Topic: Editing an acoustic/electric Show...

[taperwheeler]

I recently taped Ray LaMontagne and am not editing my capture.  He switched back and forth from loud, electric with drums and bass, to much more quiet acoustic.  Needless to say, there is a very big difference in volume levels b/w the songs.  I am wondering if it's best to boost those lower level tracks up by a large margin to get them in the same ballpark?  Any advice would be greatly appreciated...

[boojum]

I do not know if this is the right way to do it, but what I do is track each tune separately and then normalize them as "independent" rather than "unified".  That way each separate track is cranked up to 95%.  You can set whatever percentage you want.  If the quiet tracks are too loud, just lower them manually.  No big deal. 

Cheers

[Brian Skalinder]

It really just depends on how much dynamic range you want to preserve.  Sometimes, the dynamic range is so broad, it makes listening difficult on all but a high end playback system.  Personally, I find it a bit overboard to bring quiet, acoustic songs up to the same level as loud, electric songs.  Boojum's approach will work nicely, and allow you to set levels for each track.  I do sometimes apply compression or amplify to bring very quiet tracks to a higher level for easier listening...just not all the way up to the level of the loudest tracks.  Really, it's up to your personal preference.  Just make sure you maintain an archive copy of the original source, with full dynamic range, so if you wish to modify later, you're able to do so from the original.

[taperwheeler]

Thanks guys. 

[live2496]

The way to do this is by ear. Set your playback system where the loud stuff sounds about right to you. Keep the volume level at the same position and adjust the level of an acoustic song (in software) so that it doesn't sound too low to you. Well, make it sound so that it is at a comfortable listening level. Then apply those same settings to each of the acoustic songs and it should come out about right. But ideally you will want to set the level of each acoustic song by ear if you have time to do so.

[rsimms3]

I did a show for a friend that was sort of a record release party with several songs and then long descriptions/Q&A between the songs.  I found the conversation part that was loudest and then used that to judge how loud to make all of the same kinds of sections.  Another consideration is the amplification itself, if you cut the tracks and then increase the volume of the acoustic parts you may get a jarring effect in the track changes.  I manually went between tracks and did a short fade of volume increase/decrease between the tracks.  Like this - Rock track > Fade start: 0db/Fade end: +10db for 2 seconds > Increase acoustic track +10db > Fade start: 0db/Fade end: -10db for 2 seconds for Rock track if he was changing it up that often as was the case with my show.  Song/Talking/Song/Talking.  I  increased the volume of all the quieter sections by the same db so as to maintain some of the dynamic range.