workflow.

For details on resizing, grouping, docking, and floating panels, read this help document, “Customizing Workspaces.”