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Post by matt on Jan 1, 2012 2:16:27 GMT -5
Question--does anyone know if there is a way in Audacity to correct an unbalanced stereo signal, where the right and left channels are not the same volume level? I have a few shows (including the 12/22/79 show, which I recorded off WPCH) that have unbalanced stereo. It says you can use the Normalize function to correct this, but I tried it an it doesn't appear to work like that...
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Post by JMW on Jan 1, 2012 2:49:48 GMT -5
Question--does anyone know if there is a way in Audacity to correct an unbalanced stereo signal, where the right and left channels are not the same volume level? The way I've done it when I record something with one channel louder than another is: 1) choose the Split Stereo Track option 2) select the channel that has the louder volume level 3) click on the Copy button 4) select the other channel 5) press the delete button on the keyboard, not the Cut button on Audacity 6) click on the Paste button 7) choose the Make Stereo Track option There's probably a quicker way to do this, but I've never figured it out so I just do what I describe above.
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Post by mayberrymiles on Jan 1, 2012 9:35:54 GMT -5
What I do is first split the stereo track into separate tracks and then select and amplify each track separately. That way you should end up both tracks being approximately the same level. Happy New Year and happy recording!
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Post by matt on Jan 3, 2012 18:52:16 GMT -5
Thanks everyone--looks like that did it! I didn't know about the "split stereo tracks" feature until now.
One question to Lousy Smarch Weather--wouldn't copying and pasting change your stereo track to mono? I just selected the softer track and amplified just in case.
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Post by adam31 on Jan 7, 2012 17:01:38 GMT -5
Audacity question:
Does anyone know the easiest way to cut out minor gaps of silence when my recording stream buffers? Sometimes every 15 minutes a get less than 1 sec of buffering.
I'm looking for the easiest way to edit out all these silences over the entire almost 4 hour show all at once. The Find silence option seems to speed up the sound of the show.
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Post by Mike on Jan 7, 2012 17:05:40 GMT -5
Highlight the gap of silence, then under Edit, click Delete. You have to do this individually for each one - I don't think there is a way to do take them all out at once. Actually, I wonder if an "all at once" trick might accidentally risk taking out split-seconds of silence that come naturally - i.e. breaks between things Casey is saying.
The trick is to use precision when you highlight the gaps - timing it so you don't accidentally take out a split-second of the song. If done right, it'll be like the gap was never there to begin with.
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Post by erik on Feb 6, 2012 21:19:42 GMT -5
I've been having some issues with editing in Audacity. I recorded the show off WQSR and trying to use my WMGN recording as a backup. In the WQSR recording, there are a few audio gaps. In most cases, I can edit these out, but there are a few places where my recording "skips" after removing the silence gaps.
It can be tricky to edit the audio within the songs, but I have a bigger issue now. The WMGN recording is much softer than WQSR recording. After some trial and error, I need to amplify the WMGN recording by 2.5 dB so the volume level will be consistent.
Here's the problem:
After I copy and paste sections of the WMGN recording into the WQSR recording to repair errors, it will not always allow me to amplify by 2.5. I may get a recommended value of 1.5, 1.4, or even lower. If I stick to Audacity's suggested setting, it is very apparent that the WQSR portion is still much louder especially if it's within a song. If I try to manually enter 2.5 for the amplify setting, Audacity won't let me. The OK button grays out. There must be a better way to accomplish this.
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Post by matt on Feb 7, 2012 18:46:02 GMT -5
Here's the problem: After I copy and paste sections of the WMGN recording into the WQSR recording to repair errors, it will not always allow me to amplify by 2.5. I may get a recommended value of 1.5, 1.4, or even lower. If I stick to Audacity's suggested setting, it is very apparent that the WQSR portion is still much louder especially if it's within a song. If I try to manually enter 2.5 for the amplify setting, Audacity won't let me. The OK button grays out. There must be a better way to accomplish this. A very simple solution to the problem--you need to check the box that says "Allow Clipping". The reason Audacity won't amplify any higher that the value it's assigning is because that is the maximum value to which it can amplify before it starts clipping some of the peaks of the sound wave, and the default setting is to not allow clipping (hence why the OK button greys out if you enter a number higher than the assigned max amplification value without checking the box). If you check that box you can amplify however much you please, which can be nice when you get audio that has an amplitude with a lot of "spikes". Typically, these single spikes in the dark blue parts of the wave are practically inaudible, but will limit Audicity's amplification if clipping isn't allowed. You can keep retrying different amplification levels until your patched-in audio (WMGN it sounds like) is the same level as your base audio (WQSR). I run into this same issue with recording the 70's shows--my base audio is usually KLOU, which has a very uniform waveform like WQSR. My backup that I use to patch in for optional extras and dropouts is WPCH, which has real good audio, but the waveform on Audicity is much "spikier".
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Post by erik on Feb 11, 2012 6:16:20 GMT -5
Here's the problem: After I copy and paste sections of the WMGN recording into the WQSR recording to repair errors, it will not always allow me to amplify by 2.5. I may get a recommended value of 1.5, 1.4, or even lower. If I stick to Audacity's suggested setting, it is very apparent that the WQSR portion is still much louder especially if it's within a song. If I try to manually enter 2.5 for the amplify setting, Audacity won't let me. The OK button grays out. There must be a better way to accomplish this. A very simple solution to the problem--you need to check the box that says "Allow Clipping". The reason Audacity won't amplify any higher that the value it's assigning is because that is the maximum value to which it can amplify before it starts clipping some of the peaks of the sound wave, and the default setting is to not allow clipping (hence why the OK button greys out if you enter a number higher than the assigned max amplification value without checking the box). If you check that box you can amplify however much you please, which can be nice when you get audio that has an amplitude with a lot of "spikes". Typically, these single spikes in the dark blue parts of the wave are practically inaudible, but will limit Audicity's amplification if clipping isn't allowed. You can keep retrying different amplification levels until your patched-in audio (WMGN it sounds like) is the same level as your base audio (WQSR). I run into this same issue with recording the 70's shows--my base audio is usually KLOU, which has a very uniform waveform like WQSR. My backup that I use to patch in for optional extras and dropouts is WPCH, which has real good audio, but the waveform on Audicity is much "spikier". Thanks wahoo! That resolves my issue.
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Post by Mike on May 22, 2012 17:12:05 GMT -5
OK, I have this issue:
There's a section in one of my recorded shows where one side goes completely silent for a few seconds while the other side goes on as normal - it sounds like the song playing on only one side for those few seconds (in this case, the left side). How do I fix that?
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Post by matt on May 22, 2012 18:02:46 GMT -5
OK, I have this issue: There's a section in one of my recorded shows where one side goes completely silent for a few seconds while the other side goes on as normal - it sounds like the song playing on only one side for those few seconds (in this case, the left side). How do I fix that? Without doing any additional troubleshooting, my first guess is that you may have a bad patch cable or connection at the jacks on your computer. The other possibility is that your source's audio cut out on the L channel for a few seconds. If I were to have that same problem and didn't have a backup recording to patch in, I would say the best fix would be to split your channels, copy the R channel for the period of the dropout, then paste into the L channel. Your recording will go to mono during the period where you had the dropout, but it would be better than having to listen to a dead channel and you probably won't notice it was mono if it's short enough.
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Post by Mike on May 23, 2012 11:57:09 GMT -5
If I were to have that same problem and didn't have a backup recording to patch in, I would say the best fix would be to split your channels, copy the R channel for the period of the dropout, then paste into the L channel. Your recording will go to mono during the period where you had the dropout, but it would be better than having to listen to a dead channel and you probably won't notice it was mono if it's short enough. That did the trick. I had to figure out how to split the stereo track first, but once I did that, the rest was a breeze. The dropout only covered a few seconds, but I did notice the audio difference. Of course, when I listen to the full show later on I probably won't notice it as strongly. Thanks for your help! ;D
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Post by matt on May 23, 2012 15:50:48 GMT -5
If I were to have that same problem and didn't have a backup recording to patch in, I would say the best fix would be to split your channels, copy the R channel for the period of the dropout, then paste into the L channel. Your recording will go to mono during the period where you had the dropout, but it would be better than having to listen to a dead channel and you probably won't notice it was mono if it's short enough. That did the trick. I had to figure out how to split the stereo track first, but once I did that, the rest was a breeze. The dropout only covered a few seconds, but I did notice the audio difference. Of course, when I listen to the full show later on I probably won't notice it as strongly. Thanks for your help! ;D No problem--I had to have a few other of our fellow posters tell me how to do the channel split thing too. Ran into it when I started using WPCH as a source for the 70's shows during the holidays, and for some reason their L channel is always about twice as loud as the R. Once I found out how to split, I was able to amplify the R and balance it out. I think I owe that one to Randy Johnson's Mullet.
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