If anyone could please help!!

[Cassaleah]

Hello everyone,

I apologize if I leave out any pertinent information, I am not overly technologically inclined butI really need some help with the issues I am having with this program. My dad bought me a wonderful recording mic to use and I am having multiple problems using this program trying to record myself. I am hoping to make my extended family a CD this christmas as I just graduated with my degree in vocal studies-so I’m on a bit of a timeline/deadline here. If anyone has any (or all!!) of the answers to my questions below, I would appreciate it so much.

1. My biggest issue so far is that I am trying to record multiple voice tracks and I do not know how to line up the voice tracks. I will sing the melody and go back and attempt to add a harmony part to it and ultimately, regardless of how many times I attempt to do it, it sounds like a flock of pigeons because the consonants all hit in SLIGHTLY different places. There must be some way to fix this? It doesn’t seem reasonable that a person could record multiple tracks identically down to the 100th of a second.

2. I am also experiencing a strange issue with the effects options. I have had two separate problems. Firstly, if I record a small melody with a karaoke track (the karaoke track has been put straight into audacity) when I try to do any effect to it (I mainly try to add a bit of reverb) it simply doesn’t work. Sometimes, although less frequently than the next issue I will explain, it ends up amplifying the sound. Now, my second problem, is that when I try to use the effects, (this is more frequent and basically the only thing that happens if anything happens at all) the sound track will not do the effect I chose and it will shrink the sound until it is almost inaudible. Of course I can un-do it, but I am completely unable to get the desired effect that I am clicking on or do anything at all but shrink the sound.

3. My next issue is with lag-time. I understand that this is a pretty normal issue with mics, but I am wondering if this is truly an issue with my mic and not something I am doing while operating it. The mic I am using is an audio-technica AT2020USB Cardioid Condenser Mic. Basically, when I am trying to sing I use my headphones to listen to the track and my voice, however, there is about a half second lag on my voice coming through the headphones. I don’t know the brand of my headphones, but they were almost $300 and they work both wirelessly and wired-I use the wired connection. In my opinion, they are an extremely upstanding brand, so I doubt the issue would be with them. In addition, I have tried a couple different pairs and I have always had the same problem. Obviously, this is really annoying to try to ignore. This problem also amplifies my issue with trying to record multiple tracks, because the lag time causes a lot of confusion.

Thanks!!

[Trebor]

@Cassaleah

1. My biggest issue so far is that I am trying to record multiple voice tracks and I do not know how to line up the voice tracks.

I’m not sure this will solve your problem, but this animation shows how you line-up tracks with the “time shift” tool …

@Cassaleah

2. … Firstly, if I record a small melody with a karaoke track (the karaoke track has been put straight into audacity) when I try to do any effect to it (I mainly try to add a bit of reverb) it simply doesn’t work.

Bear in mind Audacity does not apply effects in real-time , i.e. you won’t hear reverb as you sing-live.
Audacity only applies effects in post-production. So you have to record the vocal , then apply reverb effect to that recording in Audacity.

@Cassaleah

3. My next issue is with lag-time. I understand that this is a pretty normal issue with mics, but I am wondering if this is truly an issue with my mic and not something I am doing while operating it.

The delay in your live-voice reaching headphones connected to the computer is unavoidable, (unless you computer has something called “hardware playthrough” ) , this problem is called “software playthrough delay” .
The solution with Audacity is more hardware : a “mixer” device which feeds a mixture of your live-voice and the karaoke track to your headphones using instantaneous analog electronics, not delayed-digital electronics …

@audacityteam.org

Live monitoring is often unavailable (or you hear yourself in the headphones after a delay) without hardware designed for this purpose.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorial_multi_track_overdubbing.html

@manual.audacityteam.org

Hardware playthrough: This is a method available on some Windows and Linux machines that lets you unmute the input directly in the sound device … Unfortunately Macs have not had proper hardware playthrough support for some years. On most machines Audacity’s Hardware Playthrough choice in Recording Preferences is not functional.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/how_to_set_up_audacity.html

[kozikowski]

The live delay thing is a pain in the neck. I reviewed three hardware devices that can provide “Perfect Overdubbing,” you hear in the headphones exactly what the combined track is going to sound like.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/samsonGTrackConnections.jpg

It’s a lot more of a problem if you’re forced to listen to the computer during the performance.

One of the recommendations is to simply not listen. The people in the illustration have one ear open so they can sing to an existing track without electronic mixing. They are recording “blind” and will only hear the combined mix when they’re done. In real life this would be like you and the person standing next to you are singing harmony.

I know this isn’t optimal, but most computers are not Digital Audio Workstations. If you do it this way on a really short test, you should get a perfectly overlayed sound-on-sound recording. If you don’t, then you set up the Recording Latency incorrectly or there’s another setting wrong.

Yes, there’s two different delays and we can only control one of them.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorial_recording_multi_track_overdubs.html

Koz