Apply effects to individual files
Learn how and when to apply effects to individual sound files in Audition.
Published
I'm going to talk about applying effects to individual files.
Alright, we apply effects to individual files in what Adobe calls the Waveform Editor.
I kind of disagree with that term, because the Waveform Editor is not just the waveform.
You could also apply effects to individual files inside the Spectral Frequency Display view, and the Spectral Pitch Display view.
It's just that working inside the Waveform Display view of the Editor panel is a little more intuitive.
So that's where we'll work here.
But to be aware that you can apply it to any of those three views.
We're not talking about the Multitrack session basically.
So, there are two different kinds of effects that you can apply inside the Waveform view here.
There are effects that have no options and effects that have options.
If you go to the Effects menu, you'll see that some effects like Invert and Reverse and Silence, have no ellipses, no dots after them like that.
And then they also have no fly-out menu next to them.
Fly-out menu ones say these are groups of effects and here are those effects within the groups, and each one of those effects has the ellipsis.
Which means that when you click on them, you're going to open up a dialog box that gives you options.
These effects have no options.
If I click on Reverse on this file, it'll do that.
Boom, it's going to reverse it.
No choices, no options, just reverse.
I'll undo that by pressing Ctrl or Command Z, to undo that.
And the same would be true if I were to select all of this file for example, and click on Silence.
Gone.
Means it's not going to say how much silence do you want, it's just silent, right?
And if I were to click on Invert, the same kind of thing would happen, we just flipped the waveform.
It would sound the same, but just flipped the waveform.
So, that would be a different phase, just in case you have phase issues with two files that you put together in a stereo session.
Nevertheless, no options.
Here, options with dots.
Here, no options.
Generate Tones... is a sort of a unique effect.
If you click on that it generates a tone, and you can apply it either to the whole file, deleting whatever is there or you could insert it.
If you have the current time indicator there and you've not selected the file, it will insert it.
I just clicked OK, it'll insert three seconds of that tone which is the amount of time that was selected.
You could select any amount of time you want.
So, the tone and then, there's the music.
Or you can cover it up, whatever you want to do.
You can replace what's there or not.
The rest of the guys have their own kind of separate thing where you're applying effect onto a clip rather than replace the clip.
Now over to the right of the Effects menu is something called Favorites and this is full of effects with no ellipsis after them.
These effects just happen.
You apply them and you're done.
And Favorites are things that you can make.
These were made by the Adobe engineers and they basically combine effects and properties of effects or individual effects with certain properties.
But when you apply them, those properties or those groups of effects are applied directly to the clip and you're done.
You can't make any changes, so...
Let's say the most obvious one would be Telephone Voice.
Now you may think, "yeah, I would just like that little bit".
Well you can apply effects to create the same kind of effect and then make some adjustments, but here, it's done for you.
You just take that and you accept it as it is.
Which may not be a bad thing.
It's a pretty cool thing and you can use it very quickly.
And on top of that, you can make your own Favorites.
So just beware, these guys do something right away that you can't adjust.
It's just a one-shot deal.
So, let's go back to Effects.
There are two different ways that you apply effects to an individual file: You either just do it directly on the waveform here, in which case that's called destructive editing; or you do it down here in the Effects Rack.
Now if you don't see the Effects Rack, it's probably one of these four tabs here.
You might have that view, you just click on the Effects Rack, there it is.
Or if you don't see it anywhere amongst these tabs, just go to Window, and click on Effects Rack to bring it forward.
Those are Effects Rack.
When you apply an effect here, it's not destructive, it's kind of layered on top electronically.
But eventually you have to apply it, otherwise it won't have any effect ultimately.
If you want to save this file or use this file in a Multitrack session with those effects applied, eventually, you have to do what's called Apply, and when you apply it, you will destructively change this clip.
And by destructively change it, what it means is it changes the nature of that audio and saves this thing as a temporary file in a temporary folder.
And then if you save that file without changing the name, that will replace the original file.
If you change the name or change the folder location, the hard drive location, then it won't replace the original file.
Just be aware.
This is the destructive editing side of things when you work with individual files.
It's non-destructive when you work in the Multitrack session.
Okay let's apply some effects.
If I go to Effects to apply an effect, I wanted to show you generically how to do this, I'll talk about specific effects later.
I'll go over here, I noticed that some effects have the word (process) next to them.
Process effects can be applied only directly onto a clip.
So, notice Normalize (process)..., Fade Envelope (process)... and Gain Envelope (process)...
If I go over here to the Effects Rack.
I go to the Amplitude and Compression.
You won't see Normalize and the Gain and the Fade Envelopes here.
They're not available inside the Effects Rack.
Process effects just are a little different, they're processor-intensive and still have to be applied directly to a clip.
So, let's go over here and apply an effect.
And typically, this is what you would do, over here you go let's say to Reverb.
We'll go to, let's say Convolution Reverb...
When you do that you get a dialog box.
The dialog box is the generic term where you've got a thing in which you can make changes, click on stuff, you know, make adjustments.
What you can do inside a dialog box, is you can just listen to your clip by pressing the Play button here or down here.
Click Stop there.
If you want to loop it, you click the Loop button, and then click Play and let's go over and over and over again.
Click Stop.
If you select an area, it'll loop just that area, like that.
And that's basically how you can preview it.
This little button turns it on or off.
I'll click away here.
As you preview it, If you decide...
I can turn it on and off, or dry and wet.
And decide whether, you know, what I'm trying out here is working or not.
And as you make those decisions, you click Apply.
Now you can make all kinds of changes here.
There are Presets.
So, I'll just click a preset here, like a Standing Room Only, whatever that means.
What's cool is as this is playing, I can try different presets.
OK, these are presets and then, inside the Convolution Reverb which is a special kind of effect, they're what I call impulses, so you select the preset, then you can try an impulse as well.
Things like that and then, as you're playing it as well, let's say I go back to the (Default), I'll pick let's say, the Classroom which is kind of a default as well.
And as I play this, I can change this.
So, you can make adjustments here and listen to how things are being applied.
So, this is what's really cool about working with the effects here, that you can real-time preview, as you are applying changes to the effect.
Then when you're happy, when you're done, when you finally found something you like, you click on Apply or if you don't like it you click Close.
If we click on Apply, that will apply it to the entire clip.
I'm going to undo that.
If I decide that I want to apply it only to part of the clip, let's say that one, I open up that effect again, go back to Reverb, I go to Convolution Reverb...
It ends up where we were before.
If I click Apply, it applies only to that section.
So, you can apply it to the entire clip or just to a selection.
Like that.
So, this part will have it and this part won't.
So, you can see there's a big difference there in terms of the volume and also the effect.
I'll undo that.
OK, so that's how you apply an effect directly.
By applying an effect in the Effects Rack, first of all just consider that the Effects Rack always has some custom Presets.
These presets, you know, combine effects.
So, if I were to let's say, go to On the Telephone, I very much like that preset we listened to before.
It's three effects.
Let's see what that sounds like.
Which sounds an awful lot like this guy that we got under the Favorites here, the Telephone Voice.
If I apply that, and turn this guy off.
I can click this button down here to turn off the Effects Rack.
So, you can see how the engineer has created that favorite.
They put these three guys together, made some adjustments to the properties and ended up with that favorite, and then saved it as a favorite.
So, let me just turn this guy back on and undo that application of the favorite here.
Go back and look at these.
He has three different effects that have been applied and if you want to let's say, adjust that, you could just double-click on one of these, it'll open up the dialog box and you could make some adjustments to this effect, so I'll just play it again.
Something like that.
So, you can make adjustments, and when I click the X, it doesn't like get rid of it, it just closes this down.
Those adjustments are still here.
I would open it up again, there are those adjustments.
It took my changes and kept them.
So, you can take the preset and make adjustments to it if you care to do that way.
I'm going to get rid of each of these things.
I'll select one at a time and press Delete.
Delete.
Delete.
Now if I clicked on this Garbage Can up here, it would have been trying to delete the preset, as opposed to deleting the individual effect there.
So just be aware when you do that.
You want to drop the effect from the list here, you press Delete.
If I undo that, if you want to try the effects but not delete them, but you don't want to hear them, I'm going to play this.
And then turn off Distortion, see the difference.
So, you can see, what difference this makes, I'll try this guy.
You can always kind of preview things over here as well.
Whether I want to include this effect or not include this effect, you can try out various options.
And when you're finally done when you've added a preset or let's say I'm going to back up, I'll just delete these guys for a second, show you one other thing before I continue.
Let's say I add the Reverb effect here for example.
Go back to the Convolution Reverb... which we had before.
I'm going to change it to let's say, Under The Bridge, let's see what that sounds like.
OK, there it is.
Let's say you're happy with that.
To have this thing actually show up with the effect applied inside a Multitrack session, you have to apply it.
Or if you want to, you know, apply this effect and then save this file, so that you can play it on the Internet or put it on a CD, something like that.
Again, you have to apply it, otherwise it just resides here inside Audition CC.
You won't hear it anywhere else outside Audition CC.
So, you'll notice when you add an effect in the Effects Rack, it puts an asterisk next to the name of the file.
Now normally, an asterisk means that you have created a temporary file tucked away inside a temporary folder.
But in this case when you apply an effect to the Effects Rack, you haven't actually created a new file.
Because right now if I go Save, I'm going to get a message.
It's going to say: The effects in the rack are not going to be applied to your saved file by the way.
Nothing is going to be done, nothing's changed really.
So even if you save it, you won't be a changed file.
You actually have to apply the effects for the effects to take place.
I'll cancel out of that.
So normally, when you have an asterisk there, it means that the file has been changed and put in a temporary location.
In this case, it just means OK, this guy is sitting here, it's kind of a prompt to you.
When you save it, you really need to apply this thing first.
So now if I apply it, now it's as if I had taken the effect from here and put it on directly.
And now the asterisk really has more meaning if I just press Save now, Ctrl + S or Command + S and just save this guy, it's going to replace the original file.
So, I got to be careful.
Now if I'm going to save this, I need to go File, Save As..., and I can save it as the same name, but I got to make sure I don't put it back in the same place that I got it, or I'll replace the original file.
So, I would either save it as that name and put it in a different folder or I change the name and put it in this folder, call it "singer-edited.wav" or something like that.
Just to make sure we're on the same page, and we don't destroy the files that were given to you.
So now it's saved as this.
And if I play it now, it has the effect added.
So finally, if I add an effect, let's say here inside the Effects Rack and if I want to apply it just to part of the clip, that is also possible.
I can close this down and when I want to apply it, I can just do this and the Selection Only option is active.
And when I apply it, it'll apply it to just that section, not the rest of the clip.
So even in the Effects Rack, you can apply it to part of the clip.
But when you do this, if you have seven or eight effects here, all eight of them or whatever number you have there, will apply only to the selection.
You can't selectively decide which ones will be applied.
You have to apply all of them in one spot like that.
Contributor
