Topic: Audacity Envelope Tool - my new best friend

[achalsey]

Just caught a quite solo acoustic show in a relatively big hall (Todd Snider at the Orange Peel) so the audience cheering was much louder than the regular music.  I had always just used the compressor or amplify (by negative dBs) to cut out peaks in the past, but both have such harsh beginnings and exits, it never worked well for anything but barely audible time spans.

I remembered the envelope tool being mentioned for this kind of thing in another thread, but I didn't get it first try, and also didn't really need it, so didn't give it much thought.  So glad I went back and looked up instructions. 

Probably sound like a noob, and I still really am when it comes to post processing (and taping in general, but who isn't  ) but, while far from perfect, this is a huge find for me in Audacity.  Finally something to fade amplification in and out.   

Youtube tutorial that I got the info from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYA6LmhAzGE

[Marshall7]

I was at at show tonight, and was thinking maybe I should try the envelope tool on it.  Thanks for the link!

[yousef]

Don't forget gentle use of a de-clicker for stray claps during song intros...

A volume envelope is a God-send for acoustic/quieter shows.

[Ultfris101]

I'll have to give this another look as well. I did a show in early December under same conditions and I ended up using the hard limiter to bring the individual applause sections a few db below the peaks of the musical sections and then when I normalized as usual it was much more tolerable.

I had the same experience with the envelope tool and just didn't get it so maybe I'll give it another try.

[ilduclo]

I use envelope all the time in old Cool Edit Pro, they have presets and spline the curves in and out, I go asymtotic with a couple different values

30% up to 100% this is useful for where you have chosen a too high level on your recorder and then reduce the levels right off.

100-80-100 curve with nearly vertical sides. loud applause section reduction, 100-60-100 and 100-30-100 for similar

100-150-100 to amplify selectively for very quiet songs in an otherwise consistent set

I also have a 100-30-0 which is a real good fade out for ends of shows.

[jbell]

Anyone have a wavelab 6 envelope tutorial??  I've not figured out how to use it.  TIA

[page]

I've used it before, and it has it's usage, but I find it's best usage comes in combination with other things.

For example (by itself), if a band has a building surge that just sounds out of place on the recording I can use the envelope tool to do a gradual fade for a few db. I've used it to do gradual transitions (instead of straight fades, do sort of an adjustable logarithmic fade) between sources when patching. For audience applause (using it among others), when I used audacity I'd figure out what the peak of the music nearby is, and what the peak of the applause is, divide that by 2 and thats what I use on the envelope. The reason is when you use the envelope you decrease the background as well. One or two DB isn't bad, but more then that and I noticed the transition. So I'd do half of it with an envelope and the other half with the hard limiter. I didn't want to favor either tool exclusively since when you really use them they can be noticeable on playback, but if I used a little from A and a little from B, I found the overall result to be better than either alone.

[F.O.Bean]

Anyone have a wavelab 6 envelope tutorial??  I've not figured out how to use it.  TIA

[Tisbo]

I've just done my first-ever two projects in Audacity, which also happen to be my first-ever two recordings. Since I still know so little, somehow it got into my head that the envelope tool was just what everyone used, so I started using it and I'm so glad! I have people changing their distance from the mic while speaking, gentle voices followed by powerful applause, and the like. Sometimes the envelope tool didn't do enough, so I rendered and then applied it again. Does anyone know if that's a bad thing? Does using it too much wear out the files?

[flipp]

I can't say if it's a bad thing or not. Since the file is digital it won't "wear out". Just be sure to always work on a copy/clone of the file and leave the original untouched. That way you can always recopy the original and start over if you screw something up and can't "undo" what you just did, which no matter how careful will eventually happen. Some editing programs are much more forgiving that others and I don't recall exactly how Audacity works since it's been too long since I've used it but a good rule no matter what editing program you use is to always work on a copy, never the original file.

[Tisbo]

Yes, Flipp, I do work on copies. My semi-facetious remark about wearing out the files relates to my only other experience with digital media, which is photography. In image editing, not only are there tell-tale effects of heavy-handedness, but certain kinds of files (especially compressed files such as JPEGs) seriously break down under extreme manipulation. With audio, I imagine the simplest case would be extreme amplification of a faint recording whose signal is near the noise floor, since the noise would be amplified along with the signal. I think I understand clipping and brickwalling, but associate those more with recording than with editing/processing the files (although I guess those results can be produced in post). I did play around with the noise removal effect in Audacity enough to realize that overdoing that can produce some bizarre distortion!