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Gear / Technical Help => Post-Processing, Computer / Streaming / Internet Devices & Related Activity => Topic started by: Thomas on April 20, 2004, 03:15:17 PM
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I taped in a very quiet venue this past weekend, and it was awesome except for between songs when people would start clapping, and I would blink over every time. I was going to go in and just clip out every section of the recording where there was a problem, but i don't want to do that. Is the normalize function on editing programs intended to fix problems like this? I am under the impression that the normalize function brings the spots in the recording where the sound tops down to a "normalized" level. Does this affect the quality of the sound? I will be doing this in nero b/c i don't have any other editing programs. thanks in advance.
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you could normalize, but mainly its for levels being to low, however, it will "normalize" it to a lower level, just put in what level youd like the recording to be, you can go from like -52db to 0 db
give it a try, also, this IS destructive
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Yeah i didn't see how it could change some of the sound and not be destructive. I guess ill just clip the sections where it is way too loud. I hate listening to music and getting my eardrums and speakers blown between every song.
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I've been using Audacity (free program) and it has the ability to use a feature called Amplify (other programs may have it too) to highlight a certain part and change its level. This is different than Normalize. I do it after I have cut it into tracks using CDWave, but I guess you could do it before cuttin gin to tracks.
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Making edits after cutting tracks will likely introduce sector boundry errors.
I *think* folks use compression on loud parts... I bet doing a search of the message board would provide some help.
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Mirth's right - you want to use compression on the applause between the songs. Just found this - there may be better resources, but here's an explanation of compression:
http://www.dancemusicshop.com/learn/compression.html (http://www.dancemusicshop.com/learn/compression.html)
I doubt Nero does compression, though. But Audacity (free) might either out of the box or with a plugin, I don't know which.
FWIW, I use compression on the applause for many of the amplified acoustic recordings I make.
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I taped in a very quiet venue this past weekend, and it was awesome except for between songs when people would start clapping, and I would blink over every time. I was going to go in and just clip out every section of the recording where there was a problem, but i don't want to do that. Is the normalize function on editing programs intended to fix problems like this? I am under the impression that the normalize function brings the spots in the recording where the sound tops down to a "normalized" level. Does this affect the quality of the sound? I will be doing this in nero b/c i don't have any other editing programs. thanks in advance.
ime, i usually hard limit the thunderous audience to equal the music passage. i realize this may be very difficult to do with an extremely loud audience in comparison to the music, but you can use your best judgement and your ears.
by hard limiting the loud handclaps/roar/etc., you can bring the music up in amplitude with normalization.
if a direct hard limit isn't a viable option, i would hard limit just enough where it cuts about 75% of the crowd, then i would basically use a "partial fade out/fade in-envelope" to bring the crowd down further.
for example: let's say this is your wave ===========<<<<<>>>>>========== where "=" is the music and "<<<<<>>>>>" is your loud crowd.
the "partial fade out/fade in envelope" would look like this depending on how long the crowd noise is.
let's say the crowd duration is 10 seconds long.
-first 2 seconds: fade 100% to 70% (where 100% and 70% are initial and final amplification values, respectively)
-middle 6 seconds: amplitude down to 70%
-last 2 seconds: fade 70% to 100%
i've been able to "quiet" a crowd by as much as 50% in the past and still make it sound natural with the method above.
it's not so easy explaining this method in words, but lmk if you want more explanations.
marc
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I've used both hard limiting and compression (they're basically the same thing as I understand it - hard limiting just has an infinite, or at least appropriately massive, compression ratio). FWIW, I've found hard limiting to sound more unnatural to my ears and have had better success using compression (since I can apply a smaller, less severe ratio).