User Guide Cancel

Editing, repairing, and improving audio using Essential Sound panel

  1. Adobe Premiere Pro User Guide
  2. Beta releases
    1. Beta Program Overview
    2. Premiere Pro Beta Home
    3. Beta features
      1. Translate captions
      2. Generative extend overview 
      3. Generative extend FAQs
      4. Color management system
  3. Getting started
    1. Get started with Adobe Premiere Pro
    2. What's new in Premiere Pro
    3. Best practices for updating Premiere Pro
    4. Keyboard shortcuts in Premiere Pro
    5. Accessibility in Premiere Pro
    6. Frequently asked questions
    7. Release notes
  4. Hardware and operating system requirements
    1. Hardware recommendations
    2. System requirements
    3. GPU and GPU Driver requirements
    4. GPU Accelerated Rendering & Hardware Encoding/Decoding
  5. Creating projects
    1. Start a new project
    2. Open projects
    3. Move and delete projects
    4. Work with multiple open projects
    5. Work with Project Shortcuts
    6. Backward compatibility of Premiere Pro projects
    7. Open and edit Premiere Rush projects in Premiere Pro
    8. Best Practices: Create your own project templates
  6. Workspaces and workflows
    1. Workspaces
    2. Import and export FAQs
    3. Working with Panels
    4. Windows touch and gesture controls
    5. Use Premiere Pro in a dual-monitor setup
  7. Frame.io
    1. Install and activate Frame.io
    2. Use Frame.io with Premiere Pro and After Effects
    3. Integrate Adobe Workfront and Frame.io
    4. Share for review with Frame.io
    5. Invite collaborators to co-edit a project
    6. Frequently asked questions
  8. Import media
    1. Importing
      1. Transfer files
      2. Importing still images
      3. Importing digital audio
    2. Importing from Avid or Final Cut
      1. Importing AAF project files from Avid Media Composer
      2. Importing XML project files from Final Cut Pro 7 and Final Cut Pro X
    3. File formats
      1. Supported file formats
      2. Support for Blackmagic RAW
    4. Working with timecode
  9. Editing
    1. Edit video
    2. Sequences
      1. Create and change sequences
      2. Set In and Out points in the Source Monitor
      3. Add clips to sequences
      4. Rearrange and move clips
      5. Find, select, and group clips in a sequence
      6. Remove clips from a sequence
      7. Change sequence settings
      8. Edit from sequences loaded into the Source Monitor
      9. Simplify sequences
      10. Rendering and previewing sequences
      11. Working with markers
      12. Add markers to clips
      13. Create markers in Effect Controls panel
      14. Set default marker colors
      15. Find, move, and delete markers
      16. Show or hide markers by color
      17. View marker comments
      18. Copy and paste sequence markers
      19. Sharing markers with After Effects
      20. Source patching and track targeting
      21. Scene edit detection
    3. Cut and trim clips
      1. Split or cut clips
      2. Trim clips
      3. Edit in Trim mode
      4. Perform J cuts and L cuts
      5. Create and play clips
      6. Adjust Trimming and Playback preferences
    4. Video
      1. Synchronizing audio and video with Merge Clips
      2. Render and replace media
      3. Undo, history, and events
      4. Freeze and hold frames
      5. Working with aspect ratios
    5. Audio
      1. Overview of audio in Premiere Pro
      2. Edit audio clips in the Source Monitor
      3. Audio Track Mixer
      4. Adjusting volume levels
      5. Edit, repair, and improve audio using Essential Sound panel
      6. Enhance Speech
      7. Enhance Speech FAQs
      8. Audio Category Tagging
      9. Automatically duck audio
      10. Remix audio
      11. Monitor clip volume and pan using Audio Clip Mixer
      12. Audio balancing and panning
      13. Advanced Audio - Submixes, downmixing, and routing
      14. Audio effects and transitions
      15. Working with audio transitions
      16. Apply effects to audio
      17. Measure audio using the Loudness Radar effect
      18. Recording audio mixes
      19. Editing audio in the timeline
      20. Audio channel mapping in Premiere Pro
      21. Use Adobe Stock audio in Premiere Pro
    6. Text-Based Editing
      1. Text-Based Editing
      2. Text-Based Editing FAQs
    7. Advanced editing
      1. Multi-camera editing workflow
      2. Editing VR
    8. Best Practices
      1. Best Practices: Mix audio faster
      2. Best Practices: Editing efficiently
      3. Editing workflows for feature films
  10. Video Effects and Transitions
    1. Overview of video effects and transitions
    2. Effects
      1. Types of effects in Premiere Pro
      2. Apply and remove effects
      3. Use FX badges
      4. Effect presets
      5. Metadata effect in Premiere Pro
      6. Automatically reframe video for different social media channels
      7. Color correction effects
      8. Effects Manager
      9. Change duration and speed of clips
      10. Adjustment Layers
      11. Stabilize footage
    3. Transitions
      1. Applying transitions in Premiere Pro
      2. Modifying and customizing transitions
      3. Morph Cut
  11. Titles, Graphics, and Captions
    1. Properties panel
      1. About Properties panel
      2. Edit text
      3. Edit shapes
      4. Edit audio
      5. Edit video
      6. Mask with shape
      7. Create, apply, and redefine text styles
    2. Essential Graphics panel (24.x and earlier) 
      1. Overview of the Essential Graphics panel
      2. Create a title
      3. Linked and Track Styles
      4. Working with style browser
      5. Create a shape
      6. Draw with the Pen tool
      7. Align and distribute objects
      8. Change the appearance of text and shapes
      9. Apply gradients
      10. Add Responsive Design features to your graphics
      11. Speech to Text
      12. Download language packs for transcription
      13. Working with captions
      14. Check spelling and Find and Replace
      15. Export text
      16. Speech to Text FAQs
    3. Motion Graphics Templates
      1. Install and use Motion Graphics templates
      2. Replace images or videos in Motion Graphics templates
      3. Use data-driven Motion Graphics templates
    4. Best Practices: Faster graphics workflows
    5. Retiring the Legacy Titler FAQs
    6. Upgrade Legacy titles to Source Graphics
  12. Fonts and emojis
    1. Color fonts
    2. Emojis
  13. Animation and Keyframing
    1. Adding, navigating, and setting keyframes
    2. Animating effects
    3. Use Motion effect to edit and animate clips
    4. Optimize keyframe automation
    5. Moving and copying keyframes
    6. Viewing and adjusting effects and keyframes
  14. Compositing
    1. Compositing, alpha channels, and adjusting clip opacity
    2. Masking and tracking
    3. Blending modes
  15. Color Correction and Grading
    1. Overview: Color workflows in Premiere Pro
    2. Color Settings
    3. Auto Color
    4. Get creative with color using Lumetri looks
    5. Adjust color using RGB and Hue Saturation Curves
    6. Correct and match colors between shots
    7. Using HSL Secondary controls in the Lumetri Color panel
    8. Create vignettes
    9. Looks and LUTs
    10. Lumetri scopes
    11. Display Color Management
    12. Timeline tone mapping
    13. HDR for broadcasters
    14. Enable DirectX HDR support
  16. Exporting media
    1. Export video
    2. Export Preset Manager
    3. Workflow and overview for exporting
    4. Quick export
    5. Exporting for the Web and mobile devices
    6. Export a still image
    7. Exporting projects for other applications
    8. Exporting OMF files for Pro Tools
    9. Export to Panasonic P2 format
    10. Export settings
      1. Export settings reference
      2. Basic Video Settings
      3. Encoding Settings
    11. Best Practices: Export faster
  17. Collaborative editing
    1. Collaboration in Premiere Pro
    2. Get started with collaborative video editing
    3. Create Team Projects
    4. Add and manage media in Team Projects
    5. Invite and manage collaborators
    6. Share and manage changes with collaborators
    7. View auto saves and versions of Team Projects
    8. Manage Team Projects
    9. Linked Team Projects
    10. Frequently asked questions
  18. Long form and Episodic workflows
    1. Long Form and Episodic Workflow Guide
    2. Using Productions
    3. How clips work across projects in a Production
    4. Best Practices: Working with Productions
  19. Working with other Adobe applications
    1. After Effects and Photoshop
    2. Dynamic Link
    3. Audition
    4. Prelude
  20. Organizing and Managing Assets
    1. Working in the Project panel
    2. Organize assets in the Project panel
    3. Playing assets
    4. Search assets
    5. Creative Cloud Libraries
    6. Sync Settings in Premiere Pro
    7. Consolidate, transcode, and archive projects
    8. Managing metadata
    9. Best Practices
      1. Best Practices: Learning from broadcast production
      2. Best Practices: Working with native formats
  21. Improving Performance and Troubleshooting
    1. Set preferences
    2. Reset and restore preferences
    3. Recovery Mode
    4. Working with Proxies
      1. Proxy overview
      2. Ingest and Proxy Workflow
    5. Check if your system is compatible with Premiere Pro
    6. Premiere Pro for Apple silicon
    7. Eliminate flicker
    8. Interlacing and field order
    9. Smart rendering
    10. Control surface support
    11. Best Practices: Working with native formats
    12. Knowledge Base
      1. Known issues
      2. Fixed issues
      3. Fix Premiere Pro crash issues
      4. Unable to migrate settings after updating Premiere Pro
      5. Green and pink video in Premiere Pro or Premiere Rush
      6. How do I manage the Media Cache in Premiere Pro?
      7. Fix errors when rendering or exporting
      8. Troubleshoot issues related to playback and performance in Premiere Pro
  22. Extensions and plugins
    1. Installing plugins and extensions in Premiere Pro
    2. Latest plugins from third-party developers
  23. Video and audio streaming
    1. Secure Reliable Transport (SRT)
  24. Monitoring Assets and Offline Media
    1. Monitoring assets
      1. Using the Source Monitor and Program Monitor
      2. Using the Reference Monitor
    2. Offline media
      1. Working with offline clips
      2. Creating clips for offline editing
      3. Relinking offline media

Use this page to know about the Essential Sound Panel in Premiere Pro.

Essential Sound is an all-in-one panel that gives you an extensive toolset of mixing techniques and repair options. This feature is useful for your common audio mixing tasks. The panel provides simple controls to unify volume levels, repair sound, improve clarity, and add special effects that help your video projects sound like a professional audio engineer has mixed them. You can save the applied adjustments as presets for reuse, making them handy for more audio refinements. 

Premiere Pro allows you to classify your audio clips as Dialogue, Music, SFX, or Ambience. You can also configure and apply presets to a set of clips that belong to the same type or to multiple clips.

Once you assign an audio type, for example Dialogue, for a voice-over clip, the Dialogue tab of the Essential Sound panel presents you several parameter groups. These groups allow you to carry out the common tasks that are associated with dialogue, such as unifying the different recordings to common loudness, reducing background noise, and adding compression and EQ. The audio types in the Essential Sound panel are mutually exclusive, that is, selecting one audio type for a clip reverts the previous changes done on that clip using another audio type.

All the changes that you do using the Essential Sound panel controls are reflected in the more advanced clip settings. For an effect like restoration or clarity, audio effects are inserted into the clip rack. If you are an advanced user, you can start with your primary edits in the Essential Sound panel and then go on with your sophisticated internal effect settings and apply finishing touches. 

To launch the Essential Sound panel, choose Window > Essential Sound

Unify loudness in your audio

  1. In the Essential Sound panel, select the clip type as Dialogue, Music, SFX, or Ambience.

  2. To make the loudness level uniform throughout the clip, expand Unify Loudness and click Auto Match. The loudness level (in LUFS) to which Premiere Pro auto-matched your clip appears below the Auto Match button.

    The Essential Sound Panel is open, Audio clip is set as Dialogue and the option Auto-Match is selected to ensure consistency in audio levels.
    Improve the listening experience by unifying the loudness.

Repair a dialogue track

If your clip contains dialogue audio data, you can use the options under the Dialogue tab in the Essential Sound panel to repair the sound by reducing noise, rumble, hum, and ‘ess’ sounds.

  1. Add the audio clip to a track in a multitrack session.

  2. Select the audio clip and in the Essential Sound panel, select the clip type as Dialogue.

  3. Select the Repair check-box and expand the section.

  4. Select the check-box for the property that you want to change, and use the slider to adjust the level of the following properties between 0 through 10:

    • Reduce Noise: Reduce the level of unwanted noises in the background, such as studio floor sounds and microphone background noise, and clicks. The proper amount of noise reduction depends upon the type of background noise and the acceptable loss in quality for the remaining signal.
    • Reduce Rumble: Reduce the rumble noise--very low-frequency noise that ranges below the 80-Hz range, for example, noise produced by a turntable motor or an action camera.
    • DeHum: Reduce or eliminate Hum—noise consists of a single frequency, in 50-Hz range (common in Europe, Asia, and Africa) or 60-Hz range (common in North and South America).  For example, electrical interference due to power cables laid too close to the audio cables can use such noise. You can select the hum level depending on the clip.
    • DeEss: Reduce harsh, high-frequency ess-like sounds. For example, sibilance in vocal recordings that cause s-sounds created by breathing or air movement between the microphone and the singer’s mouth. 
    • Reduce Reverb: Reduce or remove the reverb from audio recordings. This option allows you to to use original recordings from various sources and make them sound like they're coming from the same environment. 

Improve the clarity of your dialogue track

Improving the clarity of the dialogue track in your sequence has dependency on various factors. This is  because of the variations in volume and frequency of the human voice that range between 50Hz and 2KHz and the contents of the other tracks that go with it. Some of the common methods used for improving dialogue audio clarity are compressing or expanding the dynamic range of the recording, adjusting the frequency response of the recording, and processing the enhancing male and female voices.

  1. Add the audio clip to an empty track in a multitrack session.

  2. Select the clip and in the Essential Sound panel, select the clip type as Dialogue.

  3. Select the Clarity check-box and expand the section.

  4. Select the check-box for the property that you want to change, and use the slider to adjust the level of the following properties between 0 through 10:

    Dynamics: Change the impact of the recording by compressing or expanding the dynamic range of your recording. You can change the level from natural to focused.

    EQ: Reduce or boost selected frequencies in your recording. You can choose from a list of EQ presets that you can use on your audio and adjust the amount using the slider. To change the settings of EQ preset, select Effects>Audio Effects>Graphic Equalizer to view the graphic equalizer that you can adjust during playback, and save the changes.

    Enhance speech: Select the dialogue as Male or Female to process and enhance it at the appropriate frequency.

    The Essential Sound panel is selected with the clip type Dialogue, and the Clarity section is expanded. This section has options to improve the clarity of your dialogue tracks.
    Enhance your dialogue tracks by making them clear and crisp.

Working with Sound effects clips

Premiere Pro allows you to create artificial sound effects for your audio. SFX helps you create illusions such as the music originating from a particular position in the stereo field or an ambience of a room or field with appropriate reflections and reverberation. 

To add SFX to your audio

  1. Add the audio clip to an empty track in a multitrack session.

  2. Select the audio clip and choose Window > Essential Sound > SFX.

  3. To set reverb effect, choose the Reverb check-box under Creative.

  4. In the Preset box, select a Reverb preset that suits your needs.

    The Essential Sound panel is open, the Creative section is expanded, and the Reverb option is selected. Select the required preset from the Preset drop-down.
    Enhance your audio with SFX and Reverb predefined setting.

Creating presets

Professional users can create presets for the benefit of the users and projects that work on a similar set of audio assets to ensure consistency and to save time. 

To create a preset

  1. To create a preset for Dialogue, select Essential Sound panel and click the panel menu.

  2. You can view the presets that are already available for Dialogue listed here. 

    The Essential Sound panel is open, showing the Presets available for Dialogue.
    Create and manage your presets for Dialogue audio type.

  3. If you want to customize and create extra preset, you can choose the desired settings.  After you have selected the desired settings, click Save settings as a preset button next to the Presets dropdown.

    Save Preset dialog is open to enter a name for the new preset.
    Save your new custom presets.

More functionalities

  • If no clips with differing audio types are selected, the audio type selector available with the Essential Sound Panel serves as a quick select tool to select all clips of a given audio type.
  • The preset selector serves as a nested menu when no audio type has been selected for a given clip so that you can directly assign audio type and preset with one single click.
  • The Essential Sound Panel displays a warning symbol next to a control whenever the underlying effect settings of an audio effect plug-in differ from the Essential Sound Panel setting (the user manually changed the effect settings). The Essential Sound Panel also displays a warning symbol if a multi-selection with differing settings has been selected.

 Adobe

Get help faster and easier

New user?