The Audio Mixer’s Secret Weapon

If you’re not using the Audio Mixer, you should be. Bring it up with OPT 6 and let’s talk about it a bit.

You are probably aware that the Audio Mixer gives you separate controls for each track of audio in your timeline, can be controlled by a peripheral “control surface” and offers a great way to “animate” your changes to the levels for each track by recording keyframes (which can be a great way to add all those up and down changes to a music bed). If you are not aware of these things, then you should take a look at C. J. South’s video tutorials on YouTube.

Those features are extremely handy to be sure and can save you a lot of time, but for me, the killer aspect of the Audio Mixer is the Master Fader (which is the slider on the far right side of the Mixer). Once you have isolated and adjusted each track set (i.e., dialogue, SFX, music bed) to their proper levels, you may find that the overall mix of your audio is now a little “hot” (because audio is “additive“).  If this sounds familiar and you find yourself going back in to tweak this or that track down to compensate (a never ending back and forth exercise), the Master fader is for you.

Simply use that fader to make an overall adjustment to your timeline’s audio levels. There is actually no equivalent to to this control available outside the Audio Mixer! You can only do a “master fade” there. Note that the master levels setting is retained for that timeline only in that project (and will be remembered when you save your project).

Because of this, I think you should be opening the Audio Mixer for every single timeline you finish and that means OPT 6 should be a part of your shortcuts repertoire.  Explore it today and make a resolution to use it because it’s a huge timesaver and an excellent, powerful tool.