A voice actor, I’ve been using Adobe Audition to record and edit my audio. Very basic stuff: mono files for spoken word only. But I am shopping for a new DAW and I believe it will be WaveLab Pro 9 (for Mac). But I’m not yet sure.
One of the features of Adobe Audition that I use quite often allows me to manually create regions (or, as Adobe calls them, "subclips’), where segments of the waveform are selected and enclosed within two markers; one that identifies the beginning and the other that identifies the end of the region. These regions show in a window, where I can name them. After all the regions have been created and named, Audition allows me to export those regions as mp3 (or other file formats), leaving the original recording as-is.
To me, this process seems very similar to that which might be used to create the individual tracks (songs) for a compact disc, except that the tracks are exported as individual files and nothing more.
From what I was able to read on the website and in the user manual, it appears that WaveLab will allow me to create regions and export them as I described. But I need to be 100% certain before I buy the software.
Can someone please confirm whether WaveLab Pro 9 for Mac will allow me to do this?
I did see the description of Auto Split, but the term “Auto” made me wonder if WaveLab would perform this function based on areas of silence. In spoken word, there is lots of silence (between sentences, paragraphs, etc.).
It appears that Audio Montage is a multitrack function. In my work, the recording is a single file which I then use markers to distinguish between what will ultimately be exported as individual files. Below is a screenshot from a typical project:
Also, if you use a montage to trim the original recording and create clips for each track, the CD Wizard can automatically create a variety of marker types for you based on the clip boundaries.
It could be a fast way to create a new region for each chunk of audio and then render those regions as files.
The naming scheme may also help you create nicely named files direct from the montage.
Auto Split is very configurable based on how your audio files tend to be (time between silences, etc.), for auto placement of markers or actual auto split. Well worth running through in a dry run to see how it works and how it can be configured.
A montage can contain just one track used for one audio file, with non-destructive split or addition of markers, etc.
I use Auto Split in combination with CD Wizard in the montage to automate many things like this. PG has created two amazing tools here. Auto Split on the Audio File, and Auto Split and CD Wizard in the Montage.
I have a new question (and this should be the last one): Adobe Audition has a feature called “Auto-Heal,” which quickly and easily repairs things like static pops or, quite common in voice-over, annoying little “mouth clicks” embedded in speech. To use Auto-Heal, one simply highlights that portion of the waveform (limited to only four seconds in length), and presses the keyboard shortcut for Auto-Heal.
I’m guessing WaveLab might accomplish that by either doing waveform restoration with the pen tool or by spectral editing. Can you clarify that for me?
Error Detection and Correction is good for quickly analyzing, marking, and correcting by interpolation all of the clicks in a file. (“correct all marked errors”).
The De-Clicker plugin in Restore Rig can be used to quickly render the whole file declicked, and has noise listen mode to hear live the clicks being removed.
Spectral editing has fine selection (by rectangle or lasso) with heal (“audio inpainting”). I don’t think it has facility to find and heal over a 4 second piece covering the whole frequency range, but maybe that works in Audition a bit like Error Detection and Correction in Wavelab.
