seeking sound advice

August 8, 2005 11:36 AM

What's a good book (or online resource) about audio editing for a beginner who is smart and wants in-depth knowledge? I'm working with dialogue mostly -- not music.

I'm going to start recording people talking (as opposed to music or singing) as wavs and converting to MP3s. I would like to gain a better understanding of my audio-editor's (Adobe Audition) features and filters. But I'm not an audio guy by trade. Still, I'm a fast learner. Can someone point be towards a good resource (i.e. book) which will teach me what I need to know? I want to understand Equalization, Frequencies, etc. All the stull that will pop up in the various dialogues in the software.

Specificially, I want to learn what to do -- i.e. what equalization settings to use, smart types/amounts of compression -- to create good mp3s from these wavs. But I'd like to gain an overall understanding of audio under-the-hood as well.

posted by grumblebee to technology (5 comments total)

no question, this is one of the best online resources on the topic:
http://www.transom.org/
posted by mark7570 at 11:51 AM on August 8, 2005

What mark7570 said, Transom is a very valuable resource.

Other resources are often geared towards music recording and editing somewhat, but both Sound On Sound and EQ Mag have plenty of info. I am a huge fan of Sound on Sound - it's British and I assume you can get it in the States, but all their articles/guides etc. that are more than a few months old can be accessed for free via the site.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:03 PM on August 8, 2005

I used Radio: An Illustrated Guide when teaching media students how to approach recording and editing audio dialogue. It isn't as specific as "Adobe Audition", but it does a fair job of covering the basics...here is a sneak preview of the first page of "how to edit sound".
posted by jeanmari at 12:06 PM on August 8, 2005

Don't forget the "help" menu, Audition is a standard Adobe app, with a very nice HTML manual + tutorials.

A bit of a non-answer, but you can find info on the net covering anything that confuses or intrigues you within the help pages, so it could serve as a starting point.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 5:08 PM on August 8, 2005

Transom is great, and I'll second the recommendation for "Radio: An Illustrated Guide."
posted by Vidiot at 7:09 PM on August 8, 2005