Topic: help with loud crowd

[jrdead]

I'm looking for some help on compressing the sound of the crowd roar which is louder than the music on many of my recordings. I would like to increase the volume of the music and decrease the crowd noise between songs. I usually don't do any processing but i think this would make many shows more listenable.
I would like to do this to the show as a whole where i don't have to go through selecting each piece of applause to reduce the gain. I have wavelab 6.1 and only the plugins it came with. Does anyone here have experience with this?
Sorry if this has been covered before but i couldn't find it anywhere on the site.
Thanks!

[Brian Skalinder]

Try a search for "compression" and/or "volume envelope" by user "Brian Skalinder" and you'll find some helpful threads, I think.  (Not that I have all the answers -- I surely don't -- but I've participated in several discussions on this topic and using my name will help narrow down the potentially very large search results.)  Read through the threads (not just my comments), experiment a little, and if you still have questions -- ask away.

[rjp]

If the loudest component of the crowd noise is hand clapping, a carefully-used hard limiter effect works wonders. On a classical recording i recently pulled, I was able to tame the applause in Audacity, without losing the last decaying piano note, by using the Hard Limiter LADSPA plugin.

Since hand claps are essentially impulse noise, chopping the peaks doesn't really do harm. Just make sure that the hard limiter isn't set lower than the actual music!

If you have to deal with loud whistles, yelling, etc., then all bets are off.

[jrdead]

Thanks for the input. I'll start playing with the compressor/limiter to see what i come up with.

[live2496]

I use another technique within Samplitude and it works really well.

First off let me explain why I favor this approach more than compression. Compression is very easy as you can just apply one setting for the whole concert. However, it has been my experience that it can cause some pumping as the peaks are reduced and then they are released.

What I have started doing is to use the volume curve tool to tame the applause. You create some volume anchors in the section where the applause occurs. Then move them into place precisely. Usually 4 of them will do. I make a kind of "U" shape where I want the volume adjusted. This gives you an even drop in level, similar to riding the slider on a mixer.

As you move each volume marker samplitude gives you a hint that explains the volume level adjustment in db. If press "m" to bring up the mixer and preview that audio and watch the metering, it will tell you how much over you have gone in decibels. Adjust the volume curve so that it reduces the gain in that section by the amount showing in the metering. (I hope I am making sense). That way you can adjust the volume level so that the peaks come out to about 0db or less.

If you want to gain some extra level, you could also adjust the volume of the object upwards to a higher number in the object editor and then adjust the volume curve of the applause section down more to compensate for the louder overall level. This way your recording can be a bit louder while keeping the applause still under control.

[Scooter123]

In its pure sense, Compression makes everything an equal volume, like television shows, but the sacrifice is dynamic range.  The extreme example is Nickleback CD's which, if you look at a wave file of one of their tracks, it looks like a 2x4. 

That said, try some presets on your wave editor.  I use Goldwave, and it has about 5-6 presets, some very light compression and others quite heavy, so I would take a 15 second sample and try some out.  Goldwave also has the ability to make your own presets by increasing the aggressiveness of the effect and saving it. 

I've never found Compression to be that effective in eliminating crowd noise.  I think a directional mike or higher mike placement is the better solution.  Low placed Omnis in a loud crowded rambunctious rock concert would be disaster.

[rjp]

To elaborate a bit on how I use the hard limiter against applause, note that I only use it on the applause segments, and I make sure that it is set higher than any actual content (like the last few notes) I want to preserve. I look for the peak music level throughout the recording, and set the hard limiter at least 3 dB lower than that peak, if possible.