In my audio book I will be reading a court transcript. There will be two individuals, the defense attorney and the witness. To help separate the dialogue from each individual, I was considering having the dialogue split so the text of the attorney is on the left side and the witness on the right side speakers.
Has anyone done this and is there an easy way to create it?
I know I can split the stereo and create two tracks, but it seems cumbersome to line up the back and forth dialogue. Alternatively, I could separately record each dialogue part, then importing seems even more daunting.
You could record the two voices on one mono track, join with a track which just had room-tone, (seamlessly looped), to make stereo pair,
then select one character to swap over using Steve’s plugin.
[ Can repeat the last (plugin) effect using “Ctrl”+“R” ].
I’m going to be the wet blanket here. I don’t think splitting is a very good idea.
Regard surround-sound movies. Special effects and environment sound from all over the place and the theme music blasting away in Stereo. Know where the dialog is coming from? The Center speaker. All the dialog.
I would leave everything in mono and make two or more distinctive voices. Make the defense attorney a woman, for example.
Are you planning on publishing through Audible/ACX? They don’t much like radio theater and that’s what it sounds like you’re doing. You are thiiiis close to music stingers after dramatic monologs.
“Dum Dum Dummmmmmm.”
I would check with them before producing your work for weeks.
On the other hand, if you are producing and marketing your own work, produce only the music in stereo. Leave the voices mono
Some audiobook publishers require the audiobooks to be mono. This is to ensure that they can be heard correctly on mono or stereo equipment by anyone. Some listeners of your audio book may be listening on headphones, and deaf in one ear, in which case they would only hear half of the dialog if it is panned left / right.
I’d advise that you check with your publisher / proposed publisher, before going ahead with the stereo split.