Instruction Manual

531
Digital Audio Fundamentals
Editing Audio
Digital Audio Fundamentals
Audio Clips
If you have read Digital Audio Fundamentals, you should have a good idea
of what is contained in a SONAR audio clip. An audio clip contains a long
series of numbers, or samples, representing the fluctuating amplitude of a
waveform. Audio clips are typically quite large, hundreds of kilobytes to
many megabytes in size. By comparison, a MIDI event takes only a few
bytes to store.
The Track view lets you see your audio waveforms in great detail; you can
zoom in until you see the individual samples.
You should also now be aware of some things to watch out for when editing
your audio data. First, if you cut audio clips apart or splice them together,
you should do so at zero-crossings in the waveform (places where the
amplitude is zero), in order to avoid sudden changes in amplitude that may
cause clicks and pops. Second, you should beware of clipping. Clipping of
the audio waveform can occur if you record a signal at too high a record
level, or if you apply audio processing or effects that increase the waveform
amplitude too much. If you accidentally cause the waveform to clip, you
should undo the command and try again with different parameters.
Clipping can also occur in other situations, for example, if you try to play or
mix several loud audio tracks together, the aggregate signal strength may
at times exceed the clipping limit, and the output signal will be distorted. To
correct the problem, you can create a volume envelope to reduce the level
in loud audio clips or reduce the track volume in the Console or Track
views.
See:
Digital Audio Fundamentals
Managing Audio Data
Because of the great size of audio data, SONAR uses an intelligent scheme
for storing audio clips on disk to conserve disk space and minimize the time
it takes to load and save data. Audio data is not stored directly in your
project file, but rather in separate files in a special directory. For more
information, see Audio File Management.
You can export your project in MP3, WMA, or Wave format. You can also
convert your project’s MIDI data to audio and export it to any of the above
formats. For more information, see Preparing Audio for Distribution.