Spectral Editing
Definition
The visual and surgical editing of audio in the frequency domain, allowing specific frequencies at specific moments in time to be identified, isolated, and removed or modified. Used in noise reduction, sound design, and dialogue repair.
In Simple Terms
Editing audio by looking at a visual map of frequencies over time. You can literally see and surgically remove a dog bark, a phone ring, or a cough from a recording without affecting the speech around it.
In Practice
A spectral editor is used to remove a dog bark from a dialogue recording by visually identifying the bark's frequency and time position in the spectrogram, selecting it precisely, and attenuating it without affecting the surrounding speech.