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 (nobody)...and 708 guests Last 5 registered Oplandisks nothingstar N_loop yipe foxtrotromeo Browse members... |
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i was looking for a thread about general questions about pro audio but couldn't find one, so let this be it... i've recorded some tracks of myself playing the piano and singing, but my main complaint is that it's too QUIET. people have turn up their speakers at maximum to hear it at normal. is there an audio editing program where i can raise the gain -- or maybe i can record it louder somehow? i'm using an m-audio interface, fasttrack pro, with one condenser mike for my piano, and one dynamic mike for the vocals. i'm recording them at once to get a genuine acoustic feel. this is the only question i have, but if you're interested to know what exactly i'm recording, i put them on a website, www.peterholm.ca but i don't mean to spam, this is a tech question |
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You can "normalize" your tracks in sound forge or audacity or wavosaur (last two are free). That will bring up the loudest part of the song as loud as it can go, and bring up the quieter parts but keep the relative levels between soft and loud the same. The downside is this will also make any background hiss or hum louder too. You might end up wanting to re-record at a higher volume. You can also use a compressor / limiter to even out the volume levels, but that can destroy dynamics so you have to be careful. |
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Also check the m-audio docs and forums to see if you can activate an onboard preamp to get a better volume level. |
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its very tricky to make a shit recording sound good - its a lot eaisier to make a good recording sound great. try eq'ing and comping, noise reduction (normally would stay away from it) works really well sometimes - i used to use it alot when i was starting out and had a really loud noise-floor on my first system. Focus on the input quality before recording save alot of headache. |
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You could normalise the signal, but as fleetmouse said, it will amplify the noise as well. You really want to get the best signal to noise ratio that you can. There are a few ways to do this: passive: move the mic closer to the sound source. active: use a low noise mic preamp to amplify the signal from the mic. DSP: noise reduction using a software program. Passive is best, since it adds no additional noise. Active is next best. It will add noise, since there is no such thing as a noise free amplifer (except in textbooks!). A good low noise preamp will hardly add any additional noise and can really boost up your volume. DSP is 3rd best. Different algorithms can do all sorts of weird things. It depends on the algorithm used and how representative your predefined "noise" sample is. The other thing to ensure is that you are using "balanced" audio cables. These will have two audio signals, where one is the inverse of the other. Noise is picked up equally by both signals, but is cancelled when one of the signals is inverted in the mixer to make them both the same polarity. If you have "unbalanced" cables, any noise picked up by the cable cannot be cancelled this way (cable only carries 1 signal). Hopefully your microphone and soundcard support balanced cables. Once you have a high signal to noise ratio, you can use a wave editor to normalise the levels and the noise will not become a problem. If you have mains "hum" problems, this can be easily removed using digital filters on a wave editor or you can use ferrite and things on cables. Providing the mains hum isn't hitting FSD on your DAC, just zap it with some very narrow bandwidth filters in software, say at 50,100,150Hz (or 60,120,180Hz for you septics). Don't bother with compressors/limiters. All you need is amplification. Ideally amplify it in the analogue domain (ie before the soundcard) to reduce quantisation errors if you have to normalise. free:audacity and normalise, money:buy low noise mic pre amp. Hope that m |
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fscking zilty character counter strikes again! All I wanted to say was "hope that makes sense" Even checked it in the preview :( BTW, I really agree with Uelogy's great advice: "its very tricky to make a shit recording sound good - its a lot eaisier to make a good recording sound great. " |
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