I am a sometimes contributor, mainly lurker on this lovely yellow board (thanks Jeremy) who lives in Central Australia 1,500 km from the nearest Irish session, who is trying, in difficult circumstances to keep The Music alive for her own self and enjoyment.
I downloaded and have been using Audacity since the end of January. I try to play fiddle, and I have a lovely old one that has the ability to sound rather beautiful on occasion (usually when someone else is playing it, but still).
Now, I have been seriously putting down some tracks of some of the beautiful ITM tunes I love to play, using Audacity (eg. Major Harrison's Fedora, Poor but Happy at 53, and others etc etc), and I have been going through a kind of hell trying to get the digital recorded version to sound the way I hear the fiddle acoustically. Do you recognise the problem? I know it is a curly one.
Have been cycling through my three available mike options, fudsing with the Fishman pre-amp and the effects options in the effects menu, and particularly with the equalization options.
Now, what are the problems? Well, taking the buzz off the deep notes, for one; and stopping the high notes from popping out is another. Getting subsequent tracks to come out sounding the same as the initial track, is yet another frustrating one.
I do not have a grasp of the language of sound engineering, so at the same time as trying, as I am, to find some local sound person who will condescend to speak to an obvious amateur who is trying to do some serious dabbling into home recording without a physics degree or any knowledge of sound reproduction, I was hoping there might be some kind soul on the yellow board who might be knowledgeable and prepared to advise me.
I have got MP3's demonstrating the problems I am encountering.
1. What you hear when you play the fiddle is not what the listeners hear; there is a lot of sound that gets to the player's ear but doesn't travel more than two or three feet from the instrument. The sound frequencies coming out from a violin are directional, so the lower frequencies go in one direction and the higher ones in a slightly different one. This is the basic reason why close miking of a fiddle is difficult if you want to record the real sound. When recording a solo violin in a recording studio the mike may very well be some distance from the instrument (as a live listener would be), but in a studio you don't have the feedback problems that you would get if you tried to do the same thing on stage with speakers.
2. The microphone. I'll leave this one to the recording experts to advise on, but basically you'll only ever get what you pay for.
3. Unless you've got kilobucks to spend on top of the range audio equipment and an acoustically designed listening room to get close to the original sound you're not going to get anywhere the same effect out of domestic amplifiers and speakers - the output will always be "colored" to some extent.
4. MP3 (and most other audio compression applications) use "lossy" compression which loses some of the high frequencies together with others which the application thinks the listener won't notice in order to get the 10:1 compression at the standard so-called "cd quality" of 128kbps. This works fairly well for most audio, depending on what the music is, especially if it's being listened to on relatively inexpensive equipment such as the usual portable player, but it falls over dismally if listened to by the discerning ear on better equipment. The lossy compression is the basic reason why it's so difficult to compensate for with filters.
If you use MP3 compression I suggest you use a higher level (slightly larger file size) such as 196kbps, which will give you a compression ratio of about 7:1 (still pretty good), but you should be able to notice an improvement in the sound quality. The maximum MP3 level you can use is 320kbps, which will give you a compression ratio of about 4.5:1.
I believe I'm right in saying that there is a version of WMA that provides lossless compression, but you wouldn't expect to get a high level of compression out of it.
Personally, I think an important acoustic recording should always be a WAV recording made at a sample rate of 44100 and 16-bit (or better still 32) resolution. This will get you closest to the original sound this side of the truly professional recording studio. When you've got that WAV file (the original of which should always be kept safely, and ALWAYS work with a copy) you can play around with it using various filters and then try out various compression formats.
I agree with lazy hound.. Wav file 16-bit or higher. You can convert to MP3 after if you want.
Mike placement is everything. If you are getting buzz it usually means you have the mike too close or the levels up too high and it gives you "clipping".
Mikes, for a simple setup don't have to be super expensive to sound good recording just yourself. The Samson CO1 condenser mikes are very good. Are you using an interface or plugging a mike into the sound card? Samson also makes a USB one. they are about $70.00 You may on the other hand prefer a regular mike. You need to experiment. I like condensers for guitar.
You may get someone who knows recording to advise you as to mike placement, you may be very surprised. When I record myself on guitar, the condenser mike, if using a single mike, is placed about a foot and a half away and foot or so above. You need to move the mike around, with headphones on, and listen for the best placement. In a different room than I ordinarily use, placement will be different.
I find it best to not mess so much with sound prior to recording, but just find the best placement, so you need little EQ after. I record everything straight up and do EQ after.
I record a monthly session with a Fostex MR8-HD, four of those Samson CO1s and get great sound. I record raw, and have barely any EQ to do after due to figuring out the proper mike placement for the room. It took a good while to figure it out, but improved along the way.
I use Audacity too, it's easy and straightforward. You may lower the volume to reduce clipping...it may fix things like the buzz a bit. It's when on the level bars you see it go red....levels too high in that case. Much easier to get it right with the mikes in the first place. It's just a matter of experimenting.
For at home I like the Lexicon Omega interface, It's got no effects on it, it's just a straight recorder and is about $250. The Fostex I use for dragging around. I never ever record with any effects because you can't really undo them properly after the fact, or as easily in any case.
Yes, the first places to look for the problem are the microphone and the placement of the microphone.
In my experience, you need a pretty nice mic to get a decent sound out of a fiddle. It's an instrument that produces a very complex sound, and as you've now learned an inaccurate representation of that sound can very quickly turn, ah, less beautiful than intended.
What are your three mic choices that you mention?
Also, as lazyhound says mic placement is often key when recording. You might want to try this (it sounds dumb but sometimes you can find the 'sweet spot' in the room): set Audacity rolling with the mic set up in the room, and then walk around and play from various distances, angles to the forward axis of the mic (though mostly you'll want to stay on-axis), and such. Announce to yourself from each location where you are in the room. Then listen back and see if any of this helped.
Finally, the room itself. Unless you close-mic your instrument, make sure you're recording in the best-sounding room you have.
Hope some of this helps. Post your mic details and maybe I can make some more suggestions.
Thank you peoples. Wow! Yes -m, my mic options are:
a) Fishman in bridge pickup with pre-amp - but I broke off the flange bit of the transducer in trying to fit it into the bridge of my second fiddle a couple of weeks ago and it has a heavy clip on plug thingy that I did not want to weigh the old fiddle down with (she definitely doesn't deserve that kind of treatment). Have messed at trying to secure the plug bit to the shoulder rest with electrical tape - whole thing is heavy, cumbersome and unsatisfactory which ever way I try to go about it - don't want to buy a new pick-up unless it would definitely solve the problems and then I would want something lighter and easier;
b) Overhead mic on stand, not an expensive instrument mic, but too many other noises (like dog barks) and unsatisfactory because I have tiled floors and besser block walls, heater / airconditioner depending on whether its cold or hot, also have to use headphones and these are another sound distorting problem - the sound in the headphones not being anything like the sound from the speakers on the computer, and the sound from the computer speakers not being anything like the eventual sound that I get from the good stereo (the best sound);
c) Cheap light little tie-pin mic clipped onto the strings at the fine tuners so it points toward the bridge from under the strings. It plugs into a battery power supply that I've been plugging into the Fishman pre-amp. This has been the best of the three options from the fiddle's and my shoulder's point of view (although it still picks up the occasional dog bark).
Now, don't for one minute think that I haven't been trying to solve these issues, but each time I make enquiries around town it seems that its forking out mega bucks without any kind of guaranteed results, just maybe's, if you know what I mean. Like for instance - buying 'Inspiration' for big bucks with an external sound card, but you need to have a fire-wire port on the computer (which I haven't got) and Audacity might not be the problem anyway; buy better multi media speakers like Bose for the computer (but is it a sound card prob or a speaker prob or an Audacity prob or a mic prob); buy an expensive overhead mic, but the sound quality might still not be good given the walls and tiled floors I just have to live with (they're nice actually)! Get a new pick-up (and again the sound quality might not be what I want).
So by now I could have shelled out big bucks and still might have problems. No guarantees. I had kind of hoped it was something I could do with equalization only not knowing what the little graphs that come up in the eq options mean, I had just thought maybe if someone explained frequencies or the like, or even if the prob could be narrowed to one source I could do something about it, instead of endlessly cycling through the options.
I was recording on the second fiddle, but it has just developed a crack that has put it out of action till I can get it fixed. And all this without a proper session to go to!!!!! Ah well such is life.
Oh, sorry. I have been recording with Audacity, exporting in WAV which I then listen to in Windows Media Player, converting to MP3 and then burning onto CD to play in the stereo. WAV is the best sound, but the files are very big. And I thought MP3 is what you had to use for CD's. I don't know why I thought that. The DVD/stereo player plays MP3's I know.
Oh and I did a little Audacity course a few weeks ago, but instead of getting my sound probs solved, the people at it ended up around my computer listening to a couple of tracks I'd recorded, then I helped someone record themselves saying One-two-three-four!
The problem is NOT Audactiy... As I mentioned in the private email I sent in response to yours, for EQ, I like the interface of Diamond Cut better but that's personal taste, easier to use....yet, I rarely need to use it.
I always found mic recording better than inline pickup recording. Much cleaner to my ear, crisper. That's guitar though, and from what I have found, if you have only one mic, make it be a large diaphragm condenser mike. Fiddle may be different though....but I do use four of the Samson CO1s to record our session, we get pretty darn near studio results, esp. on the more recent ones after working out the kinks of the room, and actually moving the session to another spot.
Doesn't the overhead mike pick up everything? I'd think a regular one you could aim it at the fiddle much better.... just my two cents.
And.....record a wave, 16 bit or higher. Save that as version one in Audacity. Then make an MP3 for other purposes.
Well, as irisnevins says the software isn't going to be the problem as it doesn't really impart a sound per se, and as long as you're recording at at least 16 bit/44.1 I'm guessing the issue really is the sound being delivered to the computer is already not what you want. Since you've tried changing placemet in the room that unfortunately does leave you with the mic, preamp, and sound card as possible places to improve. It's very difficult to EQ out the effects of a bad mic, unfortunately.
Specifically what make and model are the overhead? If it's a decent mic you might be better off using it instead of the pickup (pickups generally give you sound that's best described as 'good enough for live' in the mix). You could hang blankets in a rough triangle around the mic to dampen as much noise as you can and then drown out the rest with the fiddle. I used to do that for vocal recording when I had a much tinier space than I do now, and it worked ok.
Also, I'm not 100% sure I know exactly what problems you're trying to address. Do you have an mp3 example of the problem somewhere?
Thank you Iris and -m. I did go back to the Audacity file on the Poor but happy at 53 track and exported it again in WAV, then I burnt a copy and played it on the stereo over and over and it sounded nice, no pretty darn good to me actually. It sounds like the sound I am looking for. It seems that, as you have said, leaving the tracks in WAV is the best way to go. I have given the CD of Poor but happy at 53 in WAV to a musician friend to listen to for an honest opinion. I don't quite trust my own judgement after struggling with this for such a long time. Got far too close to it. And it is so difficult to explain. How can you, when you only know what it is that you want in your head?
I haven't got an internet site where I could put up examples, but I can email tracks or parts of tracks up to 10meg. The Poor but happy at 53 track is over 11 megs in WAV however.
I did say in the original post that the issues were: a) some buzz on the deep notes; b) high notes popping out too strong; c) subsequent tracks (when multi tracking tunes) coming out sounding different (with less quality) from the initial track.
I now know I can envelope deep notes and reduce the amplification of them which gets over that one; not sure about the next two. I don't know what it is that I am doing or not doing to get these things happening! If I did I wouldn't have been asking for help - I'd have been doing or not doing whatever it is! But I am taking your advice and simplifying - keeping it simple and not fudse too much anymore. And, yes, I will go and annoy the music shop again and buy a condenser mic and try again using a blanket tee pee if is necessary.
You re likely stuck to a spot for recording due to the computer being somewhere? I know I was, a cement basement with low ceilings.....ha ha...imparts some natural reverb! But still, you should be able to make pretty much any area that your fiddle sounds good in, record decently.
It's so hard, to nearly impossible to make a bad recording sound good with effects. I'd look into getting an engineer to come over for an hour, should be about $50 or so, to show you the right placements. I was never able to make anything sound ideal off a pickup either, a decent mike doesn't have to cost thousands. As I mentioned the Samson CO1 fills the bill for me and they are about $70.00. You can get them on ebay for $50.00 also. From what I was told with computer recording the fine points of a super expensive mike are lost anyway unless all your other equipment is high end. I get a crisp clean sound off of these mikes and very realistic....in fact our session recordings actually sound BETTER than the live session, believe that or not, but many will tell you so who have played in them and heard the CD.
Right mike, not esp.pricey, right placement, get close to what you want with the live input. You should not need much EQ, compression, normalization.... if you don't know what you're doing on these things you will make it all worse.... been there, done that. It is not easy, so now you know why a good engineer makes good money! Still with more experimenting you will find a system that works for you....and it never is what you think it is...mike placement is a really strange thing. Little points like if you record near a wall, or in the middle of a room, or if a door is open or closed all make a difference.
Last year I was playing with a ceili band for set dancers. We were all live miked and playing in a familiar village hall which had given no problems before. Except on this occasion, when the hall had just been prepared for a fete the next day. Dozens of balloons and flags were strung across the room from end to end and completely marmalised the acoustics. Our sound man gave up in the end and we just had to make the best of it we could, smiling wanly if stray reflections off balloons etc caused howling.
That was certainly close to a worst case scenario.
Wow....interesting....OK no balloons at our session hall. You never know, parties, etc. they may just show up.
So many little things cause differing sounds. We had pretty diffuse music sounds and lots of crowd noise in the beginning. We moved it to a corner and radiating outward, and segregated ourselves from the sound of the listening crowd. The sound bounced off the walls and became more focused, we have some nice natural reverb there too. It's a bit too bright, but panning the mikes to pick up kind of inward compensates for that. The overall sound of the CDs is bright, airy, and sounds better than the real thing!
Point is, little things make a difference....it takes a lot of experimetning until you get it right...then a little thing can disturb it
SERIOUS Audacity question
SERIOUS Audacity question
I am a sometimes contributor, mainly lurker on this lovely yellow board (thanks Jeremy) who lives in Central Australia 1,500 km from the nearest Irish session, who is trying, in difficult circumstances to keep The Music alive for her own self and enjoyment.
I downloaded and have been using Audacity since the end of January. I try to play fiddle, and I have a lovely old one that has the ability to sound rather beautiful on occasion (usually when someone else is playing it, but still).
Now, I have been seriously putting down some tracks of some of the beautiful ITM tunes I love to play, using Audacity (eg. Major Harrison's Fedora, Poor but Happy at 53, and others etc etc), and I have been going through a kind of hell trying to get the digital recorded version to sound the way I hear the fiddle acoustically. Do you recognise the problem? I know it is a curly one.
Have been cycling through my three available mike options, fudsing with the Fishman pre-amp and the effects options in the effects menu, and particularly with the equalization options.
Now, what are the problems? Well, taking the buzz off the deep notes, for one; and stopping the high notes from popping out is another. Getting subsequent tracks to come out sounding the same as the initial track, is yet another frustrating one.
I do not have a grasp of the language of sound engineering, so at the same time as trying, as I am, to find some local sound person who will condescend to speak to an obvious amateur who is trying to do some serious dabbling into home recording without a physics degree or any knowledge of sound reproduction, I was hoping there might be some kind soul on the yellow board who might be knowledgeable and prepared to advise me.
I have got MP3's demonstrating the problems I am encountering.
Please help if you can!
A desperate old scraper.
# Posted on July 22nd 2006 by Clear Drops
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
Old Scraper, a couple of problems here,
1. What you hear when you play the fiddle is not what the listeners hear; there is a lot of sound that gets to the player's ear but doesn't travel more than two or three feet from the instrument. The sound frequencies coming out from a violin are directional, so the lower frequencies go in one direction and the higher ones in a slightly different one. This is the basic reason why close miking of a fiddle is difficult if you want to record the real sound. When recording a solo violin in a recording studio the mike may very well be some distance from the instrument (as a live listener would be), but in a studio you don't have the feedback problems that you would get if you tried to do the same thing on stage with speakers.
2. The microphone. I'll leave this one to the recording experts to advise on, but basically you'll only ever get what you pay for.
3. Unless you've got kilobucks to spend on top of the range audio equipment and an acoustically designed listening room to get close to the original sound you're not going to get anywhere the same effect out of domestic amplifiers and speakers - the output will always be "colored" to some extent.
4. MP3 (and most other audio compression applications) use "lossy" compression which loses some of the high frequencies together with others which the application thinks the listener won't notice in order to get the 10:1 compression at the standard so-called "cd quality" of 128kbps. This works fairly well for most audio, depending on what the music is, especially if it's being listened to on relatively inexpensive equipment such as the usual portable player, but it falls over dismally if listened to by the discerning ear on better equipment. The lossy compression is the basic reason why it's so difficult to compensate for with filters.
If you use MP3 compression I suggest you use a higher level (slightly larger file size) such as 196kbps, which will give you a compression ratio of about 7:1 (still pretty good), but you should be able to notice an improvement in the sound quality. The maximum MP3 level you can use is 320kbps, which will give you a compression ratio of about 4.5:1.
I believe I'm right in saying that there is a version of WMA that provides lossless compression, but you wouldn't expect to get a high level of compression out of it.
Personally, I think an important acoustic recording should always be a WAV recording made at a sample rate of 44100 and 16-bit (or better still 32) resolution. This will get you closest to the original sound this side of the truly professional recording studio. When you've got that WAV file (the original of which should always be kept safely, and ALWAYS work with a copy) you can play around with it using various filters and then try out various compression formats.
# Posted on July 22nd 2006 by lazyhound
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
I agree with lazy hound.. Wav file 16-bit or higher. You can convert to MP3 after if you want.
Mike placement is everything. If you are getting buzz it usually means you have the mike too close or the levels up too high and it gives you "clipping".
Mikes, for a simple setup don't have to be super expensive to sound good recording just yourself. The Samson CO1 condenser mikes are very good. Are you using an interface or plugging a mike into the sound card? Samson also makes a USB one. they are about $70.00 You may on the other hand prefer a regular mike. You need to experiment. I like condensers for guitar.
You may get someone who knows recording to advise you as to mike placement, you may be very surprised. When I record myself on guitar, the condenser mike, if using a single mike, is placed about a foot and a half away and foot or so above. You need to move the mike around, with headphones on, and listen for the best placement. In a different room than I ordinarily use, placement will be different.
I find it best to not mess so much with sound prior to recording, but just find the best placement, so you need little EQ after. I record everything straight up and do EQ after.
I record a monthly session with a Fostex MR8-HD, four of those Samson CO1s and get great sound. I record raw, and have barely any EQ to do after due to figuring out the proper mike placement for the room. It took a good while to figure it out, but improved along the way.
I use Audacity too, it's easy and straightforward. You may lower the volume to reduce clipping...it may fix things like the buzz a bit. It's when on the level bars you see it go red....levels too high in that case. Much easier to get it right with the mikes in the first place. It's just a matter of experimenting.
For at home I like the Lexicon Omega interface, It's got no effects on it, it's just a straight recorder and is about $250. The Fostex I use for dragging around. I never ever record with any effects because you can't really undo them properly after the fact, or as easily in any case.
# Posted on July 22nd 2006 by irisnevins
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
Yes, the first places to look for the problem are the microphone and the placement of the microphone.
In my experience, you need a pretty nice mic to get a decent sound out of a fiddle. It's an instrument that produces a very complex sound, and as you've now learned an inaccurate representation of that sound can very quickly turn, ah, less beautiful than intended.
What are your three mic choices that you mention?
Also, as lazyhound says mic placement is often key when recording. You might want to try this (it sounds dumb but sometimes you can find the 'sweet spot' in the room): set Audacity rolling with the mic set up in the room, and then walk around and play from various distances, angles to the forward axis of the mic (though mostly you'll want to stay on-axis), and such. Announce to yourself from each location where you are in the room. Then listen back and see if any of this helped.
Finally, the room itself. Unless you close-mic your instrument, make sure you're recording in the best-sounding room you have.
Hope some of this helps. Post your mic details and maybe I can make some more suggestions.
-m
# Posted on July 22nd 2006 by squeakyanimal
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
Fishman preamp? Are you using a pickup?
# Posted on July 22nd 2006 by Bob himself
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
Thank you peoples. Wow! Yes -m, my mic options are:
a) Fishman in bridge pickup with pre-amp - but I broke off the flange bit of the transducer in trying to fit it into the bridge of my second fiddle a couple of weeks ago and it has a heavy clip on plug thingy that I did not want to weigh the old fiddle down with (she definitely doesn't deserve that kind of treatment). Have messed at trying to secure the plug bit to the shoulder rest with electrical tape - whole thing is heavy, cumbersome and unsatisfactory which ever way I try to go about it - don't want to buy a new pick-up unless it would definitely solve the problems and then I would want something lighter and easier;
b) Overhead mic on stand, not an expensive instrument mic, but too many other noises (like dog barks) and unsatisfactory because I have tiled floors and besser block walls, heater / airconditioner depending on whether its cold or hot, also have to use headphones and these are another sound distorting problem - the sound in the headphones not being anything like the sound from the speakers on the computer, and the sound from the computer speakers not being anything like the eventual sound that I get from the good stereo (the best sound);
c) Cheap light little tie-pin mic clipped onto the strings at the fine tuners so it points toward the bridge from under the strings. It plugs into a battery power supply that I've been plugging into the Fishman pre-amp. This has been the best of the three options from the fiddle's and my shoulder's point of view (although it still picks up the occasional dog bark).
Now, don't for one minute think that I haven't been trying to solve these issues, but each time I make enquiries around town it seems that its forking out mega bucks without any kind of guaranteed results, just maybe's, if you know what I mean. Like for instance - buying 'Inspiration' for big bucks with an external sound card, but you need to have a fire-wire port on the computer (which I haven't got) and Audacity might not be the problem anyway; buy better multi media speakers like Bose for the computer (but is it a sound card prob or a speaker prob or an Audacity prob or a mic prob); buy an expensive overhead mic, but the sound quality might still not be good given the walls and tiled floors I just have to live with (they're nice actually)! Get a new pick-up (and again the sound quality might not be what I want).
So by now I could have shelled out big bucks and still might have problems. No guarantees. I had kind of hoped it was something I could do with equalization only not knowing what the little graphs that come up in the eq options mean, I had just thought maybe if someone explained frequencies or the like, or even if the prob could be narrowed to one source I could do something about it, instead of endlessly cycling through the options.
I was recording on the second fiddle, but it has just developed a crack that has put it out of action till I can get it fixed. And all this without a proper session to go to!!!!! Ah well such is life.
# Posted on July 22nd 2006 by Clear Drops
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
Oh, sorry. I have been recording with Audacity, exporting in WAV which I then listen to in Windows Media Player, converting to MP3 and then burning onto CD to play in the stereo. WAV is the best sound, but the files are very big. And I thought MP3 is what you had to use for CD's. I don't know why I thought that. The DVD/stereo player plays MP3's I know.
Oh and I did a little Audacity course a few weeks ago, but instead of getting my sound probs solved, the people at it ended up around my computer listening to a couple of tracks I'd recorded, then I helped someone record themselves saying One-two-three-four!
# Posted on July 22nd 2006 by Clear Drops
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
The problem is NOT Audactiy... As I mentioned in the private email I sent in response to yours, for EQ, I like the interface of Diamond Cut better but that's personal taste, easier to use....yet, I rarely need to use it.
I always found mic recording better than inline pickup recording. Much cleaner to my ear, crisper. That's guitar though, and from what I have found, if you have only one mic, make it be a large diaphragm condenser mike. Fiddle may be different though....but I do use four of the Samson CO1s to record our session, we get pretty darn near studio results, esp. on the more recent ones after working out the kinks of the room, and actually moving the session to another spot.
Doesn't the overhead mike pick up everything? I'd think a regular one you could aim it at the fiddle much better.... just my two cents.
And.....record a wave, 16 bit or higher. Save that as version one in Audacity. Then make an MP3 for other purposes.
# Posted on July 23rd 2006 by irisnevins
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
Well, as irisnevins says the software isn't going to be the problem as it doesn't really impart a sound per se, and as long as you're recording at at least 16 bit/44.1 I'm guessing the issue really is the sound being delivered to the computer is already not what you want. Since you've tried changing placemet in the room that unfortunately does leave you with the mic, preamp, and sound card as possible places to improve. It's very difficult to EQ out the effects of a bad mic, unfortunately.
Specifically what make and model are the overhead? If it's a decent mic you might be better off using it instead of the pickup (pickups generally give you sound that's best described as 'good enough for live' in the mix). You could hang blankets in a rough triangle around the mic to dampen as much noise as you can and then drown out the rest with the fiddle. I used to do that for vocal recording when I had a much tinier space than I do now, and it worked ok.
Also, I'm not 100% sure I know exactly what problems you're trying to address. Do you have an mp3 example of the problem somewhere?
-m
# Posted on July 24th 2006 by squeakyanimal
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
Thank you Iris and -m. I did go back to the Audacity file on the Poor but happy at 53 track and exported it again in WAV, then I burnt a copy and played it on the stereo over and over and it sounded nice, no pretty darn good to me actually. It sounds like the sound I am looking for. It seems that, as you have said, leaving the tracks in WAV is the best way to go. I have given the CD of Poor but happy at 53 in WAV to a musician friend to listen to for an honest opinion. I don't quite trust my own judgement after struggling with this for such a long time. Got far too close to it. And it is so difficult to explain. How can you, when you only know what it is that you want in your head?
I haven't got an internet site where I could put up examples, but I can email tracks or parts of tracks up to 10meg. The Poor but happy at 53 track is over 11 megs in WAV however.
I did say in the original post that the issues were: a) some buzz on the deep notes; b) high notes popping out too strong; c) subsequent tracks (when multi tracking tunes) coming out sounding different (with less quality) from the initial track.
I now know I can envelope deep notes and reduce the amplification of them which gets over that one; not sure about the next two. I don't know what it is that I am doing or not doing to get these things happening! If I did I wouldn't have been asking for help - I'd have been doing or not doing whatever it is! But I am taking your advice and simplifying - keeping it simple and not fudse too much anymore. And, yes, I will go and annoy the music shop again and buy a condenser mic and try again using a blanket tee pee if is necessary.
Thanks again.
# Posted on July 24th 2006 by Clear Drops
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
You re likely stuck to a spot for recording due to the computer being somewhere? I know I was, a cement basement with low ceilings.....ha ha...imparts some natural reverb! But still, you should be able to make pretty much any area that your fiddle sounds good in, record decently.
It's so hard, to nearly impossible to make a bad recording sound good with effects. I'd look into getting an engineer to come over for an hour, should be about $50 or so, to show you the right placements. I was never able to make anything sound ideal off a pickup either, a decent mike doesn't have to cost thousands. As I mentioned the Samson CO1 fills the bill for me and they are about $70.00. You can get them on ebay for $50.00 also. From what I was told with computer recording the fine points of a super expensive mike are lost anyway unless all your other equipment is high end. I get a crisp clean sound off of these mikes and very realistic....in fact our session recordings actually sound BETTER than the live session, believe that or not, but many will tell you so who have played in them and heard the CD.
Right mike, not esp.pricey, right placement, get close to what you want with the live input. You should not need much EQ, compression, normalization.... if you don't know what you're doing on these things you will make it all worse.... been there, done that. It is not easy, so now you know why a good engineer makes good money! Still with more experimenting you will find a system that works for you....and it never is what you think it is...mike placement is a really strange thing. Little points like if you record near a wall, or in the middle of a room, or if a door is open or closed all make a difference.
# Posted on July 24th 2006 by irisnevins
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
Last year I was playing with a ceili band for set dancers. We were all live miked and playing in a familiar village hall which had given no problems before. Except on this occasion, when the hall had just been prepared for a fete the next day. Dozens of balloons and flags were strung across the room from end to end and completely marmalised the acoustics. Our sound man gave up in the end and we just had to make the best of it we could, smiling wanly if stray reflections off balloons etc caused howling.
That was certainly close to a worst case scenario.
# Posted on July 24th 2006 by lazyhound
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
Lovely story lazyhound. Thanks to you both. Your help is much appreciated.
# Posted on July 25th 2006 by Clear Drops
Re: SERIOUS Audacity question
Wow....interesting....OK no balloons at our session hall. You never know, parties, etc. they may just show up.
So many little things cause differing sounds. We had pretty diffuse music sounds and lots of crowd noise in the beginning. We moved it to a corner and radiating outward, and segregated ourselves from the sound of the listening crowd. The sound bounced off the walls and became more focused, we have some nice natural reverb there too. It's a bit too bright, but panning the mikes to pick up kind of inward compensates for that. The overall sound of the CDs is bright, airy, and sounds better than the real thing!
Point is, little things make a difference....it takes a lot of experimetning until you get it right...then a little thing can disturb it
# Posted on July 26th 2006 by irisnevins