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Chapter 10 Create a song arrangement 324
Uses for Strip Silence
You can use Strip Silence for a variety of dierent situations.
Remove background noises
The most common use for Strip Silence is simulation of the classic noise gate eect. When used
on long recordings with numerous gaps—such as vocals or instrumental solos—you can obtain
better results by setting a low threshold value. Background noise is removed, without aecting
the main signal.
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For short percussive regions (drum loops), you can simulate time compression/expansion by
simply altering the tempo.
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You can even quantize the individual segments in an audio recording.
Create segments of spoken recordings
You can use Strip Silence to divide long spoken passages into several convenient segments, like
sentences, words, or syllables. For lm synchronization or jingles, you can move or reposition the
speech segments by simply dragging them around in the Tracks area.
Tempo changes allow you to simulate a time compression or expansion eect, as the syllables
automatically move closer together, or farther apart.
Create segments for drum loops
Dividing drum loops into small segments is a good way to perfectly synchronize them. For
example, in audio passages where the bass drum and snare are completely separate, you can
often use Strip Silence to isolate each individual beat.
Optimize synchronization
Dierent computers, dierent synchronization sources (internal or SMPTE code), dierent tape
machines, and—in theory—dierent samplers or hard disk recording systems will exhibit slight
variations in clock speed. Changing just one component can lead to a loss of synchronization
between recorded audio material and MIDI. This is particularly applicable to long audio regions.
This is another situation where the Strip Silence function can help, by creating several shorter
audio regions, with more trigger points between the audio and MIDI events.
For example, you can use this method to roughly split up a whole audio le, and then divide the
new regions, using dierent parameters. The new regions can then be processed again with the
Strip Silence function.
Optimize les and regions
You can use Strip Silence to automatically create regions from an audio le that contains silent
passages, such as a single vocal take that runs the length of a project. The unused regions
or portions of the audio le can be deleted, saving hard disk space, and simplifying (le and)
region management.
Use Strip Silence to extract audio les
Many sample library discs (CD or DVD) contain thousands of audio recordings stored as AIFF
or WAV les. Strip Silence can be used to split these into individual regions, which can be used
directly in the Tracks area. Regions can also be converted into individual audio les (samples),
which can be used in the EXS24 mkII.