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Chapter 3 Digital Audio Production

Digital technologies have revolutionized how a person can record and edit an audio sound signal. From creating a music bed to adding sound effects and editing out vocal mistakes, editing is a day-to-day part of audio production work, and it's one of the most important skills a production person needs to know. This chapter introduces concepts and practices of digital audio production. It looks at digital audio editing and multitrack production. The final component of a digital audio editing system is a software program to perform the actual recording and editing of the audio. Although there are many different systems available, to gain an understanding of digital audio editing, the chapter looks specifically at Adobe Audition. Even though some procedures and terminology may be different, many of the basic principles presented would apply to any equipment that's capable of digital audio editing.

3.2 The Analog Roots of Digital Productions

Analog Versus Digital Dubbing

3.3 The Digital Process

Digital Recording Process: Filtering

Sampling

22.05KHz Sampling

11.025Hz Sampling

Digital Recording Process: Quantization

3.4 Reasons for Editing

Combining good parts from several takes

3.7 Strong and Weak Points of Digital Production

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Tight Editing

Shortening a Recording

]

3.8 Audio Synchronization

Using MIDI to Synchronize Equipment

Using MIDI with a Keyboard Synthesizer

3.10 Digital Audio Editing

Reordering Recorded Material

3.11 Multi-Track Editing Techniques

Overdubbing

Punching In

Bouncing Tracks

3.12 Multi-Track Voice Effects

Single Voice

This is a single voice with no chorusing, either analog or digital.

Voice Doubling

In this example, the announcer has recorded the same material twice with the same pacing. This is called doubling. It is used to give more interest to the delivery.

Voice Chorusing

In this example, the announcer has recorded the same material five times with the same pacing. This is called chorusing. It is used to give more interest to the delivery.

Digital Chorusing

In this example, the announcer has recorded his voice only once, but digital chorus signal processing has been added to the voice to give it the feel of chorusing with several different iterations of the same recording played at slightly different rates, times and frequencies. Chorusing is used to give more interest to the delivery.

Dovetailing

Slapback Echo

With multitrack you can create an echo by recording your voice on one track, then dub that track onto another track without sync.

Projects

Project 1: Undertake Digital Audio Editing

Download the music project files Download the sound effect project files Download the project specific files

Click above to navigate to the Project Files folder, where you will find a weather report you can edit. Note the file location if you wish to import it directly into your audio editing application.

Please note: The music and sound effect project files only need to be downloaded once and used for all projects.

Project 2: Record a 'Video Music Bed' Spot

Download the music project files Download the sound effect project files

Click above to navigate to the musc folder, where you will find various music beds. Note the file location if you wish to import it directly into your audio editing application.

Quiz

Chapter 2
The Studio Environment
Chapter 4
Microphones