I have to admit, I rarely used Soundbooth CS3. It was okay for recording talking, singing, or playing an instrument, but if I needed to layer that recording over other tracks, I was out of luck. So I was thrilled when I found out that Soundbooth CS4 supported multitrack projects. And I was even more thrilled when I discovered how easy they were to set up.

1 CREATE A NEW SOUND FILE
Start by launching Soundbooth and click the red Open Record Dialog icon at the bottom of the interface. In the Record dialog, select your method of input from the Device drop-down menu at the top. Enter “Voiceover” for the File Name and then click the Browse button to choose a location for your file. Next, click the red Start Recording button and speak into the microphone. When finished recording, click the Close button in the Record dialog.

2 INSERT VOICEOVER INTO MULTITRACK
There are a couple of ways you can incorporate your voiceover recording into a multitrack project. You could choose File>Save As to save the voiceover file, and then start a new multitrack project by choosing File>New>Multitrack File. Then simply import your voiceover file into the new multitrack project. But instead, let’s click the Tracks button and chose Insert Waveform into New Multitrack File. In this example, the voiceover was a mono recording. Had it been stereo, we could have chosen Insert Channels into New Multitrack File, which would have copied each channel of the source onto a separate track in the multitrack project.

3 INSERT OTHER SOUND FILES
Now that your voiceover is on its own track, go ahead and import some other sound files. Click the Open Files icon (it looks like a folder) at the top of the Files panel and navigate to a folder where you have some saved audio files. Select several files and click Open. Soundbooth will switch away from the multitrack project (it assumes you want to solo edit the last individual file you opened), so to return to your multitrack project, double-click its name on the File panel.

4 ADD FORGOTTEN FILES
You can now drag files from the Files panel to the Editor. Each file will appear as its own track. At this point, if you realized you had forgotten to import a file, you can simply drag it from your operating system’s file browser into the Editor. If you want the file to be added to an existing track, just drop it on that track. If you want the file to appear on its own track, drop it on an empty area below the other tracks.

5 SEQUENCE FILES IN TIME
To sequence the sound tracks in time, simply click-and-drag the tracks left and right in the Editor. Check your work by pressing the Play button at the bottom of the interface and also by dragging the playhead left and right. Keep repositioning the files until you’re happy with the sound.

6 ADD FADES
When you click on a track in the Editor, you’ll have access to interactive controls that allow you to add fades, adjust volume, adjust panning, and edit in/out points. To add fades, click-and-drag the square control points in the upper-left and upper-right corners of the track in the Editor. Drag up or down to control the curve of the fade.

7 ADJUST VOLUME AND PANNING
You can also adjust volume and panning via the interactive controls. For example, to adjust panning, scrub the circular control on the right. (To scrub it, point to it with your mouse, hold down the mouse button, and drag left or right, as if you’re trying to drag the circle out of the Editor.) You can also click inside the numerical text fields to type volume or panning values.

8 EDIT IN AND OUT POINTS
To edit a file’s in point, move your mouse cursor to the left edge of the track until the cursor changes to a bracket-like symbol. Then hold down the mouse button and drag right to crop away the beginning of the file. Drag left to add back the content that you cropped. You can edit the out point by dragging inward and outward from the file’s right edge.

9 GET IN CLOSE
If you need to zoom in to make close edits to a file in just one of the tracks, double-click it in the Editor to open it in its own Editor panel. When you’re done working on it, click the Back button to return to the multitrack project.

10 SAVE YOUR PROJECT
When you’re satisfied with your multitrack project, choose File>Save. We saved our file as an MP3, but notice all the other options, including FLV | F4V for use in Flash projects.