Sound is half of a film, and usually the half that gives away an amateur. Audio Core is Accord Suite's page for it — "the timeline, the mixer and a clip's own gain and fades, for the sound." It is a mixing desk, a repair shop and a dubbing stage in one, working on the same timeline as the picture.
Audio Core in sixteen seconds.
This guide goes from a single clip to a delivered mix, then through dubbing and audio description.
Clips, tracks and the sound of one clip
Getting sound in. Drag a song, an effect or a voice recorded elsewhere onto the window: it lands at the playhead, on the audio track edits are going to, or on a new one. Clip ▸ Record Voiceover (⌥⌘R) records against the picture from any page, and the take lands where you began.
Tracks. The add-track menu at the top of the timeline adds a Video Track or Audio Track; loose clips can be given a track of their own with the stack button on their header, so they can be muted, soloed and mixed. Click the speaker on a header to mute, S to solo.
Clip gain and fades. Select a clip and open its Clip Sound panel (on Video Core, the Audio panel). Gain makes that one clip louder or quieter without touching the track — the right tool for one quiet line. Fade In and Fade Out, with a Fade Shape, ease it in and out. Put the Sound Back to Normal undoes it all.
The mixer
Every track has a strip in the Mixer: a fader for level, a pan control for left and right, M to mute and S to solo.
Buses. A bus mixes several tracks as one sound. In the bus menu choose Add Bus, or Add Dialogue, Music and Effects for the three stems a film is delivered as. Route each strip from the menu under its name (→ Master, or → a bus), and one bus fader brings all its tracks up or down together. Buses can be renamed and removed.
Sends. Open Sends… on a strip and tick a bus — say, a reverb bus — and set the send's level. The track still plays through its own output; some of it also feeds the reverb. Before the Fader takes the send before the track's own fader, so moving the fader doesn't change how much reverb it gets.
VCA faders. Add VCA Fader moves a group of tracks together, each keeping its own level, effects and sends — the way to bring the whole drum kit or every music track down a few dB without rebalancing them. M on the VCA mutes every track under it.
Ducking. On the music track's strip choose Duck Under… and pick the dialogue track; set the Depth. The music dips whenever someone speaks and comes back when they stop.
EQ and dynamics. Click EQ / Dyn on a strip to equalise (cut the rumble, lift presence) and control dynamics (even out a voice that is loud one moment and quiet the next). The button lights while it is doing anything.
Audio Units: the plug-ins already on your Mac
Audio Units are the plug-in standard on the Mac. The third-party reverbs, compressors, equalisers and effects you installed for Logic Pro, GarageBand or another Mac DAW are installed as Audio Units — and Accord Suite can use them, alongside the Audio Units that come with macOS.
- In the Mixer, click the + (Audio Unit) on a track's strip and choose the maker, then the unit.
- Click the unit's name on the strip to open its own window — the same interface it shows in your other DAW. What you set there, including a preset you load in it, is kept with the Accord Suite document.
- Right-click the unit's name to Bypass it (Switch On brings it back), Move Earlier or Move Later in the chain, or Remove it.
Sidechains. A compressor with a sidechain input can listen to another track. Put it on the music, Control-click it and choose Sidechain ▸ the dialogue track, then switch on the unit's own sidechain or key option as its maker describes. The music now pulls down under every word — ducking with the character of your favourite compressor.
Automation: a mix that moves
A mix is rarely one setting for the whole film. Automation records moves:
- In the Mixer, set the track's automation to Touch and play.
- Move the fader, the pan or a send's level where it should change, and let go. In Touch the control returns to what was written when you let go; in Latch it stays where you left it until you stop. Press M to mute or unmute from that moment.
- Stop, set the track to Read, and hear the moves played back. Clear Automation removes them.
Bring the music down under one line, move a car's sound across the picture, cut a track for a moment — and the mix remembers.
Repair: cleaning up what was recorded
- Isolate Voice. Turn on Isolate Voice in a clip's Clip Sound panel to keep a voiceover or interview clear of the room around it. Move Background up to bring a little of the room back so it doesn't sound pasted in.
- Noise reduction. Put the playhead on a moment where nobody is speaking and choose Learn Room Tone at the Playhead: the steady hum and hiss of air conditioning, a fan or tape is learnt and taken out. Raise Strength to take more.
- Spectral Repair. For a sound under a voice that can't be cut out in time — a chair creak, a phone buzzing, a rustle on a lapel microphone — choose Spectral Repair…. A picture of the sound opens, time across and pitch up; drag a box round the shape that is not the voice, and it is taken out.
- Separate Voice and Background. Clip ▸ Separate Voice and Background splits a clip into its voice and everything else: the clip keeps its voice, and a copy on a new track keeps the music, effects and room. This is how a music-and-effects (M&E) track is made — the version of a film that is sent abroad to be dubbed.
- Check before delivery. In the Loudness panel, Measure the Mix reads what a loudness number does not show: Phase (+1 the same on both sides, below 0 working against each other), In mono (how much is lost when folded to one channel, as a phone speaker does), stretches out of phase, any hum at 50 or 60 Hz, and the spectrum from 20 Hz to 20 kHz.
Dubbing and ADR: re-recording lines to picture
ADR (automated dialogue replacement) is re-recording a line in a studio because the location take was noisy, or because the film is being dubbed into another language. Audio Core has the whole workflow.
The cue sheet. On the Audio page, put the playhead where a line starts and choose Add Cue in the Cues panel. Type the character and the line, set its priority and reason, and track where each cue has got to. Lines can also come in from captions (Cues from Captions) or from a file (Import Cue List…).
The rythmo band. French and Belgian dubbing studios work from a rythmo band: the line scrolls along a band under the picture and reaches a bar exactly as each word is to be said. Choose a cue with its line typed and Play from the Pre-roll: a streamer sweeps the picture to the entrance, beeps count in, the picture flashes on the entrance frame, and the line scrolls along the band. Session sets the pre-roll, the beeps and the streamer's sweep.
Recording. Record the Selected Cue: the picture rolls from the pre-roll and the actor comes in at the cue. Stop the Take, or let it stop after the line; the take lands on the character's track. Play it back, circle the take you keep, and go to the Next Cue.
Timing a translated line. Type the translated line, then under Rythmo Band open Hear the Original and choose the film's language. The original's words appear along the top and the new line is spread across the speech, not the pauses. Drag a word to where it should be said — or nudge it a frame at a time with the arrow keys — so each word lands where the mouth moves.
Making the new line sit in the scene. A studio recording sounds cleaner and closer than the location. Match Voice To and pick the clip recorded on set: the re-recorded line takes on its sound, and the panel says how large the change is and how much of the difference closed. Remove Voice Match hears it as recorded.
Scripts between tools. Export DAPT Script… writes the cue sheet — characters, lines, times and languages — as a DAPT file (the W3C's dubbing and audio description script format), and Import Cue List… takes one in, so a script moves between dubbing tools instead of being typed again.
Foley. Footsteps, cloth and props are performed to picture the same way: Add Foley Cue ▸ Footsteps, Cloth or Props, type what is to be performed, and record it with the same pre-roll, beeps and band. Export Stems writes the Foley to a file of its own.
Audio description
An audio description describes what the picture shows, for listeners who cannot see it, spoken in the gaps between the dialogue. It is required for much broadcast and streaming delivery.
- Give the tracks that carry speech the Dialogue role (Clip ▸ Track Role).
- In the Cues panel open Audio Description and choose Find Gaps in the Dialogue: the dialogue is heard on your Mac and every quiet stretch of a second or more is listed.
- Add Description beside a gap and write what is seen. Each row says whether the line fits its time, by how much it is too long, or that it lies over dialogue.
- Voice it: a describer records each cue from the rythmo band, or Speak with This Mac's Voice has the Mac speak it in the chosen language.
- Set how far the programme comes down under each description, and Export Audio Description…: the descriptions alone, the described mix, and the script, with each chosen take.
Loudness, and delivering the mix
Every platform asks for a different loudness, measured in LUFS (loudness units relative to full scale) with a ceiling on the true peak. The Loudness panel measures against the common targets:
| Target | Loudness | True-peak ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming | −14 LUFS | −1 dBTP |
| Podcast | −16 LUFS | −1 dBTP |
| EBU R 128 (European broadcast) | −23 LUFS | −1 dBTP |
| ATSC A/85 (US broadcast) | −24 LUFS | −2 dBTP |
| Cinema | −27 LUFS | −3 dBTP |
Stems. Route the tracks to Dialogue, Music and Effects, then File ▸ Export Stems… and a folder: one file per stem and the mix beside them, each the length of the film.
Surround. File ▸ Export Surround Mix…, pick 5.1 or 7.1, and place each stem: Centre, Front, Front and Rear, or Rear. Dialogue in the centre, music round the room — written as one file.
Sound export is free, always — stems, surround and all. More in every way to export.
Where to go next
Cutting film in Video Core · Every way to export · Importing media · The overview
Download Accord Suite — free, for the Mac.