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What steps should I be taking to clean up a very basic voice audio track (mono) in Adobe Audition?

Right now this is what I did:

  1. Deleted dead space around clip
  2. Automatic Click Remover
  3. Vocal Enhancer (Male)

Are there any other things I should be doing to pretty much any small vocal track?

(I don't have enough rep to make tags and not seeing one for Adobe Audition)

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    It would help to know what you editing/cleaning this up for.
    – user6513
    Apr 21, 2014 at 17:57
  • Just making some simple videos about our products. Using this for voiceover while showing different components
    – Ryan
    Apr 21, 2014 at 20:05

1 Answer 1

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You're pretty much on the right track, save for using a compressor. I don't use Audition so someone else will have to chime in. It sounds to me that this is some kind of promo or in-house instructional kind of video, in that case, I would favour speed and clarity over the timbre of the voice. So:

  1. Adding a compressor to the track/bus to attain more consistent levels. You probably could be more aggressive with it.
  2. Cut up dialogue and add fades and crossfades where necessary. If the voiceover was recorded in an adequately quiet room and had a good s/n ratio, I probably wouldn't even bother with the fades unless I heard a pop.
  3. Using clip gain and volume automation to fine tune any bits the compressor isn't processing well enough.
  4. Doing some noise reduction (Declick, Declip, Denoise) where necessary.
  5. Using a DeEsser to soften sibilance.
  6. Using an EQ to attain more clarity with the voiceover.
  7. Add a limiter to the track/bus to stop any peaks from sliding through. If it still does, go back to 3.

This would be the sequence in which I usually work with voiceover for non-so-consequential material. It's kinda a quick and dirty way of doing things fast. Definitely not how you want to go about treating dialogue for film and tv.

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  • Thanks, looked up and playing with how these things are done. One question though - what do you mean on step 1 when you say "More aggressive with it?"
    – Ryan
    Apr 24, 2014 at 14:03
  • @Ryan I usually use less than a 2:1 ratio on dialogue when I edit. But on material like yours I wold probably be more generous on the ratio and try to squash the dynamic range a fair bit so that the softest sounds to the loudest are within as small a range as possible. Coherency would take precedence. Do bear in mind that I'm assuming that you are doing something for the web platform, and the project isn't particular or require high fidelity. If it does, then you should be less aggressive with the compressor and use it to a softer degree.
    – user6513
    Apr 24, 2014 at 15:49

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