Adobe Audition/Audio Editing help

DarkPrimus

For this round of the Debate and Discourse CD Swap, I wanted to do something different, so I decided to make a mega-medley of songs and segue them together in one, enormous track.

However, after I've gone through all the hours of work of making sure all the tracks fit together well, I go to Export the session as Audio, and then I open it up in Windows Media Player... and the sound quality is absolute shit. There's no other way to describe it, it sounds flat, there is a lot of random pops that came out of nowhere, and worst of all there's static in it. None of this is present when you listen to the tracks in Audition. I've tried saving it in multiple formats, to no avail.

Please, help me figure out what the hell is wrong. I want to send out my CD.

badpoet

What sample rate were they imported at?

What sample rate is your session set at?

I'm guessing what is happening is that audition is reducing or increasing the bit rate on export and creating the pops and static. I would import the CD's at 48000 stereo and export them at the same rate. If that's not working, I would try switching up to Audacity and doing it on there.

Otherwise, I would reimport the songs you to Windows using media player then open the MP3s in Edit View and create your mix by sending them individually to the multi-track view for fading out, etc.

metaghost

Don't listen to badpoet. 48k is for video.

Step 1: When you blended the tracks in Audition, are you using appropriate fades? If you're attempting to avoid using fades, did you make sure that all tracks are blended at zero-point crossings?

Step 2: When you say you "exported as audio", do you mean you went to Edit > Mixdown to New File> Timespan as Stereo Mix, or did you do some other random thing that is not what you want to do? Because all you want to be doing is mixing your session down to new waveform.

Audition shouldn't be "flattening" your audio, so I don't know what that's about. I suspect your issue is a combination of Step 1 and 2. The clicks and pops will be the result of the program merging waveforms at non-zero point crossings, and the shitty audio is because you're not just mixing things down to a new waveform.

DarkPrimus

metaghost wrote: »

Step 2: When you say you "exported as audio", do you mean you went to Edit > Mixdown to New File> Timespan as Stereo Mix, or did you do some other random thing that is not what you want to do? Because all you want to be doing is mixing your session down to new waveform.

I was just going to File > Export > Audio, so let me try this method and see what the results are. It's been so fucking long since I've done something this complex in Audition, I'd forgotten about that stuff. :oops:

EDIT: That didn't work so let's look at Step 1.

metaghost wrote: »

Step 1: When you blended the tracks in Audition, are you using appropriate fades? If you're attempting to avoid using fades, did you make sure that all tracks are blended at zero-point crossings?

I'm fading in/out by splitting the file and using the selection to Amplitude > Amplify/Fade and selecting the appropriate fade selection, so while the first track fades out, I have the second track fading in with equal time.

metaghost

You should just be using the fade automation tools within the multitrack session window.

The symptoms you describe would also be what happens when Audition is struggling with latency issues. But if the session sounds fine and the problem is only a result of the mixdown process, that would seem to be indicative of an issue with Audition and/or your sound card. I appreciate Audition's flexibility, and I actually used it to do the exact same thing with my D&D mixes, but it is known to be a little iffy in terms of stability.

One thing you might want to test is to just do a smaller blend and see if that works. As in, just import 3 songs, arrange them on the multitrack, highlight, mixdown. I'm not sure how many songs are involved in "one enormous track", but because Audition converts things to 32 bit in the background, the cache can get pretty jammed.

DarkPrimus

Thread resurrection!

metaghost wrote: »

One thing you might want to test is to just do a smaller blend and see if that works. As in, just import 3 songs, arrange them on the multitrack, highlight, mixdown. I'm not sure how many songs are involved in "one enormous track", but because Audition converts things to 32 bit in the background, the cache can get pretty jammed.

I took just two of the tracks and followed all advice given, and still the resulting mixdown sounds just atrocious.