Set up multitrack sessions

There are two basic approaches to setting up Multitrack sessions in Audition CC.

One: you create a Multitrack session that is full of empty tracks that you will later populate with files - which are clips inside a Multitrack session.

And the other is to take a bunch of files here inside the Files panel, select them and then insert them into a Multitrack session all at once.

So I'll show you both approaches in this tutorial.

So let's talk about the way to make a Multitrack session that is empty.

To begin with there are two approaches to do that.

You can click on this icon here and select New Multitrack Session...

Notice that the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+N in Windows; Command+N in Mac.

Or you can go to File, New, Multitrack Session...

The same 3 choices again with the Ctrl+N or Command+N there.

One place that you can't go that you think you would be able to go is to Multitrack.

Can't make a new Multitrack session here.

This is for use within the Multitrack session.

So let's go to File, New, Multitrack Session...

That opens up the New Multitrack Session dialog box with a few little items that you need to put in.

First of all, give your Multitrack session a name.

So I'm going to call it the 'Multitrack example'.

And then you want to choose a template.

Now the default template is None.

It creates a Multitrack session with 6 empty tracks and a master track.

And these are the default settings for those tracks, so 48,000 Hertz Sample Rate, 32-bit floating point Bit Depth and a Stereo track for the Master track.

Now I'm going to change this from the default settings as an experiment to show you what happens when you do this.

Notice that all the files over here that we're going to use to populate this new Multitrack session have 48,000 Hertz sample rates.

The rule of thumb is that you want your Multitrack session sample rate to match the sample rate of the files you're going to put in it.

But if it doesn't - that's ok, because when you bring in a file with a different sample rate Audition CC creates a new copy of that to match the Multitrack session sample rate.

So that's pretty cool.

Let me show you how that works.

So I'm going to purposely set this to 44100 instead of 48000.

And then click OK.

And when I do that you can see it opens up this blank slate.

It also does something else to the file folder.

Let me just switch over to that.

Inside the 'My Audition exercise files' file folder a new folder is created named after the name you gave to the Multitrack session.

And inside there is the Multitrack session file.

Ok, that's all well and good.

I'm going to back up one notch.

Let me show you what happens now if you bring in a file that's the wrong sample rate.

Let's just go down.

Now I'm going to bring in a file.

And you get this message that says: 'The sample rate of the inserted file doesn't match the sample rate of the session.'

If you click OK, we're going to make a new one that does.

So no big deal, but that lets you know what's going on here.

I'll click OK.

Brings in that base file.

It creates a new one.

It names it Bass 44100, because that's the sample rate for the session 1.

And it adds it over here in the Files panel.

And this is not one of those temporary files tucked away in some folder some place.

This guy is immediately accessible and will be on your hard drive in a logical location for you to access later.

And then if you choose to delete it, that's up to you.

But it won't be in some temporary file folder, where, if you close the session, you may lose it later.

I'll show you that.

Here's how it looks.

Inside the 'My Audition exercise files' here's that 'Multitrack example' folder.

Inside there now is another folder that has all the 'Conformed Files'.

So every time you bring in a file that doesn't match this session in terms of its sample rate, here's where the new one goes right there.

One other thing that happens, when you create a Multitrack session and then make a recording in it, is that it also uses that folder.

So I'll show you that by clicking on this little R button to activate the recording for that track.

I'm going to mute this first track so that we don't get bass inside the recording there.

I just have this track being recorded.

Put the Record button down here.

And off we go.

I'm going to record my voice into that track.

And when I'm done I click Stop.

And that immediately puts this file that we made there here inside the Files panel.

Right down there.

It gives it a name based on the track number.

And it's the first one we've made to the track.

So it's Track 2 and the first cut for that track.

But also it stores it in a logical place that you can track down later.

Let me show you that.

You're inside this folder again.

We've got the 'Multitrack example'.

I'll back up one more notch.

There's the 'Multitrack example' session folder.

Inside there now is a new folder that says 'Multitrack example_Recorded'.

So all the recorded files go here.

They too are not temporary files.

They're put here for your use down the road.

They won't disappear or anything like that, when you close this session or close Audition CC.

I wanted to just show you how those folders work.

All right, let's make another empty Multitrack session by going to File, New, Multitrack Session...

This time I want to use one of these templates.

If you take a look here you see a bunch of template choices.

And if you read them you might go: "What the heck do they mean by that?"

For example: Radio VO with Music Ducking.

That's a voice-over.

And music ducking is a technology that allows you to have music go down in volume when the voice-over kicks in.

It uses another technology called sidechaining.

And there are few other odds and ends here as well, but we're going to go with the Full Rock Band preset, which is a huge set up which has sounds and outputs and buses and all kinds of stuff in it, as if you were going to have a huge rock band recording session.

So I'll click on that.

We'll call it 'Rock band'.

The rest of these items are set for you.

You can't change them.

The sample rate is 44100, because it's kind of assumed you're going to make a CD out of this or maybe some MP3 files.

The Bit Depth is 24, because that's kind of the mid-range bit depth for a lot of recording sessions.

And we're going to have a Master output of Stereo as opposed to 5.1, which would be more likely to be put on to a DVD.

So we've got our preset all ready to go.

When I click OK, and that opens up this new Multitrack session with something you haven't seen before: a Metronome track, which is like a click track.

So a drummer can hear the rhythm very consistently.

And that click track can be played in the background.

That wouldn't be recorded to the final output, but that way the drummer, for example, can hear that while they're laying down the rhythm track.

Or anybody else can hear it as well.

You'll notice that all the tracks are already named.

It's assumed that you can have a bunch of drum microphones hooked up.

High Tom, Low Tom, Overheads (stereo) which you have a couple of microphones above the drum set.

Then have all those guys output to the Drums bus.

This is all kinds of other options here.

There's Guitars, Vocals.

Things like that are already set up for what might be or what presumably would be a very large full-bore Multitrack rock band recording session.

So that little template let's you do that.

And then you can modify templates as you see fit by adding tracks or deleting tracks.

Ok.

Those are the 2 methodologies that you can use to create empty Multitrack sessions.

Either just accept the sort of none default or else select one of these templates.

So let's move on to using files and then making Multitrack sessions from files.

Let me go over here to the Files panel and select all the files that I want to put in a Multitrack session.

So I'm gonna click on Bass.wav.

I'll go down to the end here and Shift click on snare.wav to select all of those files.

I can't put a Multitrack session in a Multitrack session.

So hold on the Ctrl key here in Windows or Command key to Mac to deselect that when I click on it.

Scroll up a bit, deselect this one as well.

Let's see what else we got here.

I think we've got all the guys deselected that I want to deselect.

So now we've got 9 files that I want to put into a Multitrack session all at once.

There are 2 ways to do that.

If I right-click on it it's going to be an Insert into Multitrack menu command right there.

And I'll put it on New Multitrack Session...

Or I can click on this button that appeared when we made some selections.

You probably might have noticed that was grayed out before.

Not active.

But now that we've selected some files, this becomes active.

And it's the same basic menu command that you'd get when you right click like that.

Here's this little button up there.

We say: Yeah, insert this into a New Multitrack Session...

And it gives us that same dialog box again.

So I'll call this one 'Files multitrack' so we can differentiate it.

I'll put it in the same folder we had before.

I don't want to use the Full Rock Band template, but it is interesting that it did switch to a sample rate of 48000, because it sees that we're bringing files in here that are 48000 sample rates.

So even though the full rock band has a default of 44100, since we're using files at 48000 sample rate, it shifted this thing behind the scenes.

But I don't want to use a Full Rock Band.

I want to go back to None.

Now I need to change this to 48000.

There we go. 32-bit floating point, which is fine.

And stereo, which is fine.

And I click OK.

And that creates this Multitrack session with 9 clips in it and a Master track.

And now that we've done that, let's just switch over to the Multitrack 'My Audition exercise files'.

And notice that we now have 3 folders in here.

One for each of the Multitrack sessions we made.

This is the one that we made from the default setting Rock band.

This one we just now made.

And again it's just one Multitrack session, whereas the guy we made first, we added some recording to it and plus conformed the files.

There are the subfolders there.

So that's the basic approach to making Multitrack sessions from scratch here in Audition CC.

You can create a Multitrack session that is empty, that's waiting for you to populate it with files.

Or you can take files and turn them into a Multitrack session.

But after you do that you're not limited to what you've just created from the template or from the files.

You can add tracks.

You can delete tracks.

You can add what are called bus tracks or do other customization.

And even then you can make your own templates that you can use down the road.