- Hello, I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
In this mini series
covering the preferences menu of Adobe Audition,
we're gonna be looking at multitrack today.
(upbeat music)
Let's hop in, but before we do, remember to like this video,
also go ahead and subscribe and ding the bell on my channel
so you never miss another audio production tutorial.
Now here we are in the multitrack,
and we're gonna be working a lot with this
during this particular session.
If I hit Control + Comma or Command + Comma on a Mac,
I get my preferences menu, I can go to multitrack.
And you've got the default panning mode as the top option.
Best just to leave this as minus 3dB center,
unless you really know what you're doing.
It's all to do with pan law.
And there's a lot of complicated stuff
and theory behind this.
And I'm just gonna say that by leaving it
on minus 3dB center,
what it will do is reduce your audio by minus 3dB.
So you can see this test here, I've got a tone,
that is at minus 3dB right now, it's a monotone.
When I bring it into a stereo multitrack
and then go ahead and mix that down with a default setting.
Then you'll see only one channel is coming out,
the left channel, and that's at minus 3dB,
just as you'd expect.
That's because I've got this first track
panned all the way over to the left.
If I now put it in the center,
so that I'm going to get the tone printed on both tracks,
left and right, let's mix down and look what happens.
And you'll see both left and right channels
are now reduced by 3dB to minus 6dB.
And this is to use pan law to balance things out,
definitely type pan law into your favorite search engine
if you wanna know more.
I think it goes beyond the theory of this video,
but just suffice to say multitrack lever is minus 3dB center
for the default panning mode.
Onto track solo, and you've got exclusive or non-exclusive.
Now, non-exclusive, the default
means that I can solo many different tracks here if I want.
So this tone track, another track,
maybe with some sound effects on, a track with a voiceover.
It doesn't have to be just one track
soloed at the same time.
However, if I go to here and say exclusive,
I'm only allowed to solo one track at a time.
See it then switches over.
I can override this by holding down
the Control or Command key.
See, so it is possible to override,
but it just changes the behavior there
by being exclusive instead of non-exclusive.
Okay, click okay.
And you see, I've got a couple of multitrack mix downs
that are not involved in this multitrack session.
And my next option is to reference all open audio
and video files when saving sessions.
Now, I would advise not ticking this
but if you do tick this,
it means when I save this multitrack session,
it's also going to reference these files.
Meaning if I then go ahead
and open this multitrack session in the future,
it's gonna be looking for these files,
even though, unless I drag them over,
they're inside my multitrack session.
So in my opinion, best to leave this off
unless you want to retain every single file
you've got open in Adobe Audition.
Back here, and we've got adjust track key frames
when performing ripple edits.
Now, believe it or not, this can actually be really handy.
And I will show you how.
Let me record a little bit into the multitrack.
We're gonna look at recording in the multitrack
a little bit later.
Hello, this is Mike, nice to be here.
Okay.
And we're gonna do a very simple
multitrack automation on this.
Let's switch off recording for a second,
zoom right in, there's my recording.
I can pop down this little triangle here
to get the automation menu up.
And I might say that I actually want to turn the volume down
when I say nice to be here.
And I've turned it down by about minus 7dB, okay?
So I've got, hello this is Mike, nice to be here.
You can hear the volume has gone down.
Now, if I do a ripple edit,
which is obviously in the ripple edit menu, ripple delete,
and I delete the time selection in all tracks,
watch what happens to my automation here.
So Control or Command + Shift and delete.
And look, the automation actually budges up.
Whereas if I do it manually,
delete you see it doesn't budge up.
So ripple delete is handy on many levels.
If I went into the multitrack menu,
and I didn't adjust the track key frames
with a ripple delete, look what happens.
It ripple deletes, but that automation does not move.
So again, in my opinion, best to leave that one ticked
if you ask me.
During loop playback, loop at the end of the last clip.
Okay, this should be pretty self-explanatory.
With that ticked, if I were to switch on loop mode
and start playing back.
Hello, this is Mike.
Nice to be here.
Hello, this is Mike.
It just keeps looping around
at the end of the last clip in your multitrack.
And in this case, there's only one clip,
so it does it at the end of this one clip.
Now, if I go back into multitrack and I switch this off,
watch what happens.
Loop mode still on, play.
Hello, this is Mike, nice to be here.
On and on and on.
So it doesn't loop.
So really again,
this is something I'd advise keeping ticked.
Okay, onto when arming tracks to record
enable input metering and enable smart monitoring.
So enable input metering is the default.
And as you'll see, when I arm this track to record, hello?
Hello, that is input metering.
The level meter is moving around.
Now, if I were to go into multitrack
and disable that when I arm a track to record,
hello, hello, hello.
I'm not getting any levels.
So I like to have that on to see
that things are ready for recording.
And smart monitoring, if I enable that,
that's going to also enable me to hear back in real time,
what's happening in this track.
Hello, hello, a bit of an echo,
bit of latency there from my audio interface.
And if I go so far as to add an effect,
let's add a pitch shift, pitch shifter, pitch shifter,
and go down and go down and go down
and go down and go down.
A lot of latency, and a lot of echo and feedback.
So that's smart monitoring.
Generally you don't really need that to be on,
so I leave that off, but the input metering
is definitely handy
to see you've got levels there to record with.
Randomized track color.
Oh, this is a good one.
Whenever I add a track to the multitrack
by hitting Alt + A, it'll give me a track of a random color.
Let's see, Alt or Option of course, on a Mac.
Look at all those lovely, random, beautiful colors.
Now, if I were to disable this feature
in the multitrack settings, let's click it off.
Alt + A, just the default Adobe Audition green there,
nothing very special.
So it just depends if you wanna be default
or if you want some color in your life.
I do, so I'm gonna leave that on.
Avoid overlapping clips when inserting or pasting new clips.
This can be quite handy.
For instance, if I copy and paste this audio,
so Control + Command + C and then paste, paste.
See it's pasting all over the clips.
Whereas if I go in and tick that,
it will make sure clips do not overlap
when I paste them in, look.
See, pops them onto different tracks.
Very, very handy to make sure nothing ever overlaps.
That might be a good thing to have on,
depending on the kind of editing you're doing.
Default start time, obviously zero.
If you want, you can start a multitrack session
from 30 seconds in, click okay.
And then you'll see
when you create a brand new multitrack session,
that it actually starts from the 32nd mark there
which is quite bizarre, but maybe you need it for some use.
So bear that in mind, but for me,
I'm gonna pop that back to zero.
And then we've got keyframe automation,
auto match optimizations.
So this is when you're recording.
And let me just give you an example
of how these all work by going ahead and showing you.
So, first of all, if I hit record,
and then I switch on touch here
means I can write in automations like volume changes, pans.
I'll also open up, let's zoom right in on track one
and open up the automations for volume,
and I'll change the volume as I'm recording.
Hello, this is Mike and I'm just changing the volume
and then the volume's going back up like that,
and I'm changing the volume again and it's going back up.
Okay, cool.
And as you can see there it's done some nice changes.
Now, as you'll see here,
it is doing those changes very, very quickly.
In fact, if I zoom right in here
and get the amount of time between one,
you'll see it's a duration of about 30 milliseconds.
And now if we go back into multitrack and look here,
minimum time interval fitting is 30 milliseconds.
So we want that to be 30 milliseconds.
If we make that 500 milliseconds,
it's going to make our automations a lot rougher.
Let me show you by recording a bit more.
Hello, hello, hello.
And I'm gonna change this volume level and bring it back up,
stop and you see, yeah, much rougher,
a 500 millisecond delay between each key frame there.
So we ideally want it to be a bit smoother.
I'm gonna put that back to 30 seconds, okay?
Next I'll go between multitrack
and I will enable linear edit point thinning,
and let's record again.
Hello, hello, hello.
This is me recording here with a bit of audio as well,
bringing this down, letting it go back up and stopping.
Okay, now linear point editing
is actually really interesting.
It removes any key frames that just represents static,
essentially static stuff that's going on.
So any silences or no changes in your volume levels.
So this can actually be quite good
to leave unticked in general.
And that's what I definitely recommend doing.
So leave that unticked.
And the auto match time
is how quickly when you move something like the volume down
or the pan across for it to return back to normal.
So at the moment it's one second,
but if I make it five seconds
and then try and do a quick volume change,
you'll see it takes five seconds to return back.
Hello, this is me and I'm turning the volume down now
and it's taking five, four, three, two, one,
about five seconds to return back to normal
whereas before it was just one second,
that's one second there.
And this is a five second return to normal.
Again in general, with this,
if you don't need it for a specific purpose,
leave these all on default.
And that is your guide to the multitrack section
of the preferences menu in Adobe Audition.
If you wanna know even more about Adobe Audition,
highly recommend you enroll in one of my courses.
They're available at mrc.fm/learn,
that is mrc.fm/learn.
And any questions about the multitrack including pan law,
post them down below.
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