Complete Beginners Guide to Adobe Audition CC 2021 | Voice Over Edition | Part 1

today let's talk voice over recording software now there is no doubt many many recording software programs which are often referred to as daws or daws a daw is an acronym for digital audio workstation that you can use to record your voiceovers some are absolutely free some are going to cost you a little bit some are going to cost you a lot i personally use adobe audition i'm not saying that to try to evangelize you into adobe audition i'm not saying necessarily that it's better it certainly doesn't sound better than other recording programs because they all essentially do the same thing in the recording process they capture the audio in digital format but what these programs do are good are to give you a specific set of features that you can use some that you may use many that you may not i use adobe audition because here's the reason it is suited specifically for voice application it wasn't built for music application and so then again if you use a program like a pro tools or a reaper or something that's built more for a multi-track recording music multi-track recording that's perfectly fine there's nothing wrong with that but you probably have way more features or features that don't all line up necessarily with using it specifically for voice so that's why i use adobe audition so this video specifically is on the basics of using adobe audition and let me just say this up front i understand that software can be terrifying as a matter of fact i think i don't care if it's voice over or you're becoming you're working in an office doing accounting work or whatever it is when you go in to a job and you have to learn new software it can be absolutely intimidating and overwhelming but it need not be let me give you a little back story here i was first introduced to adobe audition when it came out in 2003 not to give you a history lesson you don't need to know all the ins and outs but i just want you to understand where i'm coming from that adobe audition prior to being adobe audition was owned by it was owned by another company not adobe and it was called cool edit pro and it was used by a number a lot of radio stations were just beginning to transition you know into digital audio around the the turn of the century and using these daws to do their production work well i'd worked in radio and uh at this particular time 2003 when adobe bought cooletta pro and made it adobe audition i was teaching at a university and i was teaching broadcast communications and business classes and i was told by the department that i would be teaching a class in adobe audition i was mortified i was terrified and i didn't i was i was i was dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age because up to that point i had used reel-to-reel tape some of you are old enough to remember them the reels of tape magnetic tape and i had become i was very proficient i was expert i was master expert ninja level on reel-to-reel tape with a with tape with a razor blade with splicing tape an editing block and a white grease pencil i could fly through audio like nobody's business because i had spent many many many many many hours in the studio recording commercials and promos and editing and i could make it do just about you know as i look back it's laughable but i had become so good at that but i didn't want to move into digital because i was so good at it but here's the thing digital audio is going to make your life so much easier and just by committing yourself to the process of learning how to use digital audio it's going to change the way you do things it's going to make you more efficient more effective and let's face it here in this day and age you've got to be an engineer as well as be a voice over talent so i say all that to say that if i can do it you can do it and it's absolutely necessary that you learn how to do it now the next thing i want to say is this don't feel that just because you're learning software that you need to understand everything there is to know about that software you absolutely do not need to and if you attempt to it will actually slow down your learning process and it will make you very frustrated because the reality is and i know you've heard this said before but on many of these types of programs we only use maybe five percent of the functionality i remember when i learned microsoft word being told you know most people only use five percent of the capabilities of it and you know what they're tr it's true it would be to think about it it would be ridiculous to try to learn everything there is to know about microsoft word unless you had some sort of job where it required that you know everything about it but for most of us that's not the case and with adobe audition you do not need to know every i don't know i've been using it for the past couple of decades and i don't know how to use every function i don't even know how to use probably most functions but here's what i do know i know how to use the basic functions that i need to know that allows me to accomplish what i need to accomplish in voiceover and by the way this is just kind of a personal life philosophy for me i make sure that i focus on the essentials i don't need to know everything i don't need to know everything about microphones i don't need to know everything about marketing i don't need to know everything about voiceover but there are some things that i do know and i will seek out the things that i do know and those few essentials i will master so all of that to say that in today's video i'm going to share with you the essentials things that you must know that you must master but also that you can do you absolutely whether you're even if you're a complete novice and you've never done this before you can do it the things that we're going to talk about are these we're going to talk about setting audio levels we're also going to talk about how to get that audio in and out of your recording software so you can get it from mic into it and then also into a final audio file that you can deliver to a client also how you set up sample rate and bit rate which will determine the size and the quality of the audio file also i'm going to show you some basic editing not everything that's out there not every capability but what you need to know to create very well edited and clean sounding professional audio and finally i'm just going to show you a little cleanup trick that you can use in adobe audition again we're not going to don't be freaked out don't be overwhelmed i'm not going to show you everything there is to know but these few things will help you to create a professional sounding product that you can do all by yourself you don't need to outsource it you'll you'll learn to do this quickly and easily and it will help you on your road to becoming a successful professional voice over talent all right let's dig into it i want to re-emphasize the fact that you do not need to understand everything there is to know about adobe audition to be successful in voice over i've been using adobe audition for almost 20 years in broadcasting prior to voice over i only know a small bit of what can be done with it because i only need to know a small bit so yeah are there more things that can be learned sure and there are people who are really good who have devoted themselves to learning all the ins and outs and they have their own youtube channels and i would if you want to learn more and go beyond what i show you i would encourage you to do that but the main point i want to make right now is that you can become distracted and disoriented by trying to learn everything about a piece of any software learn what you need to know and again what we're doing in today's video is covering the essentials so the first thing let's just talk about getting audio how do i get audio that goes into my microphone into my computer and then have it where i can listen back to it and save it you know so then it's ready to save as a file so i brought up adobe audition here and what i'm simply going to do is go to the file pull down menu and actually move that one column left click on adobe audition and under that pull-down menu is a a preferences menu go to the preference preferences menu and then go to audio hardware it's your audio hardware that gets your audio in and out of your software the daw the digital audio workstation and what you'll see now there's a lot there's a number of things on here again i'm not covering everything there is to know on here in terms of sample rate and buffer size these are details that at some point will be helpful to know but i'm just covering the essentials so you can get it up and get it recording and you can make stuff happen all right so i want you to look at the default input and default output those are the only two things here i want you to worry about if you get those right you should at least be able to record audio and to save audio and to send out audio and if there are other problems beyond that well then you can troubleshoot but this audio input and output if you pull down the menu it will give you a list of the audio inputs that are available to you on your computer like your built-in microphone or i've got a couple of webcams hooked up the logitech brio and also another logitech which is showing up as an unknown usb audio device the one that i use is called universal audio yours may be different you may have a focusrite scarlett which will show up i believe a scarlet in the menu you may have a usb microphone and it just may it may say unknown usb audio device if you're not sure experiment click on click on them until the one that you need is actually working but in this case i know it's a universal audio thunderbolt that's what i'm using so that's my input i also set that as my output because i'm feeding audio into that and i want to get my audio back out of it so i can listen to it in my headphones and then i click ok now my audio when i hit the record button will go from my microphone into adobe audition and then when i listen back i'll be able to hear it in my headphones next thing that you want to be able to do is set a proper audio level um you don't want a level that and it's some people may think of it in terms of volume and yes a lower audio level will be lower volume a higher audio level volume will be will be louder but this is not just simply volume it's the amount of audio that we're sending in again i'm using very non-technical terms i'm not a professional audio engineer but i've been using adobe for a long time so i know the ins and outs of it so i'll just be using regular lay terms but we want to get the amount of audio that will give us the best sounding recording if it's too low if the audio level is too low it might introduce an extra noise that we don't want if the audio level is too high we put in too much it can distort and we don't want that we want good clean audio so the way to do that is to simply all that i do is i hit the record button and then uh and by the way you will see this audio file menu pop up here and i will explain more about that in just a moment but for now i'm just going to press ok and accept the defaults that it gives me now as you can see when i talk the sound waves are showing up in the daw now ideally and if by the way look here to the right hand side of the screen and you will see a meter that will show you the audio level that's going into it what i like to do is to have my audio be recorded as close to the finished product at the level the finished product will be as possible which is minus three db so you can there's there will be a knob on your interface your audio interface if you're using a usb microphone that little dial or knob might be on the microphone itself but you can turn it up or down to feed more or less audio in so if my levels were looking really low lower than they are now i would turn my input up a little bit if they were much higher than -3 db i would turn it down but right now you can see it's bouncing right around -2 so uh you know what you want to do is just read a script at the normal level that you would read it for for a recording and we tend to get oftentimes louder when we're actually performing a script because we tend to get we start to perform and which often times we're projecting more volume than when we're just casually reading a script but at whatever energy level you'll be reading that for your audition or your project set your levels at that and as you can see i'm peaking at almost look at that i mean it's literally just under minus 3 db so that's that is perfect so again if it's too low you introduce in too much extra noise if it's too high you run the risk of having distortion so you want your audio peaking right around give or take it doesn't have to be exactly right on but right around give or take a db or two of -3 db now the next thing we want to touch on is setting up the proper sample rate and bit rate for your audio now to explain it very simply your voice which is analog goes into the microphone and is turned into digital information into your computer your software will then save that information in a usable form that can then be listened back to can be manipulated can be sent to other people which is how you send your final projects out to clients or you send off an addition to somebody but there are a couple of simple decisions that need to be made in terms of file format and sample rate bitrate that kind of thing so just let me show you briefly what you need to know so in adobe audition if i go to the file pull down menu the first option there is new i can create a new and i want an audio file not a multi-track session not a cd layout i want an audio file and you can see i have a couple of options that are given to me here i can first is the file name and so just for fun here i'll put my name in here bill duis and then i have a sample rate channels and a bit depth now channel is simply do you want it to be mono or stereo mono is the standard for voice over occasionally you might have somebody that wants it in stereo but that is the exception and not the rule so mono is what i always go to and then the sample rate and bit depth i'm not going to attempt to give you a detailed explanation because frankly i don't even know what that explanation would be all i know is this determines the level of or the size of the audio file but more importantly the quality of the audio file in other words the higher the quality in terms of sample rate and think of it this way the higher the number the more data you're putting into that file the bigger it's going to be and the higher the quality now the thing you need to keep in mind is there comes a point of diminishing returns in other words you could in theory just keep going up putting the numbers up and up and up it up make the file bigger bigger bigger and better and better audio quality better audio quality but the reality is there comes a point at which you can't hear the difference and so what i use now you'll see the default sample rate that's coming up on my screen here is 48 000. industry standard the standard that i use is forty four thousand one hundred now sometimes i will have a client specifically say can you please record that at forty eight thousand which i will can they hear the difference can you hear the difference i can't hear the difference you might find an experienced studio engineer that maybe can hear the difference but frankly i bet in most cases they couldn't even tell the difference um but if they ask if somebody asks for a higher sample rate you can give that to them because it allows you it has also it has a whole menu here of options but 44 100 is what i use unless asked otherwise and then let me skip down here to the bottom the bit depth again i don't even understand exactly what all that is all i know is it does affect the quality and the size of the of the audio file and so i use 16 as my default 44100 sample rate 16 bit depth now you may have a client that says hey i want that in 20 24 bit depth so 48 000 hertz 24 bits and you can do that now the audio file will be a little bit larger and in theory it will sound better because there's more data crammed in so you're you're getting more of whatever the original audio was but again will the will you be able to hear the difference it's highly highly highly unlikely but at 44 116 bits that's again i've recorded for the biggest brands i've recorded over 10 000 projects i've never had a client come back to me and say hey you didn't record this at a high enough sample rate or bit depth never and i'm talking the biggest brands on the planet it's never been an issue for them so you can feel perfectly comfortable with these settings again if you're asked for something else give them something else so that's the first thing you need to know and so i'm just going to hit okay so when i begin to record i'm recording at 44 100 hertz and then at a 16 bit depth okay so at least you know how to set that up and then when you save the file you can at that point i'm going to go to file and save as you can determine what format that formats the two files that that are almost exclusively used now occasionally you may hear somebody ask for something different but 99.9 of the time it will either be a wave file wav dot wav or an mp3 dot mp3 very briefly the difference is a wave file is a larger audio file more data so as we just learned it's a higher quality audio file mp3 is a smaller audio file which means it's been compressed and some of that data has been taken out and therefore it's going to be a lower audio quality and we listen to most of our music on mp3s you know and most people don't complain about the audio although technically if it's done in a in a format like wave in a larger format or a larger file more data again it's going to sound a little bit better but your client will tell you you can ask them do you want to wave file wave pcm or do you want an mp3 file and you can choose that format right on there and then when you click save it will save and either mp3 or waive the file format that you've decided that you need all right next basic editing when i say basic editing i'm this is very basic but this is this is what i do i mean i don't do anything fancy when it comes to editing there are different there are different methods to use editing but let me share with you what i do and i've learned to become very fast and very proficient with this method and what i'm going to do is let me start a new recording here new audio file i'll set that for you there it is 44 100 hertz mono 16 bits all right and so let's say i'm you know i'm recording something and um i make a mistake what i do is i'll pause for a moment maybe a second half second i'll create a click with either my mouth like that or i'll clap my hand and what you can see is that click or that clap and you can use a dog clicker it doesn't matter what you use but the reason i do this is because i can immediately see where i want to place my and imagine you've you're recording a half hour an hour's worth of audio well instead of listening back to that entire audio to find the mistakes you can look at it and you can immediately tell where those mistakes are at so i can take an hour of raw unedited audio and within five minutes i can go through and i can correct all these mistakes because i found so friend let me give you a for instance so um okay i'm recording i'm recording i've flubbed the line pause and then i start recording that was not a good click there now i can see it much easier this spike rises above all the other sound waves and then i pick it up by starting to record again well now all i have to do is go back and pick and use your cursor find the beginning of the last phrase that you started move it to the beginning of the phrase with the you know the new one where you correct it hit the delete button and now the mistake has been corrected i'm going to hit ctrl z to undo that so again let's imagine this is the beginning of the phrase where i made the mistake and then i i flubbed it so i i clicked so i would know i made a mistake there i just put my cursor at the beginning of that mistake right before i start that phrase i move forward to the the correction the pickup where i start the phrase again i delete it and now there it is it's if it never happened now there's another technique called punch and roll which i'm not going to get into some people use it they love it again what i'm giving you are the very basics i would suggest learning this first and then if you want to move into other techniques that's perfectly fine and by the way i'm going to do a follow-up video where i'm actually going to go through this process with an actual script and show you a little more detail how i do that so that's something you can look forward to finally clean up now this is where we could get into the weeds you know what do you do with breaths what do you do with mouth noise and again this is not a tutorial to take us into those weeds and give you all the possibilities of how you can handle that what we want to do is you need to be able to do at least basic editing to start and i've showed you how to correct your mistake but what about clean up because there's going to be a little what i call snap crackle pop in your in your speech you know your mouth is going to make some at the very least some very slight crackle sounds uh mouth noises as your tongue moves around if you've recorded at all in voiceover you know exactly what i'm talking about um in adobe audition i want to show you something that you can use that i found to be very effective for me and at least it's a place to start now i'll be honest with you i'm not a huge fan of the adobe tools for like noise reduction and all you know that kind of thing but when it comes to like mouth noise like the very slight little mouth noises if i go into the effects menu up here and i go down to noise reduction restoration into that menu they have a click pop eliminator what i'll do is i'll just use the default you see all the stuff on the screen don't worry about it don't worry about it just hit apply and use the default setting and see if that works well for you it does for me it's just a very light the way i describe it is like taking a very fine grit sandpaper to some rough wood and it just smooths things out a little bit now again we're not getting into the weeds today about taking out breaths and how do i go in and take out single noises and these are those are more advanced techniques that you can use or that you can learn these are the things that you can use today to get started that you can create professional sounding audio so don't overwhelm yourself with a thousand details when you only need to know five or six things to get started but the things that i've just covered in terms of your audio in and out setting your levels setting your sample rate how to save what file format you want basic editing some basic cleanup if you use these and practice these things it will take you far on your way to becoming a really uh you know a good audio engineer for voice over now i'm going to to follow this up with another video soon where i'll actually go through the process well i'll record a script and i'll actually uh implement the things that i shared with you so you can see how that actually looks within context of an actual recording session but also i wanted to quickly mention that and i know you've heard me say this before but i think it's it's it's so true and it bears repeating that is regardless of how good your microphone is how regardless of how good your audio software and even your editing skills you need to make sure that the environment that you record in is absolutely is pristine and that's why i love capital l-o-v-e love my whisper room this booth i've had now for about a dozen years and it creates a consistent a consistent source of quality audio because it controls my environment there's so many things outside of this booth that i have no control over for instance i live in a newer development and yesterday neighbors to both of my sides and when i say neighbors i mean we're talking they're only 10 to 15 feet on either side of my house we're both doing heavy duty landscaping meaning they had like earth moving equipment in their yards both of them and i had a directed session and some other scripts to record yesterday and i was able to come into my booth close the door and while nothing that i'm aware of is a 100 percent solution unless you build a building from the ground up it's amazing i it didn't interrupt my recording session even with again this earth moving equipment on both sides of me i was able to walk in here close my door and do my session with no disturbance and no interruption and so if you want to learn more about whisper room and how you can have an environment that you can control regardless of what goes on out there go to the description below check it out i've got other resources there as well and uh check those out and don't forget don't forget in my next video i'm going to take you through the process of what it looks like to actually do a real project using the things that i shared with you today make sure you like share subscribe and i will talk to you again soon you

Channel: Bill DeWees

Views: 7,389

Keywords: Complete Beginners Guide to Adobe Audition CC 2021, Voice over technology, Voice over software, adobe audition voice over, Sound editing, Mixing, Audio editing software, adobe audition, adobe audition how to make voice sound good, Adobe audition for beginners, adobe audition tutorial, adobe audition voice effects, Voice over lessons, Voice acting, Voice over techniques, Voice over teaching, Voice over artist, Voice over training, Voice over tips for beginners

Id: endtkLc7o8A

Length: 26min 26sec (1586 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021