User Manual

WAVELAB
6 – 108 Editing in the Wave window
Silence dialog options
The Silence dialog contains the following options:
About the Ambience – Background noise option
In certain situations, completely muting the sound (True silence) will pro-
duce an undesirable result. This particularly applies to spoken word and
field recordings, where a natural background ambience is often present.
Inserting “True” silence can introduce a marked difference to the pas-
sages with voice dialog as opposed to the silenced passages, thus limit-
ing the use of the Silence function (unless this is what you want). Using
the Background noise feature you can insert ambience instead of silence
which in such circumstances will produce a far more natural result. Here’s
how its done:
1. Select “Background noise” in the Ambience section.
2. Click the folder icon to open a standard file dialog where you can navigate
to the source file for the Background noise.
The file you specify must have the same properties (stereo/mono, sample
rate, etc.) as the file to be silenced. The file can be any length – if the si-
lence region is longer than the file it will be looped.
Item Description
Length If set to “As selection”, the silence range will be the same as the se-
lection. If this is unchecked, you can specify a silence length in the
field below the checkbox.
Fade in/out If this is checked, a crossfade will be performed at the start and end
of the silence region for a smoother transition. You can specify the
crossfade time.
Ambience –
True silence
If this is selected, the result will be “digital silence”, i.e. completely
muted sound.
Ambience –
Background noise
This option allows you to select an audio file containing ambient
noise, and use this as the source for the silence operation. See be-
low.
Gain This allows you to lower or raise the gain of the Background noise
source file.
Mode The sets whether to Replace the selection or to Insert the silence at
the cursor position.
Apply Applies the operation.