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Filtering
Your E.V.P. With Adobe
Audition
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You have some wav files on your computer, you have Adobe
Audition,
and you want to
filter the noise, and other useless crap so you will have a clean
finished product.
Audition, at first glance looks pretty complicated, but you'll have
this down pretty quickly. Trust me, it's easy.
There are five basic things you should be familiar with
when starting with Adobe Audition. They are the Spectral/Waveform
Button,
The Effects List, The Edit View, Basic Controls, and lastly the Zoom
Controls. If you look at the
picture below, I've taken a screen shot of a wav file opened up in
Audition. The five functions that you need are circled. |
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Basic Controls: I don't mince words. If you don't know the basic controls
for a media player, you're stupid. Seriously though, these are all you
need to play and record on Adobe Audition. The top right button is also
useful for 'looping' your recording.
Edit
View: This is where
you can actually 'see' your sound file, as well as decibel & hertz
levels. It is also used to identify anomalies in the sound which
I will explain shortly.
Zoom
Controls: This one's pretty easy to understand
too. This just makes the image in the Edit View larger or smaller, or
wider or thinner. If you zoom in and widen the image n the Edit View,
it's a lot easier to see an anomaly.
Effects List: There are a bunch of creative things
that can be done with your sound file, most of which will be located
within this list. For now we will be focusing on only 3 different
effects. Noise Reduction, Hiss Reduction, and Quick Filter.
Spectral/Waveform
Button: This button helps you identify
anomalies in the Edit View by switching the Wave image in green to a
pinkish Spectral image. I know, it sound's goofy right now, but you'll
understand.
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Identifying
Anomalies
To
Identify an anomaly within your sound file, the first thing you have to
do is get rid of those green waves in the Edit View. I mean, you can
strain your eyes, stare at the green crap all day and find things, but
it's not necessary. All you have to do is hit the Spectral/ Waveform
button.
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Now that you have converted your Edit View from Wave to Spectral, all
you have to do is identify the anomalies. Its not hard to do, and
after doing this a couple times you'll develop an eye for it. Its as
simple as looking for something that you don't recognize. Look at the
picture below.
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The brighter
the color, the more powerful the sound. That's all there is to know
really. You see in the center of the image, it's very brightly colored.
I think that's me yelling at my cat (or vice versa). You can tell that
it's loud. You can see that I circled a couple of things that were way
to quiet to be anybody talking. We have no clue what those are. Those
are the anomalies.
You're going to want to play around with your Zoom
Controls because, the more you widen the Edit View and zoom in, the
better you'll be able to identify them.
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| Cutting
& Saving Anomalies |
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The first thing you want to do is separate your anomaly from the
original wave. The image on the left is the anomalies (circled) in the
Edit
view. I've also used Audition to highlight the area which has the
anomalies. In the image, you'll see the 2 versions of the same
image switch back and forth.
Once you've highlighted the section that you want to separate, all you
have to do is go up to the top left corner of Audition. Click FILE, and
then go to SAVE SELECTION...
Give it a name and save it. At that point you'll want to
open your new smaller file in Audition to start filtering it.
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Filtering
There are three different ways to filter your sound file
that I'm
going to focus on here. I've highlighted all three in the Effects List
to
the left. You can use them as much, or as little as you want, and in
any order to make your sound file sound more clear. Which ones you use,
and how is all up to you. Here's how you use each one.
Hiss Reduction: Hiss reduction Is the easiest to
work with due to its three presets.
To keep it simple, all you have to do is choose one of the
three presets that I've circled in the above image, and click OK.
You can click 'Preview' to hear it before you make a decision, or play
around with other more complicated settings to get the desired result.
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Noise
Reduction:
When you click on this, the first thing that will happen is a box will
appear. (Image on right) All you have to do there is click on the
little button that
I've circled in green that says 'Capture Profile.'
After you click that button, you have the ability to
change the 'Noise Reduction Settings' that I've squared off in blue on
the image. There are many settings in here which you can change to
filter your audio track. The main one you will be working with is
the 'Reduce By' field. You'll set it between 2 and 40dB. Play around
and experiment a bit and you'll figure out which settings work best for
you.
When you're done, just click OK and move on.
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Quick
Filter:
To use Quick Filter, you must first zoom in on your anomaly, and see
where it's at its strongest.
The brighter the color, the stronger the audio. If
you look at the image to the left, you'll see the anomaly that I
recorded. On the right of the image you'll see numbers and lines, sort
of like a ruler. That thing measures Hertz (Hz). So, you take the
brightest color in your anomaly, and look to the right, and match up
where it falls on the Hz scale. I apologize for the size of the image,
but if you can see, you'll see that my anomaly falls at right around
400Hz. Also, you might want to note that most of the best E.V.P.'s are
under 1000Hz.
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After
that, go to your Effects List and click "Quick Filter." The image below
is the box that will pop up with a bunch of sliders for you to adjust
to change your sound file. You'll notice that I slid them all the way
down, all but one. The one that's all the way up is marked 344. Why?
Because my anomaly is close to 400Hz, and 344 is the closest one to
400. So, what I've done is amplify all sound in that Hz range, and
silence all others.
Click
OK. That's about it.
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The
Glorious Marquee Selection Tool
This one is my favorite, so I saved it for last. It's also
EXTREMELY easy to use.
The first thing that you have to do is make sure that you transform
your Waveform to Spectral, like I'd shown you before.
The next
thing you want to do is select your Marquee Selection Tool. There's
a button for it at the top of the program, but for this tutorial, it's
easier to go
into the edit menu. Click 'Edit', go down to 'Tools' and select the
'Marquee
Selection Tool'. Once you've done that, your cursor should change to a
'+'. Look at the image to the right for an example.
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Below is an image of the 'Edit View' to show you exactly what needs
done to use this tool. You'll have this second
nature immediately. It's that simple. There's only 2 steps to learn.
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Step
1:
Use your cursor the same way that you would if you were highlighting
multiple icons on your desktop. Click and drag to make a square. You
can make it as large as I did, or you can just use it to select a tiny
noise in the waveform that you don't like.
Step 2:
Right click anywhere on your Edit View. In the little menu that pops
up, click 'Silence'. Everything that you highlighted is gone!
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That's it. It's as simple as that. You can go through any file, and
VISUALLY delete sounds from any frequency that you find to be hurting
your finished product. You can do it on a large scale, like I had just
shown you, or you can be meticulous, and go through every little
annoying click or pop, or car driving by.
Have fun.
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That's all you have to do. I've tried to simplify it as much as
possible to ensure that you'd pick it up easily. You can ALWAYS get
more complicated with it as you go. Change your
settings a bit and see what happens. Of course,
this isn't everything, but it's a good start to get you going. I really
hope that this has helped you.
Filtering
your sound files in Adobe Audition is so easy, a caveman could do it!
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NOT
COOL, MAN! NOT COOL!
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