Editing Audio

[Ruckman65]

To edit audio on a track, do I need to install third party software (such as Sound Forge) or is there something built into Cakewalk?

[Alan Tubbs]

It depends upon what editing you want to do.  Many edits in cake are non destructive.  SF and other audio editors are destructive editors, so that you save the file as a new sound, such as for mastering.

let us know what kind of editing you want to do, but I will say having SF is a great tool for workflow.  It does certain tasks a lot quicker and easier.

 

@

[Ruckman65]

Hello Alan. Thanks for the response. I want to edit the audio files to take out breaths, gulps, silences etc.  

[David Baay]

That can probably be done just as easily within Cakewalk. Noises in between words and phrases can be attenuated or silenced with a Volume automation envelope, and gaps/silences and can be closed up by deleting sections with Ripple Edit enabled. And plugins like an Expander can often be used to automate some of the noise reduction.

[Chaps]

Another useful editing tool is a Spectrum Analyzer that lets you see the frequencies you are hearing. This can be useful to pinpoint sounds/frequencies that you may want to boost or cut. I like Voxengo's SPAN Frequency Analyzer (free) because if you hold down the Ctrl key while you move the mouse cursor horizontally around in the screen you will hear only the frequencies that the cursor is over. Moving the cursor up and down will also increase or diminish the volume.

https://www.voxengo.com/product/span/

[John Vere]

It depends on your workflow. I find using a wave editor speeds mine up as I'm much more efficient at using Wave Lab to do wave editing. There is a way to set up Cakewalk to open a track in your wave editor Scook made a tool to makes this set up easy. I think this is the correct link. 

http://forum.cakewalk.com/Adding-programs-to-the-SONAR-Utilities-Menu-a-new-tool-Updated-for-CbB-m3237117.aspx 

Actually that seems broken,, scook hopefully will chime in and post the updated link.  I can't find it. Sorry. 

 

You can use Calkwalks tools but for me they are slower and involve more dialog boxes. The volume envolope is propably what a lot of folks use. I have also used the SPLIT function to chop up a track and delete parts or apply volume gain to quiet parts. don't worry about that "destructive" editing farce. Digital audio with back ups is very safe from harm. Go ahead, destroy it...

Edited March 3, 2020 by John Vere

[scook]

40 minutes ago, John Vere said:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/Adding-programs-to-the-SONAR-Utilities-Menu-a-new-tool-Updated-for-CbB-m3237117.aspx 

works for me but I usually send people to the thread in this forum https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/4155-updated-several-utilities-for-cbb/. It contains a link to my CbB/SONAR Google page which has tools, themes and other stuff. The thread also serves as the discussion/support page.

 

[Ruckman65]

Thank you all. Thank you Scook for the link. 

[Mark James]

I downloaded a wave editor called WavePad which does everything I need it to do. Once invoked and changes are made to the selected wave file, how are those changes transferred back into Cakewalk? 

[Jack Stoner]

I have Goldwave, an audio editor.  When I use that, I export the clip track as a .wav file.  Import it to Goldwave and do what I want. Save the file and then Import to Cakewalk in a new audio track (that preserves the original in case I need it).

 

[Ruckman65]

Thank you, Jack. Do you have any trouble aligning the edited track with the existing tracks or is there some sort of trick to that? 

[lapasoa]

In my opinion Cakewalk by Bandlab posses in abundance so many tools to tweak and edit audio and midi .

[Jack Stoner]

1 hour ago, Ruckman65 said:

Thank you, Jack. Do you have any trouble aligning the edited track with the existing tracks or is there some sort of trick to that? 

No, but I haven't done any large (time) slices.  I have realigned an edited track, using the "Nudge" process,  but it was only off a miniscule amount.  

 

[mark skinner]

If it's a vocal track your editing you can also use melodyne  (if you have it) and just delete the noise blobs. I'll do that on minor stuff since I'm going to use melodyne anyway.    If you don't have it , it's a great tool to get ..     ms 

[Ruckman65]

I do have Melodyne but I am just learning how to use it properly. 

[Ruckman65]

45 minutes ago, Jack Stoner said:

No, but I haven't done any large (time) slices.  I have realigned an edited track, using the "Nudge" process,  but it was only off a miniscule amount.  

 

Ah, so import the file and manually align it.

[57Gregy]

1 hour ago, Ruckman65 said:

Ah, so import the file and manually align it.

If you right-click the clip and select Properties, you can see the exact time the clip starts. Write that down.
After editing, import it to the same place using the time value you wrote down.

[bitflipper]

As long as you don't modify the beginning of a wave file, an external edit should not affect the file's position on the timeline, as that information is not contained in the wave file itself but rather in the project. I've been using an ancient copy of Adobe Audition this way for many years, and have never had an alignment issue.

However, I do 99% of my editing within Cakewalk itself, using splits, slip edits, mutes and automation to fix most problems. An external editor only needs to come into play if I'm trying to remove noise, as CW does not have a de-noiser or de-clicker utility. Those are specialty tools best left to dedicated software such as iZotope Rx and Sony SoundForge.

[Starise]

For me it depends on the type of editing. If I am making changes to individual  tracks I mostly use Cakewalk. If I am working on a master for edit I use Sound Forge. Case in point- I just had a track that needed to be cut down from over 3 minutes to 2 minutes or under. I put the master in Sound Forge and the process was easy to make splits and move things around. I was impressed by how well the split points merged in Sound Forge. If you get between beats no one will ever know.

I don't often use Sound Forge, but for that. It saved my butt.

[Ruckman65]

5 hours ago, bitflipper said:

As long as you don't modify the beginning of a wave file, an external edit should not affect the file's position on the timeline, as that information is not contained in the wave file itself but rather in the project. I've been using an ancient copy of Adobe Audition this way for many years, and have never had an alignment issue.

However, I do 99% of my editing within Cakewalk itself, using splits, slip edits, mutes and automation to fix most problems. An external editor only needs to come into play if I'm trying to remove noise, as CW does not have a de-noiser or de-clicker utility. Those are specialty tools best left to dedicated software such as iZotope Rx and Sony SoundForge.

Still yet to delve into automation but it may be a good solution instead of exporting to 3rd party software. Haven't figured out how to do mutes in Cakewalk so I will need to look into that as well.