Basic audio workflow question

Very new to video in general. Liking Resolve, as I come from a still background and do a lot of post processing, so the color adjustments are great. And the editing is adequate for what I need.

So what does one do with audio? My question is more basic I think than 'what tool' but more "when" and a bit of "how to make an external tool work with Resolve".

Consider a simple case- 1980's vintage sVHS video with ambient sound audio I want to mix in with a bit of background music, remove some noise, etc.

I did this all in Resolve -- a few dozen clips are now on a timeline, fades and overlaps all done. I did a first cut at audio using resolve - added background, clipped it at the places I wanted, used Resolve to fade in/out. It's ok, in fact fine for timing and alignment with the video, but I also experimented with the original audio and cleaning it up and a simple pass through noise and equalize in audacity vastly improved it.

So should I have done that first -- then re-attached a corrected audio and done the scene detection afterwards?

Is there a way to do that now, and have the clips from scene cut somehow re-applied and replace what I have in the timeline, in place?

Or should I somehow export this now, clean it up, and import it as a replacement track(s)? Each track separately? I can render in deliver, and get a separate audio and then adjust it separately, but that's already blended audio from two sources; I'd rather treat them separately.

Everything I read implies audio is cleaned up after editing and grading, but when you have multiple audio tracks, with gaps in each, on the timeline -- how do you do this without having to re-cut/position them?

Am I perhaps just not using tools that can handle an export format that respects the time codes?

Please feel free to tell me RTFM but if also kind enough to point me to where in the M, or pointers to other information. I see lots of "use another tool not resolve" and discussion why, but not a lot of how/when.

You should really look into using some proper DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software that supports AAF or XML exports - that'd drop your Resolve edit directly into the DAW allowing you to work on the edited audio in much the same way you work on clips in Resolve.

Audacity's a great audio editor but it's no replacement for something like ProTools. I use Sony Vegas atm for most of my audio tinkering since it's got a lot of audio functionality built-in (it was a DAW long before it was a video editor) but I wouldn't recommend that to anyone unless they already had Vegas. I was hoping ProTools First would support AAF import but sadly is doesn't (Avid fumbles the ball again).

Would love to give you a recommendation but I think all the decent options cost $$$

Yeah, looked at pro tools first (didn't work) and the base product appears by subscription.

What I do is intensive work for a week or two, then a year would go by. The monthly plan would be a nice solution if one at a time but it requires a year at a time, but 95% of the months I would never open the program.

So if I am stuck with free (or decide to stick there), it sounds like I should do the cleaning (e.g. noise reduction) before bringing into Resolve, and do the rest of the editing in Resolve where it gets cut up and moved around?

Yes - if that's your only option, do the cleanup on your audio using the master audio files then bring them in for editing/grading.

Resolve 12 will feature a number of enhancements to audio including support for VST plugins which may mean you'll be able to do most of what you need without leaving Resolve

Resolve 12 will feature a number of enhancements to audio including support for VST plugins which may mean you'll be able to do most of what you need without leaving Resolve

Thanks. I had seen that, and in fact improvements in 12 is one thing that kept me away from Premier Elements that some friends keep pushing me toward. While I can hardly claim to be competent at using them, I can see the MUCH deeper color correction capabilities in Resolve (and as a long time Photoshop user for stills I appreciate depth when you need it). So I'm more happy to live with less capable editing and audio, and great color, than the reverse. Would be nice if they flesh out the other parts, even though I get the purist argument that making it a swiss army knife rather than a scalpel gives them concern. I happen to like swiss army knives.

Me too - there's nothing wrong with a quality swiss army knife

And regarding Resolve's diversification - I understand that professional colourists that use it to make a living might prefer that developer time was spent on improving Resolve's CC toolset but I don't see anything that's been added in 10 or 11 as extraneous - my personal pet peeve is when good ideas or features are poorly or only half implemented and Blackmagic seem pretty good in that respect - I don't see bloat, just a wealth of genuinely useful and well thought out additions for content creators.