Operation Manual
Table Of Contents
- Contents
- Chapter 1: Getting started
- Chapter 2: Digital audio fundamentals
- Chapter 3: Workflow and workspace
- Chapter 4: Setting up Adobe Audition
- Chapter 5: Importing, recording, and playing audio
- Chapter 6: Editing audio files
- Displaying audio in Edit View
- Selecting audio
- Copying, cutting, pasting, and deleting audio
- Visually fading and changing amplitude
- Working with markers
- Creating and deleting silence
- Inverting and reversing audio
- Generating audio
- Analyzing phase, frequency, and amplitude
- Converting sample types
- Recovery and undo
- Chapter 7: Applying effects
- Chapter 8: Effects reference
- Amplitude and compression effects
- Delay and echo effects
- Filter and equalizer effects
- Modulation effects
- Restoration effects
- Reverb effects
- Special effects
- Stereo imagery effects
- Changing stereo imagery
- Binaural Auto-Panner effect (Edit View only)
- Center Channel Extractor effect
- Channel Mixer effect
- Doppler Shifter effect (Edit View only)
- Graphic Panner effect
- Pan/Expand effect (Edit View only)
- Stereo Expander effect
- Stereo Field Rotate VST effect
- Stereo Field Rotate process effect (Edit View only)
- Time and pitch manipulation effects
- Multitrack effects
- Chapter 9: Mixing multitrack sessions
- Chapter 10: Composing with MIDI
- Chapter 11: Loops
- Chapter 12: Working with video
- Chapter 13: Creating surround sound
- Chapter 14: Saving and exporting
- Saving and exporting files
- Audio file formats
- About audio file formats
- 64-bit doubles (RAW) (.dbl)
- 8-bit signed (.sam)
- A/mu-Law Wave (.wav)
- ACM Waveform (.wav)
- Amiga IFF-8SVX (.iff, .svx)
- Apple AIFF (.aif, .snd)
- ASCII Text Data (.txt)
- Audition Loop (.cel)
- Creative Sound Blaster (.voc)
- Dialogic ADPCM (.vox)
- DiamondWare Digitized (.dwd)
- DVI/IMA ADPCM (.wav)
- Microsoft ADPCM (.wav)
- mp3PRO (.mp3)
- NeXT/Sun (.au, .snd)
- Ogg Vorbis (.ogg)
- SampleVision (.smp)
- Spectral Bitmap Image (.bmp)
- Windows Media Audio (.wma)
- Windows PCM (.wav, .bwf)
- PCM Raw Data (.pcm, .raw)
- Video file formats
- Adding file information
- Chapter 15: Automating tasks
- Chapter 16: Building audio CDs
- Chapter 17: Keyboard shortcuts
- Chapter 18: Digital audio glossary
- Index

8
Chapter 2: Digital audio fundamentals
Understanding sound
Sound fundamentals
Sound starts with vibrations in the air, like those produced by guitar strings, vocal cords, or speaker cones. These
vibrations push nearby air molecules together, raising the air pressure slightly. The air molecules under pressure then
push on the air molecules surrounding them, which push on the next set of molecules, and so on. As high-pressure
areas move through the air, they leave low-pressure areas behind them. When these waves of pressure changes reach
us, they vibrate the receptors in our ears, and we hear the vibrations as sound.
When you see a visual waveform that represents audio, it reflects these waves of air pressure. The zero line in the
waveform is the pressure of air at rest. When the line swings up to a peak, it represents higher pressure; when the line
swings down to a trough, it represents lower pressure.
A sound wave represented as a visual waveform
A. Zero line B. Low-pressure area C. High-pressure area
Waveform measurements
Several measurements describe waveforms:
Amplitude Reflects the change in pressure from the peak of the waveform to the trough. High-amplitude waveforms
are loud; low-amplitude waveforms are quiet.
Cycle Describes a single, repeated sequence of pressure changes, from zero pressure, to high pressure, to low
pressure, and back to zero.
Frequency Measured in hertz (Hz), describes the number of cycles per second. (For example, a 1000-Hz waveform
has 1000 cycles per second.) The higher the frequency, the higher the musical pitch.
Phase Measured in 360 degrees, indicates the position of a waveform in a cycle. Zero degrees is the start point,
followed by 90º at high pressure, 180º at the halfway point, 270º at low pressure, and 360º at the end point.
Wavelength Measured in units such as inches or centimeters, is the distance between two points with the same
degree of phase. As frequency increases, wavelength decreases.
B
A
C
0