What do you do with the .wav file silent spots?

T

tbkahuna

New member
I think I am making progress!!! I was hoping to find out what others do with the silent spots in .wav files. When I record a vocal track, there is silence between each of the phrases. Do I leave that in there so I have one .wav file for an entire vocal track, or do I go in and remove the silent part so I have multiple sections on the vocal track, but nothing in between actual singing?

The silent part isn't always silent, so I know those have to come out, but is it normal to remove those sections. Will it make the song sound better if it is removed?

I am recording using sonar with a Gina card at 16 bits right now. The vocals go through my Pod XT using the Tube preamp patch with no drive on it.

I see a lot of people mentioning .wav editors. What would be a decent low cost editor I could use with Sonar if I need to edit files?

Thanks for the help.
 
Just decrease the volume on the silent sections to -inf using Sonar. I'm sure it must have some way to draw volume envelopes. No you don't want to go cutting the file up.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I usually insert silence during those parts. It eliminates anything within the dead space. It doesn't chop it up, just flat lines it. I've also used strip silence which will cut out the silent passages but requires detailed editing afterwards. Just depends on the situation.
 
Sound Forge is a decent editor for this. It will allow you to flat line it (mute edit) or just lower the volume like Slack said. The main consideration will be how much background noise you have in the "silent" parts to begin with. Too drastic a drop-off will create a very un-natural sound. This may or may not be masked in the final mix depending on what you have going on on other tracks. To smooth out a really hairy background noise, use a fade out edit and a fade in edit in the silent spots.
 
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I almost always run a “remove silence” in CWPA9. It’s kind of like a gate where I can specify at what db level it removes the not so silent silence. I try to get it to a level where it removes the background computer noise, but still leaves in breaths at the beginning of phrases and exhalations at end of phrases so the vocal sounds natural. It takes some manual editing no matter what, but that’s a good opportunity to get rid of lip smacks & other nasties ;) :D.

The side effect is that the track is all chopped up and some others more knowledgeable than I have said that is not the best idea. So you might want to listen to them. Just for my curiosity, why not do it? Maybe in case you need to slide the whole track somewhere along the line? I usually don’t do this editing until the very end for that reason. Just curious in case there is something else I should be considering :)
 
In Sonar, what I do is the following:

Delete the section of the audio file that has silence (hold down alt when selecting to select the specific part.

Select the whole track, or each part of the track and then bounce to clip. It will create 1 wave file with silence between phrases. It's the same as insterting silence... I just find this way easier....

Personal preference I guess,

Porter
 
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