The basic sound panel offers you a number of advanced functions for adjusting the sound, but what really sets it apart is the fact that you can work on multiple clips at the same time. I have already opened the example called Essential Sound and switched to the mode intended for working with sound (Audio Workspace). As you can see, this sequence contains multiple audio channels with a human voice and some music. If I start playing it, you’ll notice that their levels are completely out of sync.

The background music is so loud that you can barely make out a human voice, which is a shortcoming that must be corrected. The most logical thing would be to do it manually, but the options found on the Essential Sound panel allow me to do this task much faster and more efficiently. To that end, I will first select the segments that contain a human voice with one stroke and look for the option called Dialogue on the right side of the screen. As soon as I click on it, the program will classify the input parameters and display additional options. After that, it will not be difficult for me to automatically adjust the sound level (Loudness), and this can be achieved by activating the Auto Match option. As you can see, the program automatically set the sound level to -23 LUFS, which is in line with the volume used for broadcasting on television. This standard was first established in Europe and is increasingly used in other parts of the world. If the chosen level does not suit you, you can always change it, but in any case it can serve as a good starting value.

Since I have successfully set the sound level for speech, I can select a clip that contains music and immediately assign it the appropriate classification (Music). As you can see, now I will have completely different options at my disposal, but for the beginning I will stick to the one that allows me to automatically adjust the sound level (Auto Match). If I now restart playback, you will notice that the situation has changed considerably.

Regardless of the fact that both components of the sound are now better coordinated, the voice is still insufficiently distinguished from the background music. This happened because Premiere Pro assumes that music is the primary thing you want to hear, so it adjusted its volume accordingly. It seems to me that lowering the level by 18 dB would be much more appropriate, so for this purpose I will use the option related to the control of the volume of the entire clip (Clip Volume) and set its value to -18. If I now go back a little and listen to the rest of this sequence again, you will notice that the voice has finally become dominant in relation to the music.

It seems to me that the music could be a little more muffled, but I won’t deal with that, because I would like to show you the other options in the Effect Control panel. To that end, I will choose the item of the same name from this menu, so you will have the opportunity to see how, regardless of the changes I made a little while ago, the volume remained the same (Volume Level). This happened because the function called Hard Limiter is responsible for sound control here, and this allows you to raise the sound level as much as you want and not exceed a certain limit. If you want to set its values separately, it is enough to click on the Edit button and make all the changes in the frame that follows.

I’ll reselect all the clips that contain a human voice and show the options a little further down in the Essential Sound panel. They allow me to improve the sound quality a little more, and this especially applies to the clarity of speech. To show you what this looks like in practice, I’ll extract the audio channel with the human voice and place the play marker at the beginning of the sequence. After that, I can select the appropriate contents and activate the Dynamic option. Now I just need to turn on the Reanalyze function and start playback.

The function that I just turned on (Dynamic Control) will apply the appropriate type of compression to the selected audio, and that effect is called Dynamics Processing. This approach allows you to adjust the volume in great detail based on the highest level reached at a certain moment. This effect is a very advanced approach to sound control, but you can easily access it using the Clarity Dynamics Slider.