Adobe Audition is a powerful program that we can use to edit and manipulate sound recordings. Today we’ll do a quick sample activity to get you used to the program.

Use this link to access the files that you will need. You will have to download the files before you can work with them. Take 01_SplitterEdit.wav and open it in Audition (drag it on top of the Audition icon, right click on the file and choose “open with” or open the program and choose “Open” or press the shortcut, Command + O.

The parts of the audio file are all mixed up. It should say “Hey, this is DJ Tranquility and you’re listening to Serenity 121.7 fm. I love you all.” Click and drag on the timeline to select parts of the waveform (words/phrases) then cut and paste them into the proper order.

Highlight and delete any unnecessary/long silences so that the words flow at a proper pace, and there is no silence at the beginning or end.

Once you’re confident that it flows well and there are no unnecessary silences, “Normalize” the track to get it to peak volume. Highlight the entire track, then go to the Effects menu, choose “Amplitude and Compression” then “Normalize (process)…”

Make sure that it is set to Normalize to 100%, and “Normalize All Channels Equally”

You should notice that the first part of the file is much louder than the rest. Consider going in and normalizing everything except that first part, so it’s all roughly the same volume:

Switch over to “Multitrack” mode

Choose some instrumental music to use in the background. It should fit with what you hear in the voice track and make sense. For example, if you were making a commercial about a comfortable bed or sleeping medicine, you probably wouldn’t use heavy metal music! You’d go with something soothing. Find something that makes sense with this recording.

You can get creative commons audio by going to a service like ccmixter.org, or one of the other copyright free content sources listed on my Links page. There is also a folder inside of the 06_Audition folder called instrumental music. You may use a file from there if you wish.

Open the music file in Audition as well

Generally, the music starts and plays for a short time (a couple of seconds at most) and then the voice comes in. Find a spot that makes sense and put your music in one track, and your voice file in another.

In each track, you will see a horizontal yellow line. That’s the volume for the track. You can move it up or down to adjust the whole track, or click on a spot, and then pull it down to create sections, which can be adjusted to create a fade.

Your music should fade down when the announcer starts to speak, and fade up when he’s done. Then do a final fade a few seconds later.

To mix both tracks into one file, go to the Multitrack menu, then Mixdown Session to New File, and choose Entire Session:

Your song is likely longer than the speaking, so there will be a lot of silence at the end. Highlight that and delete.

You should edit so that there is no silence at the beginning or the end of your file.

Save your file as an .mp3 with a proper name (eg: robsonj_splitter.mp3) and drop off.