Audition 2.0's Spectral Display Controls

Tutorial: Page (1) of 2 - 03/27/06

Audition 2.0's Spectral Display Controls The default view is only scratching the surface of this powerful toolset By Frank Moldstad

Color is an important part of the Spectral Display in Adobe Audition 2.0, which might seem strange, because after all this is an audio program. But since the Spectral Display is a visual way of analyzing frequencies, colors are essential for differentiating the various frequencies by their amplitude.

The Spectral Display shows time versus frequency on an X-Y graph, with the horizontal X-axis representing time and the vertical Y-axis representing frequency. It is a great tool for identifying an audio file's dominant frequencies, as an aid when applying EQ or for removing unwanted individual sounds such as coughs from a recording.

By default, the colors range from dark blue for the lowest decibel (softest) sounds to bright yellow for the highest decibel (loudest) sounds. This is a good starting point, but depending on what you're trying to analyze, other color schemes may work better. In this tutorial, we're going to look at how the Spectral Display can be tailored to fit a project's needs. The Spectral Controls panel offers a practically unlimited color palette, with customizable gamma, hue and color bands.

The Spectral view is launched from Audition's Edit window. With an audio file open for editing, go to View>Spectral Frequency Display. The file takes on a radically different look -- going from a conventional waveform display to something that resembles the Northern Lights. Just as in the Waveform view, you can zoom way in to get a better look at specific parts of the file.

This Waveform view takes on a radically different appearance in the Spectral view below. The graph components are also different -- in the Waveform view, the vertical axis represents decibels, while in the Spectral view, it represents Hz.

But the specific file I'm trying to analyze doesn't have much high frequency information -- it's a recording of a guitar played through a wah wah pedal. The wah wah sound is created by narrowly focused EQ applied by the player as the pedal is rocked back and forth. In this recording, the player was using the wah pedal to create a punctuated low frequency rhythmic accompaniment in a song, sporadically opening it up for chordal sweeps. The file's dominant frequencies (yellow) are between 400 Hz and 1600kHz.

However, the narrow wah wah bandwidths aren't displayed prominently enough with the default Spectral View, which shows mostly dark blues, purples and reds. Another color scheme might make it easier to tell what's going on at a glance. This can be created in the Spectral Controls panel [Window>Spectral Controls].

Spectral controls panel opens as a square floating window, but I have lengthened it and docked it below the main window for easier workflow.

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