Accidental Overdub

Recording of sermon on Sunday was accidentally overdubbed, now the second part of the sermon overlaps with the first part. Is there any way to seperate these audio recordings and return it to the way it was originally intended?

Varlen

Can you describe how you did that? Audacity will not back up a little bit and start recording.

If you have two or more blue waves and timelines, then yes, use the Time Shift Tool (sideways black arrows), select the second show and push it to the right.

Koz

The other media person was doing Media that day, so I don’t know what happened to cause this, and I did not have a chance to talk to her (I could find out if I need to ). I did find that the “Overdub” option was checked and on.

Our input channel is set to “mono”, so there is only one timeline and the blue waves are mixed together, so that both the first and second parts are heard at the same time, overlapping each other during playback. It seems like the recording continued on, and the second half was folded over the first half. I tried using the time shift tool, but it didn’t seperate the two halves, it moved them both together. Can this be fixed or no? Thanks.

No.

Once you have two different shows on the same timeline – came blue waves, you can’t split them.
Koz

Now that we know a little more about this, I would be able to reproduce your problem by having Audacity Overdubbing selected (which normally doesn’t matter) and also be recording from Windows Stereo-Mix or WAV-Out and not an actual physical device like Line-In or Mic-In. Stereo-Mix records everything happening on the computer, so that would have given you two shows at once.

The other specialist was probably recording YouTube music or something like that and forget to reset the Audacity input for your “straight” recording. The two settings are very different.

That’s my best guess based on the conditions.

Koz