Adjusting track volume

I am making an audio track in Cool Edit 2.0 for a video which contains both a commentary and music, and I'm having problems preventing the music from drowning out the vocal track. Is there any "smart" way of controlling the volume of the music track so that it never overwhelms the vocals, other than reducing the volume for the entire track? Ideally, the music should fade down at the points where there's dialogue.

If this is a stupid question, I apologize, but I am a newbie...


Chief Ellingar

[For example, you can automatically increase clip volume during a critical musical passage and later reduce the volume in a gradual fade out.]

From the Help files (in AA1.5, I have no idea what it is in CE 2)

"For example, you can automatically increase clip volume during a critical musical passage and later reduce the volume in a gradual fade out.

This is exactly what you want to do, right? This is the reason we use multi-tracking systems for recording and mixing different audio sources together. Everyone has to start somewhere so don't be afraid to ask questions, but please do some reading first. I assume that you know how to record or generally get audio into the track of Multitrack View? (MV) If so, make sure you have your background music on Track 1 and your audio commentary on Track 2. The process is then to mix the two tracks together using Edit/Mixdown To File. Envelopes will allow you to vary the volume of either track at the position of your choosing.

To find help on the above method of using envelopes to adjust volume levels during a mixdown, check the help files in the program for "Using envelopes" "Automating mixes" or "clip envelopes" The methods are outlined in there and are well within your grasp.

-Phil

Phil left it to his last paragraph to mention envelopes so I just thought I'd make it obvious that it looks like envelopes are what you are asking for. You'll need to manually drag the volume down under each part of speech.

There are ways of doing this automatically using compressors and sidechains but I'm not sure that it is possible in Audition.

Cheers

James.