Topic: How To Bump Music Levels, But Not The Applause

[stevetoney]

I recorded a Greensky Bluegrass show awhile back.  It started raining and the show moved into the back room.  Since zman and someone else were already staked out in front of one of their monitors and since I was with my daughters having a damn good time and wasn't in the mood to babysit my rig, I set up kinda off to the side, but just to the left of their makeshift stage.  So, I basically recorded them acoustically (since the volume of the monitors was pretty low anyway).

Now, zman's source kicks mine to pieces, but I've got some time on my hands and started to master my source up today, just for the heck of it.  It sounds so different from Zman's, I'm thinking that it might be worth trying to salvage.

My problem is that the crowd and applause are loud and the music is soft in the recording...maybe a typical problem for an acoustic-ish show.  Is there any standard tool that can be used in Audition to bump the music up louder in the mix while keeping the levels of the applause the same?

Here's a screenshot of the music I'm trying to save.  You can see from this that there are significant peaks with a steady center volume.  The peaks, of course, are applause in between the songs.  The solid center is the music.

Any advice?  Thanks!

[MattD]

Run a compressor/limiter with the threshold set just above where the music peaks. Let it squish the applause as needed.

[stevetoney]

Excellent thanks.  I had looked in Audition for the compression function and couldn't find it.  Your post sent me back and I found the function...in Audition they call in a 'Hard Limiter'.  Coooool.  Thanks and +

[Brian Skalinder]

Excellent thanks.  I had looked in Audition for the compression function and couldn't find it.  Your post sent me back and I found the function...in Audition they call in a 'Hard Limiter'.  Coooool.  Thanks and +

Hard limiting is a type of compression.  Generally, I try to stay away from it, unless limiting a very strong, transient peak that's resistant to softer compression.  Hard limiting often sounds crunchy and pulsing and unnatural, generally not very good, IMO.  Softer compression works much better, I think.  It's in Effects | Amplitude | Dynamic Processing.  You might also consider a Volume Envelope (Effects | Amplitude | Envelope in CEP/Audition), though I think CEP/Audition's implementation of this tool isn't very good.

Edit to add:  search this forum for compression, limiting, and/or envelope and you'll find plenty of on this subject.

[stevetoney]

Thanks Brian.  Last night I tried hard limit and the results really weren't all that great...I think more because of garbage in = garbage out, but I'll try your suggestions today.  Afraid at this point that I just don't have a good enough recording to salvage it in the first place.