Editing audio tracks is a cosmetic process. You’re making things sound better, not worse. You don’t want to end up with a nicely timed drum track that’s full of annoying clicks just because you don’t know where to cut your audio. It’s a simple process to edit audio correctly and smoothly.
If you’re dealing with a drummer that’s not the tightest in the world you might need to move a beat here or there. But what’s the easy way to edit without introducing clicks into your audio?
Find the Zero Point.
The zero point is that point in the waveform where it crosses the center, or the horizontal axis. If we look look at the waveform in the term of loudness it’s where our audio is silent. Even if it’s just for a fraction of a second, that’s the place where it’s silent.
A typical sine wave starts at the zero point and then goes through its crest before coming back to zero. In the image below you can see the waveform start at the zero point, then going up, returning to the zero point before going underneath and finally returning again. It’s easy to see when that sine wave reaches the zero point on the horizontal axis, but when we’re working with complicated audio waveforms, it gets a bit trickier to see.
But luckily, using your audio software, this is easy to find. We just zoom in. Here is a normal waveform. Say we want to make a sample or loop out of it.
In order for us to avoid that annoying clipping sound, we can zoom in to find where our audio is silent. Look at the region below. I’ve zoomed in completely and cut the region where the waveform sits on the zero point. By doing this you should avoid any unwanted pops or clicks from your editing process.
Conclusion
Be a surgeon, be precise. Find the zero point and avoid any unprofessional clicks in your audio.
Ps.
Editing is tedious and time consuming. And it only takes longer to do when you don’t have the efficiency to work fast. Check out Understanding Editing. It’s a training resource designed to teach you the steps needed for better editing.
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6 Comments on "The #1 Rule for Editing Audio"
Will editing at the zero point prevent a clip even if editing the middle of an audio sample?
I find chopping sections of live audio always produces that sound, maybe I haven’t tried to be as exact as described.
Yep, zoom zoom zoom all the way until you see without a doubt that your waveform crosses zero.
Or you just fade in, out or cross fade every edit instead of worrying about zero crossings.
Also an effective editing technique.
If you have a lot of time this is ok, but if you are working with speech this is not possible, if for example a 1 hour radio programme you might have 1,000 speech edits, you need auto fades. LE might have this by now but when it did not it made Pro Tools LE almost impossible to use.
Very important and many people have no idea about this. In some better DAW’s this is taken care of by automatic application of fades but Pro Tools LE for example does not, so it is very frustrating doing lots of edits, especially with spoken word.