Delete Silence in Stereo Clips

Question

I'm alternating spoken-word recordings on left and right microphones on a stereo track, and want to be able to silence the left audio when the right voice is talking, and vice versa.  Can Delete Silence do this on a stereo track?  Or would I need to split it into mono clips first?  In my tests on a stereo clip, it only finds sections where BOTH tracks are quiet. 
Using 5.5 but plan to upgrade
==== since writing my first note, I find that when I split the stereo into mono tracks and identify  those off-mic sections, the Delete Silence function does NOT just mute the sections; it cuts them out and shortens the clip.  It works exactly the same whether I have "delete silence" or "shorten silence" selected.  Evidently, I'm doing something wrong here!
thanks for your help
Message was edited by: rothmannnyc

Answer 1

rothmannnyc wrote:
Am I misreading this?
You must be. Here is the relevant section from the Audition CS5.5 help file (I have bolded the relevant line) :
Create silence
Creating silence is useful for inserting pauses and removing nonessential noise from an audio file. Adobe Audition provides two ways to create silence:
•To mute existing audio in the Waveform Editor, select the desired content, and choose Effects > Silence. Unlike deleting or cutting a selection, which splices the surrounding material together, muting leaves the duration of the selection intact.
•To add silence in the Waveform or Multitrack Editor, either position the current-time indicator or select existing audio. Then choose Edit > Insert >Silence, and enter the number of seconds. Any audio to the right is pushed out in time, lengthening duration. Multitrack clips are split if necessary.
And, it's always been like that. 'Delete' means exactly what it says - get rid of from the file completely, not just reduce all the sample values to a mid-point level, which is what muting is.