The Sound of Silence

GuitarLegend

New member
Been recording and mixing for many years now. I have often wondered if there are any benefits to removing silent sections of tracks in the mix? I have never heard that there are.

I know those sections have no audio content to contribute but still wondered if that level was being summed into the rest of the mix and affecting it in any way. It may be imagination but when I experiment with that and cut all silent sections, the mix seems to sound better but now I am feeling foolish for saying that.

Does anyone have any comments on this practice? There are downsides to it but is there any audible benefit to it?

cheers
AL
 
What do you mean by 'remove' - physically chop the section out, or just bring the faders down to zero for that section? When I automate vocals, I will put those tracks down to zero between phrases (assuming more than a second of 'pause'), just in case there is any background noise that I can't hear in the full mix, but is still there.
 
Some meters will give a false LRA reading when there is large amounts of silence involved. As far as sound quality, I really don't have a clue but I agree that pulling the faders down in these open spaces could not hurt.
 
I mean physically cutting those sections from the track. I notice some other mixing engineers' DAWs only consisting of sections of track that actually contain audio, not complete tracks with silence included. I wondered if there was a reason for it, or perhaps they were just where those sections were punched in.
 
I mean physically cutting those sections from the track. I notice some other mixing engineers' DAWs only consisting of sections of track that actually contain audio, not complete tracks with silence included. I wondered if there was a reason for it, or perhaps they were just where those sections were punched in.

From what I have read, it is a waist of time to go in and cut every everything not containing audio, out.
 
Yeah, I don't and wouldn't bother.

There might be a small trace of hiss on my organ track, buzz on a certain guitar amp track, or a fan whirr on a harmonium track.
Those are part of the sound to me; Someone else might cut them.

If every track has hiss/hum or buzz because of some common piece of equipment, fix that at the source.

If not, I'd leave it be. :)

I was super OCD about it I'd use noise gates with low threshold and long release time to save myself a lot of time but, as I say, I'm not. ;)
 
I mean physically cutting those sections from the track. I notice some other mixing engineers' DAWs only consisting of sections of track that actually contain audio, not complete tracks with silence included. I wondered if there was a reason for it, or perhaps they were just where those sections were punched in.

Some people do their automation that way - chop the track into parts, and just drag the volume up/down for each part that needs it. If you do it that way, it's just as easy to delete the 'silent' parts.
 
I do.

When I'm almost done with editing tracks my OCD kicks in bigtime and I cut all sections of all tracks with large silences. Every cut gets a crossfade and then I save and render the tracks. This way if you are sharing the sessions to another computer or DAW, the chances of the saved tracks repopulating as they were before your edits is diminished. And YES, tracks that are the full length of the song still are seen as data even in the silent parts.

I especially chop up drums and vocal tracks. Basically anything that will be "out in front". On the drums, I generally only chop up the kik, snare and the toms on their close mic'd tracks. I leave the overheads and room mics as is simply editing for time. This way it still has a natural 'played in place ' feel and sound while giving the kik, snare, and toms an easy path to standing tall. This is the engine in music with a beat. Another help is when I add samples to layer with the hits, I can control the tails giving them an even bigger footprint.

With vocals I want all the anomalies of the noises between phrases out of the way. No lip smacks, no heavy breathing, no little grunts and humming, no headphone bleed....ALL the things that singers do when they are tracking their parts. Cleaning these out makes it simpler for the compressor and for the verbs and other time based or reflective effects to have a clear space to add the magic to the works.

I used to have 8 channels of high-end gates. This is better. I used to razor out things on the tape or be very very quick with the record function to edit out things. This is better. Does it make things sound better? Very much so. ALL of the pro's do this.....well, they have their seconds and their digital editing experts do it!

I do.
 
I mean physically cutting those sections from the track. I notice some other mixing engineers' DAWs only consisting of sections of track that actually contain audio, not complete tracks with silence included. I wondered if there was a reason for it, or perhaps they were just where those sections were punched in.

I don't remove every little bit of the "no audio" sections on all tracks, but I will chop most of it out, especially the longer stuff....like not the small mini-pauses between notes or words in a verse...but anything more than a few seconds or more.
I've always done it...to clean up tracks, and to prep them for any editing, comping, or arrangement/production changes...so it's like the first thing I'll do when I get all my tracks in the DAW. I can do it really fast, maybe takes me about 30 minutes to clean up all the tracks on a given song.

Like...if you're playing maybe a few notes on an instrument, only in some parts of the tracks...there's really nothing to be gained from leaving in all the "no audio" sections on a 4-5 minute track...and those sections may not always be silent, especially if you're applying processing on the whole track, some of that processing might pull-up useless noise that doesn't really add any value to the total sound, that wasn't heard before.

Very often when I'm recording a track, unlike the old days of using a gate to keep it clean in-between, I know I can easily chop out stuff in the DAW...so then when I'm playing, I don't really worry about hitting a string accidentally between phrases, or coughing between words, or whatever occurs in-between the actual playing/singing.
It kinda gives me more freedom when recording...rather than worry about any little noises that occur in-between the actual audio.

Another reason I'll end up chopping it out is that I'm already going to cut up some tracks because as I said above, I might be moving things around, maybe changing the arrangement on a section, on the fly in the DAW, or simply because I may comp 2-3 tracks into one...so I'll just go ahead and make cuts where there is relevant content, and by default, remove the silent sections.

Besides that...I track to tape, and while I do record fairly hot, and the playback from the deck is surprisingly clean, there isn't an obvious tape hiss...if I end up boosting some highs on some tracks, there is the chance I will pull up that tape hiss, which in the "no audio" sections could add unwanted noise to the track.

I'm all for getting as clean as possible tracks.
If I was recording a live band, then room ambience, noises and "as it falls" mentality would apply. :)
 
I don't have any problems with the silence, I don't mean ambient noises or anything like that.

I was just referring to silent sections of track that have absolutely nothing on them. Most of the time I leave everything as it is, I was just looking at it one day and remembering other mixes I have seen that only consist of the audio parts that make up the song. I wondered if there was any benefit to cutting out those silences. Once done, I also make sure the "invisible" audio is cleaned up - the audio that is still in the mix somewhere that could be restored if for example, you drag the end (or beginning) of a track an uncover hidden audio. I clean those up mostly to reduce the size of the project, for what it is worth.

Thanks for the replies, they pretty much tell me what I was looking for.
 
I mean physically cutting those sections from the track. I notice some other mixing engineers' DAWs only consisting of sections of track that actually contain audio, not complete tracks with silence included. I wondered if there was a reason for it, or perhaps they were just where those sections were punched in.

There are a couple reasons why you see people with only audio and no silence:
1. Punch ins
2. That instrument only plays in a couple sections in the song, no reason to start at the beginning
3. Instrument is noisy, like an electric guitar with amp hiss. You do want to cut that out.
4. The mixer is flying parts around to rearrange the song or copy and paste parts from one section to another.

I will cut out amp hiss, extra noise and vocal tracks between verses and stuff (singers can't sit still or be quiet)
 
I don't have any problems with the silence, I don't mean ambient noises or anything like that.

I was just referring to silent sections of track that have absolutely nothing on them. Most of the time I leave everything as it is, I was just looking at it one day and remembering other mixes I have seen that only consist of the audio parts that make up the song. I wondered if there was any benefit to cutting out those silences. Once done, I also make sure the "invisible" audio is cleaned up - the audio that is still in the mix somewhere that could be restored if for example, you drag the end (or beginning) of a track an uncover hidden audio. I clean those up mostly to reduce the size of the project, for what it is worth.

Thanks for the replies, they pretty much tell me what I was looking for.

Absolutely no audio? Like what Cavedog described where he edits out the "silent"* passages and renders that to a stem? No, I wouldn't edit those out, but I will do what CD described. If I do a single take of an instrument, and it doesn't play for a few seconds, I'll cut out the silent bit to keep the ambient sounds from affecting the mix.

*except room noise, amp hiss, noise floor, etc
 
I'm guessing you are talking about the areas where you aren't singing/playing but the mic's are still going? I will USUALLY cut that stuff out, and sometimes when I do after I hit play the whole song sounds cleaner and more full, but sometimes it takes something away. I recently was doing a high energy rock track with a very dirty feel to it, I tried cutting out the "white noise" and when I did it just didn't sound as good, all that background noise was somehow giving it a live/chaotic feel that really added excitement to the song and gave it attitude. But on the flip side I've done tracks that had a more precise feel to them and they were better off without any noisey tracks in the background. I guess you just gotta decide if it's bothering you or not. One time my cat meowed during a recording and I didn't notice it till later, when I heard it in the headphones I thought it added humor and character so I actually turned it up hahaha
 
If the vocals need cleaning up, I cut each vocal line into it's own soundbite, then just use trim to bring the edges just a bit away from the audio start and stop points. Then I will put in a short fade in, and fade out.
I do it on some drum tracks if no gates are used. Toms that only hit a couple times in the song but, are picking up quite a bit of bleed. Things like that. I don't delete anymore, I just use the edge edit / trim tool.
 
I'm guessing you are talking about the areas where you aren't singing/playing but the mic's are still going? I will USUALLY cut that stuff out, and sometimes when I do after I hit play the whole song sounds cleaner and more full, but sometimes it takes something away. I recently was doing a high energy rock track with a very dirty feel to it, I tried cutting out the "white noise" and when I did it just didn't sound as good, all that background noise was somehow giving it a live/chaotic feel that really added excitement to the song and gave it attitude. But on the flip side I've done tracks that had a more precise feel to them and they were better off without any noisey tracks in the background. I guess you just gotta decide if it's bothering you or not. One time my cat meowed during a recording and I didn't notice it till later, when I heard it in the headphones I thought it added humor and character so I actually turned it up hahaha

The LAST thing I want is the ghost coming through from someones headphones and being out of time . Thats the kind of smear that screws things up, even noisy ballistic dirty rockin musak. If I want dirt, I can get that from some of the more 'modern' plugins that actually have a noise knob.

Having clean tracks that fill up the arrangement are key to the mix in any genre.

The ONLY time I have found the ambient sound of the environment to be really needed was doing a jazz trio where there only two close mics being used. Everything else was room. A close mic on the kik and the doghouse bass simply for a bit of definition.

I take that "only" statement back.....Horn sections, strings, and using a distance mic on a loud harmonicat guy worked well in conjunction to his handheld crystal thing he played through. I put up my U67 in omni as an overhead and it gave a stage perception to his track.
 
The LAST thing I want is the ghost coming through from someones headphones and being out of time . Thats the kind of smear that screws things up, even noisy ballistic dirty rockin musak. If I want dirt, I can get that from some of the more 'modern' plugins that actually have a noise knob.

Having clean tracks that fill up the arrangement are key to the mix in any genre.

The ONLY time I have found the ambient sound of the environment to be really needed was doing a jazz trio where there only two close mics being used. Everything else was room. A close mic on the kik and the doghouse bass simply for a bit of definition.

I take that "only" statement back.....Horn sections, strings, and using a distance mic on a loud harmonicat guy worked well in conjunction to his handheld crystal thing he played through. I put up my U67 in omni as an overhead and it gave a stage perception to his track.
I went back to the song and looked at it, I actually don't have any white noise from the vocal tracks coming through, it's simply the buzz from the electric guitar leads as they're waiting to come in on the choruses. On the other track I was talking about I did leave a whole vocal track going, but now that I look at it it's just one, and it's a background vocal that's low in volume and panned right, the others are indeed muted in the space. That's the "Cat meowing" track. One of these songs I have almost completed, the one where I left the guitar buzz, I'll just post it in a day or two and see if you think it was a mistake. From what I can tell you seem to really know what you're talking about in your posts, do you mix professionally? I get that impression from how you talk, I'm not at all a professional, just a guy trying to get my own songs up to par sonically, so I may not be the best person to listen to, but at the same time I do know what I like and have been told I have a good ear by professional engineers, I just have a lack of knowledge about my software/gear, that's why I'm joining sites like these, but yeah I suppose my opinions should be taken with a grain of salt hehe
 
Do not assume that working even the smallest most seemingly insignificant things can't make an impact of the final result. "Up to par sonically" is something achievable by anyone on any system and all that is required is patience, an ability to learn, and taking the time to do the tasks.

The one huge thing that set's a major production apart from any other is there isn't anything left to "good enough" ......
 
I sometimes cut it out, or just automate the fader to zero, same impact from what I can hear. I don't see any value to the guitar buzz or vocal mic noise, especially unwanted singer pops or mic touches.
 
I think most of the examples I have seen where only audio is on each track are either mixed down stem versions, cut up versions to facilitate re-arranging, or were done in a pro environment where it is often done by an unpaid intern is "cleaning and organizing" a mix to suit the mix engineers usual work flow. Depending on the type of recording(music,spoken,etc) , I may cut out areas of a track with no audio or not. Than I might consolidate all the cut parts into one new whole clip. Some room noise can sound "right" , some just needs to go away.
 
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