Adobe Audition For Podcasts

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Are you trying to figure out how to adjust the volume of your podcast? Did you know there are industry standards around podcast loudness? Are you curious what LUFS are or what LUFS stands for?

Audacity and Adobe Audition CC are popular Digital Audio Workstations - software to record, edit, and mix audio. Which is right for you? Audacity and Adobe Audition CC are two popular Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) – software programs that can be used to record, edit, and mix audio. 🎙 Adobe Audition Presets! 🎧 The audio presets I use. Find out more about me and how we can work together. Whether you’re editing video files and looking to improve the audio quality or starting a podcast and need a reliable program to edit your podcast recordings, Adobe Audition has you covered. Use the tutorials on this list to learn the basics of audio editing.

Integrate Adobe Audition into your post production workflow! Utilize Audition’s powerful tools for fixing common audio problems like background noise, hum, clipping, clicks and pops. Adobe Audition can quickly clean up audio and fix problems that Premiere Pro cannot. In this post we cover common audio problems that you may encounter in your. Make your audio sound great with a minimal knowledge of Adobe Audition. Audio Presets from one of the most prolific trainers in the world. Produce more in less time, sound better with just a few clicks.

If you’re using Adobe Audition CC to edit audio and answered yes to any of the previous podcast loudness related questions, then this article is for you.

To prevent the poor user experience of constantly adjusting their volume or one piece of audio being substantially louder than another, many podcatchers/podcast aggregators like Apple Podcasts, Google Play, etc. recommend using a loudness measure of -16 LUFS in podcasts and spoken word audio.

How to adjust the loudness of audio using LUFS as a measure in Adobe Audition?

  • Open Adobe Audition CC
  • Navigate to the Window menu and open that
  • Select or ensure that Match Loudness is selected in the menu
  • Locate the Match Loudness window
  • Select the Match To option of ITU-R BS.1770–3 Loudness from within the Match Loudness window
  • Drag and drop an audio file like a .wav or .mp3 into the window in the area that says “Drag and drop supported media files here”
  • Click on the value next to LUFS
  • Adjust the LUFs value to your desired LUFS setting which in this case is -16
  • Click on Export Settings to inspect the settings that will be utilized for any files that the Match Loudness process creates
  • After inspecting and/or adjusting the Export settings click OK
  • Then click Run in the match settings window to create the new LUFS adjusted file(s)
  • Look on your filesystem in the location specified in the Export Settings for the Match Loudness Process to find the new file(s)

That’s it! Now your audio is good to go with the desired LUFS setting.

Grab a microphone, some headphones, and fire up Adobe Audition – we’re going to podcast!

If you chop out anything in the middle of your show, you’ll need to do a different kind of DELETE – in Audition it’s called a RIPPLE DELETE. This will remove the selection and slide everything after it over so there is no gap.

Let’s find a mess up in the show and ripple delete it. If you haven’t slid your tracks around, you should find it around the 31m,41s mark, right after Justin says “jump through those hoops” he starts mumbling and gives up on the thought and asks YOU THE LISTENER to cut it out. He really does mean you! He gets back on track at 31m57s.

Use the TIME SELECTION tool to select the region between those approximate times. Use the waveforms as your guide, and ZOOM IN if you need to!

select that mess up for a RIPPLE DELETE

Now let’s RIPPLE DELETE! Use EDIT > RIPPLE DELETE > TIME SELECTION IN ALL TRACKS to make this happen.

Is Adobe Audition Good For Podcasts

RIPPLE DELETE from the menu

You’ll want to make sure you use ALL TRACKS otherwise you’ll only delete one track’s area and pull it out of sync.

Now let’s slide our intro song in there to TRACK 3. If you PLAY it you’ll see it’s super loud compared to the voices! Let’s go ahead and turn it down using the track’s tools. You’ll find the VOLUME knob just under the TRACK NAME:

turn down that music!

-11dB is probably pretty good.

Next thing – I think the song ends too early. Justin doesn’t start speaking soon enough after it fades out. Let’s go ahead and MOVE our music to the right until it’s happily half-faded out as Justin starts the show:

the music has been moved to fade as Justin starts!

Now let’s RIPPLE DELETE this new 1.5sec gap we just created up front. Remember how? SELECT that 1.5sec region, then RIPPLE DELETE ALL TRACKS. You’re getting the hang of this!

Adobe Creative Cloud Audition

TWO MORE THINGS:

1 – Let’s add the theme song to the end of the show. FN-RIGHT ARROW to the end and drag the song from the FILES tab onto Track 3 at the end. Place it where Justin wraps it up “Podcasting with Justin Edwards.” around 32m16s (if you chopped out that first 1.5sec).

the song repeated at the end

No need to adjust volume again, since the adjustment we made already changes it for every file that lives on that track.

2 – Speaking of adjusting volume levels, you may have noticed the discrepancy between JUSTIN and MIKE’s tracks – Justin is much louder than Mike. Go ahead and give Mike’s track a boost. 6dB should do.

A Word On Effects

We should spend some time talking about EFFECTS – adjusting EQ, adding a COMPRESSOR and a LIMITER, but we are just about out of time here for an already long tutorial.

BUT THERE’S GOOD NEWS:

For

Listen to the sample podcast we’ve been working on. Mike gives a great overview of the effects he uses for his shows.

We also have our own tutorial on it here: Audition FX Tutorial

Exporting An MP3

Let’s get your show out of Audition and into MP3 land! To export your session use the menu and go FILE > EXPORT > MULTITRACK MIXDOWN > ENTIRE SESSION

exporting through the menu

This will open the following window:

export window

We’ll want make some changes to their defaults.

  • I like to export to my Desktop so the file is easy to find. Use BROWSE to do this.
  • Change the FORMAT. Use the dropdown box to choose MP3.
  • CHANGE the SAMPLE TYPE. This will open a window:

SAMPLE TYPE options

Adobe Audition Podcast Preset

  • Change the SAMPLE RATE from “Same as source” to 441000.
  • Change the BIT DEPTH from “Same as source” to 16. Hit OK.
  • Lastly, CHANGE the FORMAT SETTINGS. It will open this window:

Adobe Audition Effects For Podcasts

MP3 FORMAT SETTINGS

  • Change the BITRATE to 96Kbps. This is because we just have a one-channel MONO file. A stereo show would double this since it has two channels. Hit OK.
  • Hit OK in the export window and Audition will do its thing!

Adobe Audition For Podcasts

Go find your file on the desktop. Voila! Congratulations, you’re a podcaster!

Adobe Audition Settings For Podcast

Special thanks to Michael Edwards of the Sunrise Robot podcast network for his guest spot in our tutorial files! You owe it to yourself to check out his shows at SunriseRobot.net.