 
About Audio Filters
The goal of audio mixing and processing is to create a believable sonic environment 
that is not distracting. Audio filters can help to remove distracting frequencies, reduce 
loud sounds, and add ambience to a sonic space. Generally, filters are much better at 
removing components of a mix than they are at adding something that wasn’t in the 
original recording. An audio engineer with a thorough understanding of how sound 
works and how filters affect sound can produce excellent results with just a few 
equalizer and compression filters.
Final Cut Pro includes a set of audio filters that you can use for equalization, 
compression and expansion, adding reverb, vocal cleanup, and noise removal. 
Final Cut Pro uses the Mac OS X Audio Units plug-in format.
Audio filter parameters can be adjusted in real time so you can make changes to a 
filter’s settings while the clip plays back. When the Record Audio Keyframes button in 
the Audio Mixer is selected, Final Cut Pro records all changes you make to audio filter 
parameters as keyframes; those keyframes appear in the keyframe graph of the 
parameter you are adjusting in that clip’s Filters tab in the Viewer. For more 
information, see “
Automating Audio Filter Parameters with Keyframes
” on page 172.
 
154
Part I
Audio Mixing