Reference Guide

792 Editing audio

Advanced audio processing

SONAR provides a number of advanced audio processing commands for power users. Among

these are commands to apply fades and crossfades.

See:

“Removing silence” on page 792

“Applying fades and crossfades offline” on page 794

“Removing DC offset” on page 794

Removing silence

The Remove Silence command detects sections of audio that fall below a given loudness

threshold, and replaces those sections with absolute silence. Remove Silence gives you the option

of actually deleting the silent sections from the selected audio clips, splitting long audio clips into a

greater number of shorter audio clips.

SONAR treats passages of absolute silence intelligently. It doesn’t store stretches of silence on disk,

and thereby conserves disk space. During a passage of absolute silence, SONAR sends no signal

to the digital output port; this results in cleaner audio playback. Remove Silence is great for

cleaning up your final audio mix, because it can mute all audio tracks in which the live performers

were “laying out.”

Using Remove Silence to split long audio clips into smaller ones opens a variety of creative

possibilities.

The parameters in the Remove Silence dialog box are used to specify exactly what you mean by

silence. More precisely, Remove Silence employs what is called a digital noise gate. The gate is a

type of filter, it passes data through, or stops it from passing through, according to certain criteria.

Parameters in the dialog box specify the conditions under which the gate is opened and under which

it closes again.

The digital noise gate parameters are described in the following table.

Parameter Meaning

Open Level (dB) The loudness threshold for opening the noise gate. The gate officially opens when

loudness rises above this level, although it can open earlier because of the Attack

Time.

Close Level (dB) The loudness threshold for closing the noise gate. The gate officially closes when

loudness falls below this level, although it can stay open later because of the

Release Time.

Table 154.