What’s the best way in Audition to do a basic compression on audio with conversations where there is atmosphere or nature in the background, and it plays an important role in the story, but you still want to make sure the conversation is heard?
I would suggest using a downward expander first to lower the background noise then the single band compressor will be your friend for speech.
Don’t sent the downward expander ratio too high or you’ll eradicate the background noise you want to keep completely.
Dynamics, expander first then single band compressor. Don’t set the ratio too high on the compressor either otherwise you’ll end up with an unpleasantness listen as the voice will be too compressed for spoken word.
Just honking about this more open up the effects rack.
Put the single band compressor in rack slot 2 of the effects rack. Scan the audio using amplitude statistics, set the threshold for the compressor at the average RMS value of your audio and the radio you can set to your own preference between 1.5:1 and 3:1.
Put the dynamics effect in rack slot 1. Re scan the audio in amplitude statistics, this time just selecting a portion of the audio that is only background noise. Now set the downward expander to a threshold of the peak RMS but keep the ratio low. 1:1 will have no efffect at all but slowly crank up the ratio until you have the effect you want.
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Now you’re talkin’. You must have read my mind when you clarified with the step by step. Thank you!
Mike’s made a great video on this: How to Make a Downward Expander in Adobe Audition CC - YouTube
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