Adobe Audition 1.5 Versus 2.0

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Music-software-reviews.com now has a sound editing software comparison chart available that includes Audition 2.0. You can see at a glance differences between 1.5 and 2.0. The chart seems to line up better through Internet Explorer than through Firefox (my default browser).

That site also has a nice music glossary that describes some of the features listed in the editing software comparison chart.

 

Most voice actors I know love 1.5, hate 2.0. They find 2.0 unnecessarily complicated. I truly love Audition 1.5; my only beef (and it’s a big one) is that Adobe refuses to develop a version of Audition for Mac OS X. What a terrible tragedy.

Red Book Specs for Voiceovers

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Some clients want “red book specs” and dry recordings (just your voice; no music or sound effects). Red book specs are standard for CD quality audio files: 2 channel, 44k, 16 bit. Although you can record good audio at red book specs, you can generally record cleaner audio at 24 bit and then adjust the sampling to the client’s specifications.

The Internet is full of resources for quick definitions among other things. When in doubt, I click over to Wikipedia, an ever-growing wiki site full of articles on everything. It’s community operated and created through online collaboration. Like everything we encounter on the Internet, wiki articles have to be evaluated, not taken as gospel; but I’ve found it to be a reliable resource for most searches I’ve run over there.

Wikipedia has this article on the Red Book audio standard. Short and sweet. If you don’t find it on Wiki, there’s always Google.

Vocoder Effect In Adobe Audition 1.5

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A vocoder basically makes a musical instrument or sound effect talk like you (or mimic whatever you use to modulate the carrier wav, your voice). Adobe Audition 1.5, my favorite editing program, comes with a vocoder in the multitrack section under effects. Here’s a vocoder video tutorial by Jason Levine. It’s part of the excellent Total Training DVD for Adobe Audition 1.5. I definitely recommend that training DVD which I think is still available on eBay. Jason uses the vocoder for the great intro clip that loads when you first launch Adobe Audition’s multitrack feature.

Anyway, here is a vocoder sample mp3 file I produced.

[audio: http://nikkisaco.com/audio/vocoder.mp3]

You’ll hear the original clips and the vocoded effect using a guitar loop. One portion has a dry voice recording saying “voice over services”. I enhanced that with the vocoded version of the same phrase on a separate track. I also added a cello wav file that I love. (The cello is probably my favorite instrument; so much emotion.) Then, I added a vocoded phrase I created with the cello as the modulating track. Very interesting sounds. I love to play with this stuff.