Using Windows 7 Home Premium, Audacity 2.0.3.
I’ve been using Audacity for a year or so now, and have found the tutorials and manual really great. However, I can’t seem to find an answer to a problem I have at the moment (perhaps there isn’t one!).
I’ve recorded someone’s voice telling a story, I used a Tascam DR-05. When they heard it back later, they wanted to add a line or two. So I recorded that (on the same machine), but it was in a different location in a different room. I’ve inserted the additional words into the narrative where they need to be, but perhaps not surprisingly there is a distinct difference in voice tone and sound, presumably to do with room dynamics etc.
My question is whether there is anything I can do to camouflage this difference and/or to balance out the tone and sound.
Any help or tips would be much appreciated, thank you.
Depending on how much “room sound” there is, you may not be able to make them sound alike.
First, match the volume.
You can try using the Equalization effect. That may, or may not help. You’ll just have to experiment by ear. The Graph Equalizer mode is usually easier to experiment with than the Draw Curves mode. Try moving 3 or 4 adjacent sliders at a time to zoom-in on the frequency bands that might help. Don’t use a ton of EQ… Probably ± 6dB is the most you can go without over-doing it.
When you “splice-in” the changes, use a short cross-face (fade-out, fade-in, and overlap) so there are no sudden-instant change in the background sound.
If the room noise is significantly different, you can take a selection of noise-only and mix the noise in. That should work fairly well if the original is noisier than the edits. If the new parts are noisier, again you may want to cross-fade some of that noise into the splice area, but it’s probably a bad idea to add noise to the entire recording.
When they heard it back later, they wanted to add a line or two.
That’s deadly. Your comeback line is: “I’ll see if I can get the same hall where the original was recorded. Without that, the only other option is to record the whole thing again.”
That usually cures the insane urge to micromanage the show.
This is also the reason serious recordings are done in soundproof studios. Any soundproof studio can be used for post production assuming you have the same microphone and recorder.
Best of luck.
Koz
Spot on Koz…I allowed myself to be pushed against my better judgement. Thanks too DVDdoug. I shall play around with the technicals and see if I can sort something. If not then it’s no longer my problem.
Many thanks
RobNap