LAB TWO

REVIEW
Understand the difference between an audio editor, such as
Amadeus or Soundforge, and a mixing program, such as ProTools or
Audition.

PROJECT ONE: EDITING

Due in Week Four.

ASSIGNMENT
Create a soundfile that contains the following:
part 1a version of the text below with all of the sibilants
(s or c), the ps (p), and the hard ts (t) removed.
part 2a version with all of the s/cs ts, and ps edited
together.
Text: Sometimes, using this system seems difficult at the start. With
practice it will soon be possible to do even more sophisticated stuff.
As someone once said: practice makes perfect!

PROCEDURE
Creating a Folder (Directory) for Your Audio Work
Before you begin, you will need a folder (directory) in which to
store all of your audio files for this course. On the PC, it might be in
your My Documents directory. On the Mac, it might be in your
Documents folder.

Download the File

Download the file at the following URL:
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Lab Two

<http://www.sfu.ca/sca/courses/fpa147/sounds/Assignment_1.
aiff>
Move the file from your download folder into your audio folder.
Editing the File
Open the file in either ProTools, Audacity, or your audio editor.
Detailed instructions for the specific programs are given in the
appendix.
Begin editing out (cutting) the sibilants marked above with
underlining, and move them to the end of the file (shown in detail
later).
Once you have removed all of the sibilants, continue with the
ts and then the ps, always moving them to the end of the file.
As always, remember to save your work.
Your final version should sound like this:
(part one) omeime, uing thi yem eem difficul a the tar. With
racie i will oon be oible o do even more ophiicaed uff. A omeone
one aid: racie make erfec!
(part two) [ssssssssscssssssscscstttttttttttttpppp]

FORMAT/PRESENTATION
Upload the file to WebCT, under
Editing.

Assignments Practical 1

EVALUATION
The project will be judged by the quality of the editing. The file will
not be opened in order for the editing to be visually judged
evaluation is completely through listening. What the tutor marker
will listen for is the absence of the specific consonants in the first
part (i.e. no left over s, t, or p), and the absence of vowel
sounds in the second part (i.e., you didnt include part of the o of
sometimes in your edit).

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Lab Two

AUDIO EDITING
BASIC CONVENTIONS
As we will discuss further in Lab Three, many of the conventions of
digital audio editing are borrowed from the traditional analogue
tape studio. The audio editor, of which Amadeus and Soundforge are
both examples, emulates a two-track tape recorder with an editing
block. It allows you to record, play back, edit, and save stereo
sounds.
There are, naturally, some key differences between the two
media. The digital medium has a higher fidelity than virtually all
analogue tape recorders; but, more importantly, editing with digital
equipment is done graphically. This second feature is a tremendous
advantage over tape editing, which you had to do essentially
blindly since you couldnt see the sound information on the tape.
To edit tape, you move the tape manually across the play head,
listen for a space between words, mark the back of the tape with a
felt pen and, finally, cut the tape with a razor blade. Moving the
tape across the tape head (also known as scrubbing) does not
accurately represent the recorded material because the speed of the
tape is inconsistent, and the tape itself cant be moved very far.
Furthermore, editing tape is really only possible during silences
(for example, at the end of a song or between words), since it is too
difficult to identify anything else by tape scrubbing.
Apart from these key differences, the concept of audio editing
is basically the same in the two media. This similarity extends to
the point that many of the physical tape recorder parts are
suggested by the softwares user interface. For example, the virtual
transport buttons contain Play, Stop, Record, and Rewind controls
as well as VU/peak level meters.

The transport controls in ProTools.

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Lab Two

SIGNAL LEVEL
A tape recorders main function is to record a signal onto magnetic
tape. There are limits in the level of signal any piece of audio
equipment can pass without either undue noise (low signal levels)
or distortion (very high signal levels). Therefore, a method had to
be established to measure the signals intensity.
The VU (volume unit) meters found on analogue tape
recorders were devised for this purpose.

VU meter found on analogue audio equipment.

The physical needle on the VU meter moves in relation to the

signals intensity. Because of its movement, it is subject to inertia,
friction, and other physical forces. So it is slightly sluggish and
tends to show an average of the signal level but not sudden peaks,
or transients.
For this reason, many systems have peak level meters that
display instantaneous intensity levels.

A peak level meter.

Peak level meters, however, are less effective than VU meters

for displaying human perception of loudness. We perceive
loudness by more or less averaging sound amplitude, and we tend
to perceive very short sounds as less loud than they actually are.
The scale of measurement shown ranges from -20 to +3 decibels
(dB) on a VU meter and from -32 to 3 dB on a peak level meter. Dont
confuse zero dB with the 0 dB that is the threshold of hearing. On a
meter, 0 dB, also known as unity gain, indicates the maximum
distortion-free level that can be handled by the device.

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Lab Two

HEADROOM
If you have ever recorded music on a cassette recorder that has a
VU meter (either a VU or a peak level), you probably know that
recording a signal level above 0 dB does not, in fact, cause hideous
distortion: that usually results when you reach levels of +10 dB.
The reason is that analogue devices have a certain room, usually
3 dB, above 0 dB that allows for peak levels: this is known as their
headroom. Higher quality analogue tape recorders, combined with
higher quality recording tape, allow for extended headroom, up to
+6 dB.
Digital recording systems, however, have no headroom because
their dynamic range is fixed. A sixteen-bit system (the CD
standard) can handle numbers in the range of -32,767 to 32,765
which translates into a 96 dB dynamic range. 0 dB, or the maximum
level that it can record, is fixed: if the ADC creates a signal level of
32,769, that number cannot be stored and is unrepresentable in the
system.
For this reason, a peak level meter in a digital system has 0 dB
as its true limit, shown below on the far right.

The peak level meter in Peak.

SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO
When recording in either the digital or analogue domain, we want
to ensure that we capture the highest signal level without distortion.
Any piece of electronic audio equipment has a certain amount of
operating noise caused by random movement of electrons (thermal
noise) in its circuitrythis unavoidable noise is considered the
noise floor of any audio recording. The ratio of our signal level to
this unwanted noise is the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and it is the
difference, measured in decibels, between the noise floor of an
audio system and the largest signal it can record without distortion.
Along with the noise created during the recording process,
there is other noise added by the storage medium (magnetic tape)
during playback. There are a number of ways to diminish this byproduct, some of which we will discuss in Lab Seven; however,
none will completely eliminate it. Those of you who have ever
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Lab Two

recorded a CD onto a cassette will notice the tremendously

decreased signal-to-noise ratioquiet passages in the music may
be completely subsumed by the hiss.
An ideal signal-to-noise ratio on our equipment would be
equivalent to, or greater than, the dynamic range of the signal we
are trying to record. For example, a symphony orchestra playing
Beethoven might approach a dynamic range of 108 dB, whereas the
dynamic range of our hearing is 120 dB. A signal-to-noise ratio that
is less than the dynamic range results in the lower signal levels
being lost in the background noise. Analogue reel-to-reel tape
machines have an SNR of 55 to 60 dB, medium-priced cassette
machines have an SNR of 45 dB, and CDs have an SNR of 96 dB.

EDITING STRATEGIES
FOR PROJECT ONE
VOWELS VS. SIBILANCE
Although it is virtually impossible to tell what a graphic
representation of a complex sound actually sounds like, you can
make some distinctions about certain types of sounds.
In this project, the first editing you are required to do is to edit
out the sibilants. Sibilants are ss and soft cs. Because they dont
use the vocal cords (try experimenting with making s sounds
while touching your throat, then try humming. Notice the
difference?), they have no periodicity (pitch). Noise, you will
remember from Unit One, has no periodicity. You may have
figured out by now that sibilants are some of the noise components
of speech.
Vowels, on the other hand, are voiced and use the vocal
cords. They have periodicity and, therefore, are pitched. When
you sing, it is the vowels (and the voiced consonants, such as m)
that provide the pitch.
Zooming in on the first word of the text, Sometimes, you
can begin to recognize visually some of the internal sounds:

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Zoom in even further to the first two sounds, the sibilant s

and the voiced i.

Notice that there is a pattern, a visible period (that is, a period

of time, not a stop point) in the vowel (the right side of the above
diagram). We could, theoretically, calculate this period and
determine the frequency and pitch of my voice!
Now look at the first part, the sibilance, and notice that there
is no pattern. Thats because there is no periodicity; it is noise!

MAKING A MISTAKE
If you make a mistake, remember that Command Z (Control Z on a
PC), also found on the Edit menu, will undo your last action.
However, if you have made a separation and then executed
some other commands, you cannot use Undo to reverse the
separation, since this function applies only to the last action
executed.
Heal Separation (ProTools only)
When you create separations in ProTools, remember that you are
only creating additional references to a audio file, you are not
altering the original audio file in any way. Therefore, any
separation can be easily healed so that the original region returns
to the way it was before the separation.

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If you make an unwanted separation, select it (using the

Grabber), and press Delete. It will disappear from the track.
Remember, you have just deleted a reference, not any audio data.
Then, using the Selector, drag over the two separated pieces,
including the hole that you just created.

Select Heal Separation from the Edit menu.

This step will return the region to its original state.

SOME GENERAL ADVICE

Listen to Your Work
This suggestion may seem obvious, but remember that the project
will be marked by listening to it, not by viewing your session data.
Change Your Zoom Often
Zooming in allows you to focus on a detail and listen to it, while
zooming out allows you to hear longer portions of the sound. There
is no single zoom setting that will work for the entire project;
change it often to suit your needs.

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Learn the Function Keys

In this assignment, if you are using ProTools, you will constantly be
changing between the Selector tool and the Grabber tool. They can
be employed using keyboard shortcuts (there are many keyboard
shortcuts within ProTools). F7 (function key 7 at the top of your
keyboard) selects the Selector tool, while F8 (function key 8) selects
the Grabber tool.
Any program in which you are going to spend a lot of time
working will operate much faster once you learn keyboard
shortcuts. This eliminates the often unnecessary mouse movements
to the menubar. Make the effort to learn the shortcuts to the tools
and functions you use the most.
Dont Get Bogged Down With Perfection
Perfection is good to strive for, but you should recognize the tradeoff between doing a good job of editing and the time it takes to do a
perfect job. Keep in mind that while you are editing, you can
magnify your data and concentrate your listening in a way that
isnt possible when you are listening to the entire assignment.
Getting rid of the tiniest sibilance without affecting the following
vowel might, in fact, prove impossible. If you find that you are
listening to only a fraction of a second, zoom out and listen to
several seconds to determine the effectiveness of your edit.

TO DO THIS WEEK
Begin Assignment One. Decide whether to do the assignment in an
audio editor, or within ProTools or Audacity. Start editing, and
remember to save your work!
Next week we will learn how to create a final audio file that
can be handed in.

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