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Author Topic: level changes HELP 8^)  (Read 5033 times)

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Offline zhianosatch

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level changes HELP 8^)
« on: February 09, 2003, 06:22:22 PM »
Hi, all.
I'm throwing a friend's recent Tool recording onto CD for him and we've got a hitch in our giddalong.

DPA 4061 > Zefiro Inbox > D8 is his rig. (And the recording is just schweet - 3rd row center. I want to make this nice.)

The problem is that he got a little jumpy during the guitar fade in to "Cold and Ugly" at the very beginning of the show and adjusted his Inbox levels too much (first left, then right, then left and right some more, then back down, etc). And this is a little disconcerting.
So is there any way to get the volume for one region of the wav constant? Selecting a certain portion and adjusting the volume for it gets really messy because the level changes themselves were not instantaneous (gain pot turns) whereas volume changes with Sound Forge are. Know what I mean?
I have SF 5.0 and Wavelab 4 at my disposal. Any thoughts? I really want to do this well...
Thanks, brahs!
Armen

jpschust

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Re:level changes HELP 8^)
« Reply #1 on: February 09, 2003, 07:55:57 PM »
why not select the section and normalize it to whatever the average db of the next section is?  seems like a simple answer to me

Offline zhianosatch

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Re:level changes HELP 8^)
« Reply #2 on: February 09, 2003, 08:24:02 PM »
... because there is no limit to just how small each section could be. When the volume changes are fades in or out, the fades themselves are still audible after normalizing. (EDIT: Unless I take a few pixels' worth of wave fromteh fader louder/fade softer parts and do them all one by one, which is unrealistic for a series of changes that occur over a minute.)
Unless I'm going about this all wrong... am I?
« Last Edit: February 09, 2003, 08:37:26 PM by zhianosatch »

Offline hippies

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Re:level changes HELP 8^)
« Reply #3 on: February 09, 2003, 09:59:40 PM »
Armen,

without seeing the waveform, it's hard to say.  one thing to think about is if only one channel is affected at a time, simply cut a section from the 'good' channel, and paste in place of the flawed section in the other channel.  this will only work if one channel at a time is screwed.  

another solution is to find another recording, and patch this whole section.  peeps do it all the time.  may be better than trying to mess with this fading business.  

however, if you feel the need to explore your boundaries, i believe the best way to handle this is in the Analog domain.  you need to run this through a Mixing board/ EQ, etc. and manually run the faders during a re-record.  You would need to map out the changes and have that diagram in front of you to attempt to do this correctly, and get it right.  

if you can't patch the recording with the other channel, or another version, this is a very tough fix.  IMHO, not worth it to bother.  

This is an anomolie that happened during recording, and is regretable, but hardly ruins a good recording.  get 'em next time, bro.  a good learning experience is priceless, as they say.    ;)

hope this helps.

~S

Offline greenone

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Re:level changes HELP 8^)
« Reply #4 on: February 09, 2003, 10:30:42 PM »
Are there too many changes to try setting envelopes for the areas in particular that correspond inversely to the speed of the level change? Now I'm confusing myself ??? ...umm, in plain English, you could fade IN an area where the knobs were twisted down and fade OUT an area where the knobs were twisted up. That way you're only approximating it instead of zooming to the sample level.

But like Scott said, you're pretty much stuck doing a manual fix rather than automating it - if there were a "de-knob-twister" function I think a lot of producers would be out of business. Sorta like turning off the legendary "suck filter". ;)

--Dave
Unofficial Blues Traveler archivist - glad to work on any BT or related recordings
archive.org admin - happy to upload tracked material to the LMA

Offline zhianosatch

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Re:level changes HELP 8^)
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2003, 01:04:03 PM »
I guess it's what I feared. Funny how in this age of bitchin' technology, there's no audio editing software that'll do something as simple as leveling out the volume. I guess you're right, Dave - Sonic Foundry doesn't want to put its best customers out of business!  ;D

Scott: the problem with splicing the good/bad channels is that my friend (Brad, also on this board somewhere ;))was getting a lot of sound from the stage in addition to some from the stacks. Hence, the guitar fade is a little louder on the left (where Adam and his monitors were) and I'd have to tweak both channels' volumes when patching while comparing them to my own recording (which had no level changes) and the actual change in volume from the guitar. Whew.
As for splicing in the whole section from another recording, this is a possibility. I also taped the show but from way back, about 25' off the floor, with Core Sound Binaurals and an AD-20. The guitar fade on both recordings sounds similar (the rest doesn't, of course) so I'll consider doing some SF tweaking and patching it in.
Then again, after I spend a lot of time doing that, I might not like what I hear and just throw all the work away...

Dave: I considered doing the reverse fade thing, too, but as far as I know, Sound Forge does only perfect fades while the fades from the recording were roughly sinusoidal (slower rate of change at the beginning and end of the fade than in the middle) because starting and stopping the turn of the gain pot is a slower process than the maximum speed of the turn itself (somewhere at roughly the midpoint of the turn). It's (practically) impossible to turn knobs at a constant velocity so the knobs' acceleration (rates of change of the fade) equals zero. Ya know what I'm blabbing about?

I tried doing a fully manual fix this weekend on a 20 second part and I was just not pleased with the results. So I'm either going to patch in the fade from my recording or just leave it alone and have everyone just accept what they hear. We'll see what Brad wants to do.
There are maybe four or so run-of-the-mill independent volume changes during the show that I can handle, but the fade in, after chatting with you fine chaps, might be too much for me (or anyone, right?) to handle.
All advice is much appreciated. Thanks!
Armen

Offline Marc Nutter

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Re:level changes HELP 8^)
« Reply #6 on: February 25, 2003, 12:26:26 PM »
Hi All,

>This is an anomolie that happened during recording, and >is regretable, but hardly ruins a good recording.  get 'em >next time, bro.  a good learning experience is priceless, as >they say.

Scott's feedback is right on!  It amazes me how readily so many people will discard a recording due to an "imperfection."  Granted, it may be a momentary distraction but if we get too caught up in minor errors or what equipment was used, we sure lose the focus, which is the music as I recall. : )  

>sinusoidal (slower rate of change at the beginning and >end of the fade than in the middle)

I think the correct term for this is "logarithmic" not sinusoidal.

>if there were a "de-knob-twister" function I think a lot of >producers would be out of business.

At the risk of sounding like I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, A LOT of producers, engineers, recording studios and mastering facilities are already going out of business due to the great proliferation of high-quality project studio equipment and DAW's.  Still, I can't imagine that Sonic Foundry neglected such a feature out of an altruistic love of studios, etc...

Now enough commentary...

To solve your problem, if you think it is worth tackling, I know that Samplitude allows you to easily draw pan and level curves and listen in real time. In fact, you can actually take the stereo file and split it into dual mono then edit each track independently.  You can adjust them 'til you can't stand that 30 second section any longer.  

I'm not sure of the limitations of the currently available DEMO copy that you can find online but it may be possible to pull this off.  You can also do it is Nuendo and I think SONAR.

Happy Editing,

Marc

Offline zhianosatch

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Re:level changes HELP 8^)
« Reply #7 on: February 28, 2003, 12:22:39 AM »
I hope to try out Samplitude or those other warez this weekend on your recommendation, Marc.
As for the sinusoidal/logarithmic bone... ;D I should have made it clear that I was talking about the turning of the knobs, not the volume increase. The acceleration vs. time graph of the knob turning would be sinusoidal (the cosine graph, technically). Pure physics - no sound.
Not that this matters one bit. hehe :D
-A

 

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