Import audio files and browse media
Watch this tutorial and explore common methods for importing audio clips and scrubbing media with Adobe Audition.
Published
As you might imagine, importing audio files into Audition is very easy.
But I just want to clarify what we mean by "import".
We're not really taking a file and putting it anywhere.
What we're really doing is just creating a shortcut to it, or a link.
And it's that link that we see inside this Files panel.
I'll give an example of what I mean.
There are perhaps four straightforward ways of importing media into Audition.
I've got a folder here, and I've got some stems.
This is all of the audio from a layered piece of music.
And I'm going to grab one of these MP3 files, I've compressed these down to MP3 to make them a bit quicker for you to download.
And I'm going to drag these over to the Files panel in Audition.
And you can see, I'm dragging directly from Explorer here in Windows.
This would be the Finder in Mac OS.
If I now click into Audition, you see there's my file, and if I right click - that's Control click on a Mac - I can choose Reveal in Explorer and there's the file, still on my hard drive.
I haven't moved it anywhere.
It's in the same folder that it was originally.
So another couple of ways of importing are up here at the top left of the Files panel.
I've got Open File and Import File.
And these seem pretty similar and to be honest, they're very, very similar.
But there is one subtle difference.
If I choose Open File, let's pull this on screen here, this is opening up the Explorer window.
Again, this would be Finder on Mac OS.
If I pick one of these pieces of audio and click Open, you'll see that it actually opens the file in the audio editor.
But if I instead click Import File, and I'll just choose something else here, and click Open, you'll notice that the file is imported.
Let me just adjust the heading here.
I'm just clicking and dragging the divider between Name and Status so we can see the file name.
But you notice, that file has not opened.
I'm still looking at this SpectralCough.wav file.
If I double click, you can see it's quite dramatically different in this waveform view.
That really is the difference between these 2 buttons.
If you don't want to be distracted from the file you're working on, you choose Import instead of Open.
I can also double click on the blank space of the Files panel here.
This brings up the Open File panel.
And I can right-click on that space and choose Open or Import.
You can see I've got Ctrl+O or Ctrl+I.
Or I could do Command+O or Command+I on a Mac.
So that's 3 ways of importing things.
But you'll notice down here I've also got a Media Browser.
Now if you don't have this on screen, go to the Window menu right at the top and you'll see it down here about halfway down the list, Media Browser.
You also have the option of going to Workspace, making sure Default is selected, and resetting the default workspace.
Now the Media Browser allows you to examine audio files on your drives, actually on your hard drives, without necessarily importing them to Audition.
This is especially useful because of this button right here: Auto-Play.
With this button on, Audition will automatically begin to play any of the items that you select on this list.
Now, of course I could just click, hold down the Shift key, click again, and have a list of items I'm going to import.
But if I just select one of these, in fact, what I think I'll do is just select this folder so I'm seeing the items.
These all start playing pretty much right at the beginning.
I'm going to turn on Auto-Play and then... well let's take this one for example, I'm just going to single click, and then another... and another... and then click Stop.
You see I've got a Loop Play button as well.
So if this is on, as Audition's playing the file it will just repeat.
So these 3 buttons are very, very useful for identifying items you'd like to import into Audition.
And you can see over on the left, I'm just seeing the contents of my drives.
This is pretty much the same - Mac or PC.
Browse to the folder you want to look in and you can just check the media before you import it.
Anything I want, I can drag and drop, and there it is.
I've got it in my Files panel, ready to work with.
So that's importing files into Adobe Audition.
And remember, when you import, nothing in particular is done to the files.
We're just making them available to include in multitrack sessions or to work on in the Waveform view.
