Topic: First recording editing questions

[extraction]

Recorded my first show the other night -

My Morning Jacket - Buffalo, NY [06.29.05]

Source/lineage = Core Sound Binaurals>Sony MHZ-910>Sonic Stage>wav>Audacity 1.2.3 (where it now waits...)

Location = Belt level... first 3 songs was right next to the soundboard, last 4 up closer about 20 feet back (sounds better here suprisingly)

Overall sound is full and pushing 0 dB w/ some occasional distortion (had the levels set to Auto adjust, due to security didn't pull out the rig to check during the show).   Also some occasional crowd talking/cheering but not overwhelming...

On Some of the clipping  I tried normalizing which helped a little...is compression better ??

Should I normalize the whole thing? or compress?

What is the etiquette for fade in/out? every track or just the beginning and end of the whole thing

Also how difficult is it to split into tracks???

Many questions I know but my friends want a copy and I need some general advice so maybe I can eventually learn enough to get it out on a torrent or on eTree

I would like to stick with Audaciity as the editior

Thanks!!!!!!!

[NewHomebrew]

It's up to you to get a feel how you like to do things.

Compression will change the dynamics of the recording, the relationship of the quiet and loud parts to each other.  Changing the gain or normalizing will affect the whole recording equally, and that sounds more like what you want to do.

I haven't found an effective way to repair clipping, maybe some others can help you with that.  You want the max gain of the recording safely below 0dB when recording, once it's made, you can decrease the gain if you want, but the damage is done.  Your max peaks are already 0dB if you've got clipping, so you'd have to normalize to some lower value, which would really only be necessary if the recording was gratingly loud.

For splitting tracks:  http://www.milosoftware.com/cdwave/cdwav193.exe

It's up to you if you want to fade it in and out, I don't really see the point.  Sometimes less is more.

[extraction]

Well the whole recording "pushes" 0 db but only actually clips maybe 40 times in 45 minutes, and only a few of these are actually noticeable...To my unlearned ear it sounds pretty good...

This was a stealth recording so the level adjustment was on Auto...

I'm going to try normalizing the whole thing though...

Everyone seems to mention CD Wave for splitting so I guess I'll check that out...

Thanks for the reply