In this tutorial Shaun Whynacht walks through the mixing stage of a podcast episode using Adobe Audition. He starts the session at the beginning of the timeline, demonstrates how to isolate intro, outro, and background music tracks, and shows how to create automation nodes to shape fade‑in and fade‑out curves for the music so it gently recedes when speech begins and returns when speech ends. He explains how to adjust individual track levels and monitor the master meter to keep the mix out of the red, using gentle gain changes rather than drastic cuts. Shaun also shows how to mute, move, and trim clips, clean up the start and end of the episode, and balance the background music throughout. The lesson ends with a brief preview of the next session on mastering and exporting the final podcast file.
Chapters
All right. So in the last lesson, we looked at assembling or layering the different elements. Now we're going to talk about the mixing of the files. So let's go back and let's start at the beginning. And I tend to want to start at the beginning of any file and mix it through. So let's look at this.
Welcome to the Content Amplification Podcast, where you will gain insight into real-life tactical and strategic elements to help you scale and grow your business. Now let's get started with today's episode.
Okay, so when that comes in, that's a little too loud for my liking. So I could, because the music's all on this track, if I wanted to— and again, I could have put the intro on this track and the outro at the end on this track. So as you see, as I'm playing these, today's episode, we're getting different audio files over here, right? You're seeing this one because I'm talking, but I could pull this down and they're color-coded. So yellow meets this track, purple meets this track. So I can actually pull that down as we listen to this again.
Content Amplification Podcast, where you will gain insight into real-life tactical.
So we really want to see around here.
Now let's get started with today's episode.
Okay. Not bad. So let's listen. Hey, what's up everybody? It is episode. Okay. So when the talking starts, you want this to start to fade out and become nothing. As you can see, there's a line through the file here. This one, there's yellow on here, it's yellow on here because this is yellow, it's the same color. So, what I'm going to do is when I start talking, I'm just going to click on that yellow line twice. It makes a little node. I can go ahead and I can click and make another node down the way, and I can drag this down to start to fade it. And over time, you will learn that a fade shouldn't just be like this, right, straight down. You're going to want to start to come down a little bit, make another node, bring it down a little bit more, and then eventually fade it out like that. So you want to slowly make it more of a gradual type of curve. So let's take a listen now. Episode. Hey, what's up everybody? It is episode number 2 of the Content Amplification Podcast. That's right. I'm your host, Shaun Whynacht. And today we're going to be talking about mindset. And what I mean by mindset is what are you thinking? Okay, a good fade right there. Now you can leave that all in there, right? So the whole file on the line, or you can go to the very end here, grab the end of the file and start to drag it back until that point where you see it, right? Just cut it off just to make it cleaned up along the way. It wouldn't hurt if it's all the way out. I just like to keep my productions looking clean that way. So let's go ahead and let's look at the very end. Right, so how does it end? So what we're going to do here is I like to have the transition when there's something in the audio that happens. So let me just go ahead and actually turn the recording off here so you don't see that. I'm going to mute that. We're going to mute that. And let's listen to the end of the audio here. Right, so you see how that goes, like, so I want to make that happen when I stop talking. I'm going to move this out a little bit. So that could have been an assembly, but that's okay. You can move stuff around when you get to this point. If you're noticing that the audio is a little out of whack or something cool could actually happen. So let's go ahead here, unmute this, and let's take a listen. That you deserve. Thanks for listening. Okay, so the audio was too loud there. We're going to do reverse of what we did at the beginning. I'm gonna make sure right when I stop talking, we want the audio to be up at its fullest. Make a node. I can pull that down, pull it down a bit more. I'm gonna actually go here and I'm gonna pull this in. So we don't really want the audio to be playing a lot here. So I'm gonna go to here and I'm gonna, Oh shoot, I'm going to pull that down just like that. Okay, now when you hear the talking, let's see what it sounds like. Your monthly revenue where you're at, if that was doubled, how would things change? So you hear the gentle audio in the background. Write it like a short story. Okay, maybe I want to bring it up a little bit more here so it becomes more gradual as it goes along. And read that every single day that you— okay, let's take a look where we're getting near the end— to the business that you deserve. Thanks for listening.
Thanks for listening to the Content Amplification Podcast. If you have questions about how you can amplify your content strategy, go to http://amplifymycontent.com.
Okay, so if you got audio that would justify you then bringing up a little bit more, you can— dot com— just gentle, gentle adjustments so it's not so drastic. Okay, so that's not too bad. I'm okay with that. I would take that to the next level. Now one thing to look at after you do that part of it is go back and listen and watch the levels. So watch the levels over here as the different tracks play. And make sure that you've got things staying out of the red.
Welcome to the—
okay, so we see that's hitting the red, so we're going to pull that down here just a little bit as it talks.
Content Amplification Podcast.
There we go. That's pretty good.
Where you will gain insight into real-life tactical and strategic elements to help you scale and grow your business. Now let's get started.
Okay, you're always watching the master here or the master down there to make sure it's not going into the red as well. Let's go to the end. I know that happens here at the same time. It may have fixed itself because I adjusted the entire track, not just a specific audio file. Let's take a listen. Thanks for listening.
Thanks for listening to the Content Amplification.
It's on the verge. I wouldn't really adjust it too much more. It's okay. The master's not really hitting that red.
If you have questions about how you—
Okay, so that's pretty good. So that's what I would do is go and adjust those different levels, those fades for what it is that you want to have happen. And that's what I would consider the mixing element of your podcast. In the next lesson, the final one, we're gonna be talking about mastering and then exporting to save the file and things that you can do within Adobe Audition to make it sound even better and ready for publishing. We'll see you there.
