My narration "fades in" - How to avoid this?

Audio Software Adobe Audition
1

Hello everyone!

Before anything, thank you, Mike, for all you’ve taught me! Just 5 months ago I had never recorded anything other than some instructional training videos for my company. Now I am doing podcasts and YouTube videos with what I would consider relatively good success, so far. :slightly_smiling_face:

I am so very, very new at this, please be gentle.

I have done great recording and editing my sleep documentaries. I think they have mostly gotten very good reviews, although sometimes my listeners seem to think I am AI (go figure…) I can always post a sample of how this fade in sounds if any of you think it may help. Maybe one of you with a better understanding of this can help me tweak my settings where it will stop doing this weird fade in.

My issue is that sometimes, (possibly after I delete or restart a recording?) my voice fades in, which is not desirable, because sometimes you only hear half the word. I assume it has to do with the effects I am applying and I will list them below. I found the Facebook video on smoothing fades and smoothing crossfades, but I don’t think if I reduce it to under 2 or 5 ms respectively it will work?

(I am sorry if I have added too much below, I just don’t know what you may need to point me in the right direction)

Thank in advance!
Closer2Fine :blue_heart:

Software: Adobe Audition (I could use Adobe Premier Pro)
Mic: Blue Yeti Pro
My audios are usually around 60 minutes.
MSI laptop 11th Gen Intel(R) Core™ i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz 2.30 GHz with 64 RAM

  1. Effects: (in order)
  2. Clarity VX Broad 1 (removes constant noise, turned all the way up, basically AC and furnace, and does great)
  3. Diagnostics…declicker > scan > repair > clear repaired > repair (medium reduction)
  4. De-esser Central Frequency: 8163 Hz, Bandwidth: 6404 (I don’t see any improvement with this setting but not sure what else to do)
  5. Noise Gate AutoGate : Threshold -40dB - Attack 2.7ms - Release 183 ms - Hold 51.3 (I use for eliminating breath sounds, works on most breath sounds, still remove a few manually)
  6. Parametric Equalizer: (Gives me a little deeper voice) Not even sure how to show the settings here for that. I’ll try to paste a screenshot.
  7. Single Band Compression: (Threshold: -25dB - Ratio: 5x:1 - Attack: 1ms - Release: 500ms - Output Gain 5dB

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Congrats with the success of your podcasts and YouTube vids!

Now, regarding the issue you’re facing with the voice fade in. It does sound like it could be related to the effects chain you have in place. The Noise Gate effect in particular is a likely candidate because it can inadvertently cut off the beginning of words if the threshold is set too high, or if the attack time is not fast enough so perhaps tweak those.

Also, the Parametric EQ screenshot you shared has a rather high boost in the high end consider reducing that for a more natural sound.

1 Like
3

Thanks Mike!
I think I get it. I will tweak those settings and see if I can improve it. I noticed that all my audios had a very low volume. So what I am doing now is after I add all my effects, I applify to 12dB.
I’m probably not doing it right since there should be a way to apply this at the end where I apply Single Band Compression but I am afraid of messing up what I have set with a lot of testing. Would it be maybe in the Gain? Set that to 12dB instead of 24dB?

I’ll play around and watch more of your videos! :blush:

Olimpia