How to Eliminate Background Noise in Adobe Audition

 

People often forget that film and video are as much an audio art form as a visual one. Of course, you’ll never find sound engineers making this mistake. It’s true that anyone can press record on a high-quality camera and capture stunning visuals. However, mixing speech, backing music, sound effects, and room tones to create an audio environment that feels realistic on the one hand and magical on the other is no small feat. 

So, whether you’re a specialized sound engineer or a jack-of-all-trades DIY filmmaker, chances are you’ve spent some time with Adobe Audition. In this blog, we’ll explore how to create elite audio tracks that sound clear and crisp by using a range of audio tools to eliminate background noise, hiss, and unwanted room tones.

A Powerful DAW

Part of the Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Audition is a powerful DAW (or Digital Audio Workstation) that rivals other pro-quality software on the market. Though there are many other options for mixing and editing soundtracks, Audition’s integration with the Creative Cloud makes it the DAW of choice for many production studios and independent film and video makers. Like all DAWs, Adobe Auditionhas an array of built-in tools and can also use 3rd party audio plugins.

 

 

Using Built-in Tools

Eliminating most background noise using Audition’s built-in tools is relatively simple. For high-pitched hiss, you can use effects>noise reduction>hiss reduction. Hiss reduction is a dynamic eq filter that aims to cut out the offending frequencies without disturbing the overall audio quality. If you can isolate a space that’s just hiss and nothing else, you can sample the hiss using the capture noise floor setting. It tells Audition exactly what frequencies you want to be removed. 

 

Adaptive noise reduction (effects>noise reduction>adaptive noise reduction) is another built-in powerful tool that’s great for removing background noise, like wind. However, unless you get the settings just right, adaptive noise reduction may have a detrimental effect on your audio quality, so make sure to take your time and find the sweet spot.

 

Using 3rd Party Plugins

Adobe Audition also allows the installation of 3rd party audio plugins. These include ones that essentially do what the built-in effects can do, though they often offer more control and better processing.It also offers things like echo removal, which Audition’s pre-packaged tools cannot do. If you’re going to be using Audition a lot, it makes sense to take some time and demo all available noise reduction plugins. Finding one that feels intuitive to use and provides the right balance of noise reduction and audio quality preservation can be a game-changer.

Avoid the Issues by using High-Quality Music

Of course, the best noise reducer is a great recording. You can’t always get that from field recordings or even audio recorded on set, but you should never have hiss or background noise from legit stock music—like the kind you can find at UPM. So use tools for music production to clean up the tracks that need it, but make life easier for yourself and your team by selecting studio-quality recordings whenever possible.