I am new to Audacity and was hoping someone could help me a couple of questions.
I’m a drummer in UK working on songs with a songwriter in the US.
I have an electronic drum kit (Roland TD-6), a focusrite and a MacBook.
My US colleague has an eight-track and a Windows-based computer.
The idea is he writes a backing track (which I get access to) then I record the drum part on a separate track in the project, then he takes back control and finishes the song.
Is this possible using Audacity?
How do we both get access to the same project, allowing us to dip in and out?
(I’d rather not the project back and forth using dropbox or equivalent)
I’ve been working collaboratively myself recently. The way that I’ve been handling this is to use “Export Multiple” to export each track as 24-bit WAV files. The remote party began the project and wanted to record with a sample rate of 48 kHz, so I set Audacity to also use 48 kHz (48000 Hz) sample rate.
We share the WAV files via dropbox, so we both have access to all of the files. Uploading a single track is much quicker that having to upload the entire project.
For safety, we both keep local copies of all of the files.
All of the recordings are “clean” / “dry” (no effects). Effects will be added later when they mix down.
A good thing about this way of working is that it does not matter if they use Audacity, Reaper, ProTools or anything else, as nearly all editors / DAWs can work with 24-bit WAV.
One important thing is that all files must start at time = zero (padded with silence at the beginning if necessary). This is required so that the audio will line up correctly, even for parts that don’t start straight away. Audacity does this by default.
I agree that it’s probably better if you can share WAV (or FLAC) files.
And just as a “project organization” issue, it’s best if one person is in charge of the overall project and the mixing.
AUP3 files require an NTFS drive and sometimes people have trouble with “the cloud”. The latency (delay) with remote storage might cause issues too.
And WAV (or FLAC) files are just “simpler” than the AUP3 database file and are less trouble-prone.
You can store (or back-up) an AUP3 file remotely and it should be OK if everybody downloads the file to their local hard drive before opening, and then save to their local drive before uploading it again.
P.S.
An unrelated thing to look-out for: If anybody is using a “regular soundcard”, the sample-rate clock can be off. (No clock is “perfect”.) When you record on one device and play-back on another, you can get pitch and timing differences.
Sometimes this happens if somebody is recording with a USB mic while listening to a backing track from their soundcard. Everything can be in-tune “live” but when the tracks are mixed they are out-of-tune with each other.
Usually it’s a pitch problem because it doesn’t take much to be out-of-pitch with the other track. (Not a problem with drums). Usually the timing/tempo aren’t off enough to cause a problem over the length of a song, but they can be out-of-sync after a “concert length” performance.