User Guide

269
ADOBE AUDITION
User Guide
Envelopes Use this command’s submenu options to clear the Volume, Pan, or FX Mix envelopes from the highlighted
portion of a selected block, as well as uses spline (curved) envelopes instead of Adobe Audition’s default envelope style
(which has straight lines between the envelope’s control points).
About Busses
Adobe Audition gives you the ability to organize multiple tracks into busses, which is especially useful for adding one or
more real-time effects to and/or adjusting the gain for a common group of tracks. The dictionary states that, electroni-
cally speaking, a bus is “an electrical conductor that makes a common connection between several circuits”. In the case
of Adobe Audition’s Multitrack View, a bus lets you make a common connection between several tracks. Sometimes it’s
more convenient to group two or more tracks together into a bus in order to apply real-time effects or give the tracks the
same volume, pan, and equalization properties.
Let’s say you’re recording a song that has four tracks of background vocals. You want to apply a bit of compression to
those tracks to give them a more punchy sound, plus add some reverb. Instead of processing each track separately (which
might have a significant drain on your computer’s processing speed), you can add the four tracks to their own bus and
then apply the reverb to the bus. Up to 26 buses may be created.
How to assign tracks to a bus
Adobe Audition provides several ways of assigning tracks to busses, but here’s the easiest:
1 Press the Output button in the Track Controls. (The button says “Out 1” by default.) This will display the Playback
Devices dialog for the track.
2 In the bottom part of the Wave tab of the Playback Devices dialog you’ll see a list of existing Busses. If it’s the first time
you’ve used busses in Adobe Audition, just one bus – “Untitled Bus (A)” – will be listed. (You can press New Bus… to
add another bus to the list – up to 26 if you want.)
3 Click on the name of the bus you wish to add the track to.
4 Press the Properties… button to display the Bus Properties dialog.
5 Use the Bus Properties dialog to give the bus a friendly name and change its output device if desired, as well as assign
any Real-Time Effects to the bus. Press OK when you’re done.
6 Press OK to close the Playback Devices dialog. (Notice how the track’s Output button now shows the letter of the bus.)
About Real-Time Effects
Adobe Audition offers three types of effects: Real-Time, Off-Line, and Multitrack. Real-Time Effects have parameters
that may be adjusted while listening to the results as part of the mix in the Multitrack View. Since they’re non-destructive,
they don’t actually change the physical sound files in the tracks they’re applied to. In addition, Real-Time Effects may be
used like Off-Line Effects in Adobe Audition’s Edit View.