In the above image, the cut is made at two points where there is no sound. Although this example is exaggerated, making a cut in the middle of sound makes the audio 'jump' and is jarring for listeners. In the above image, we cut the audio halfway through the 'um' sound. You can seamlessly cut out any section of your audio, as long as you edit at the lowest point of sound in other words, if we make cuts in the audio track at points where no sound is being made, listeners won’t notice because the edit is imperceptibly silent. We can polish our audio by eliminating unwanted sounds like ‘ums’, ‘uhs’, coughs, or anything else that distracts the listener. Tip: To convert your stereo tracks to mono in Audacity, select your audio track and then click ‘Tracks’ from the top menu and select ‘Stereo Track to Mono’.
However, for those on a budget, we recommend Audacity as a free, feature-rich, open-source software option. You can get Audition through Adobe’s Creative Cloud Suite which is discounted by 60% for TechSoup Canada members. If you can purchase professional software, like Adobe Audition, it’ll serve you well. Using audio production software to edit your audio files allows you to fix any hiccups in the recording so the final product is seamless. Here are some simple steps you can take to increase your audio quality. To get quality audio, we need to spend time in post-production to polish our work.
Check out part one, " How to Record Sound".Įditing your audio is just as important as recording it. This is part two of our "Getting Audio on a Budget" blog series.