(Music playing)

Here we are in the PC side so rather than opening sound booth from the dock this time, we are going to open from the start menu. So far, we have covered the most often used editing facilities in Soundbooth. Most of these tools remove audio from the file, be it through simple cutting, or through more complicated processes, like noise reduction.

Now it is time to look at another powerful class of editing tools provided with sound booth, effect processing. Effects processing is different from other editing tasks and that the purpose is not so much to chop, line up, and time your audio. It is to take your already cut or even raw audio tracks and give them more punch, more space, more intelligibility, or any other tambour related change you deem necessary.

To get started adding effects to your audio, the first thing you need to do is actually load an audio clip. So let come up here to the open dialog and once again, we will load Zoombasol tag. You can find all of these files in your Media Resources folder inside you Project files folder.

The very first thing I see here is a low amplitude throughout the entire clip, so I am going to click the loudness button to bring it up to (00:01:18). Make sure that the effects panel is visible. You will see the effects tab right next to the tasks tab that we have been using commonly. The first view you get of the effects setup is quite simple. The main pull down menu gives access to a wide range of rack presets. These presets will often contain multiple individual effects group together aimed with accomplishing a particular goal.

Lets us take a closer look at one of the available presets. We will pick mastering mix 1. Notice that the preset immediately calls up the chain of effects when it is chosen. Also note that the individual effects all have their internals set to useful values, again aimed at accomplishing the presets specific function.

Note that audio flows from the top to the bottom of the rack. Processing order is very important when dealing with chains of effects. In this particular example, first we have the EQ, or the equalizer, second, the dynamics processor, and finally the mastering module.

The little power buttons next to each effect act as an individual bypass, notice also that there is a larger power button in the lower left of the effects section that turns the entire effects rack on and off. As you have already seen, clicking on settings gets us into the effects specific settings dialog. If I make a change here, any arbitrary change, you will see that reset highlights. If I click reset, it will set the effect back to a default state. The disk icon lets us save either individual effect settings or entire rack presets

Finally, you will see your apply to file button down here at the bottom. While the rack is live, which is to say while you have the settings called up, all of the effects processing is applied to the audio in real time. Once you got your settings tweeked the way that you like them, you can click apply to file. It will be only after this action that you can see that in the wave form in the spectral view, the changes made by the effects. Notice that if we select a little portion of the file, the apply to file button changes to apply to selection. This is the way that you can apply effects selectively throughout the clip without affecting the rest of it. We can delete effects by choosing them in pressing the backspace or the delete key.

Adding a lone specific effect is accomplished by right clicking or control clicking on the mack, and choosing the effect from the popup menu. The basic effects here are for very little user controllability. Varying that simple quick fixes, people who are not entirely comfortable getting into the real nuts and bolts of the effects themselves. The advanced effects settings offer a lot more flexibility. We will be looking mostly at the advanced settings throughout this series.

I am going to select the analog delay. There are a couple of very useful presets that we are going to be looking at as this chapter progresses. Among them are the 2 remove home presets, the vocal increase clarity preset. The male and female all purpose presets, and the large and small room reverbs. All of these presets can be useful to you in different situations. It is just that these that I have mentioned are widely applicable in a large range of situations.

I am going to deselect here so that we can hear this analog delay effect across the entire file. I will open up the settings dialog, and we will just twiddle some sliders. The settings that you make in the effects rack are applied dynamically anytime the play button is pressed. Any updates that you make to settings while the audio is playing will be immediately reflected in the audio that you hear. This is invaluable for tweeking your settings until they are perfect.

(Demo)

When your settings are as you would like them to be, go ahead an render them to the audio by clicking apply to file. You can see here the pretty drastic changes that the analog delay has created. You will find the Effects and Soundbooth very useful to you. For all situations, from subtle fixes, to extreme spaced out sounds.