Live band - clipping at start and recording level adjusted.

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Can someone help me sort out this recording please.

It’s a recording of a band which lasts more than an hour so there is some talking and gaps between songs. The first few songs were recorded far to loudly and are badly clipped. The recording level was adjusted downwards half way through the third song so there is a big drop in the overall volume of the performance although there are still a few clipped points in the latter part of the recording.

How can I un-clip the whole performance and normalise the volume so that all songs appear to have been recorded at the same level?

Thanks.
Patrick.

2

You may be able to restore the clipped peaks in the latter part of the recording using ClipFix http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/clip_fix.html
From your description it sounds like the first part of the show is beyond rescue.

3

Thanks Steve - I’m guessing there must be a video tutorial for the clipping fix as that help page doesn’t really speak to me I’m sorry to say but is it possible to normalise the volume so that it appears as if it was all recorded at the same level?

4

As there is “one” change that you wish to compensate for, I’d suggest that you use the “Envelope Tool” http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/envelope_tool.html

If you imagine that this is your track:
firsttrack000.png
Then you would use the Envelope tool to bring down the level of the first part like this:
firsttrack003.png
Note that this will not fix the distortion and the height of the waveform in the first part will look smaller than the latter part because the peaks are missing.

Then apply “Tracks menu > Mix and Render” to “apply” (fix) the the envelope. (and press F1 to go back to the normal “Selection” tool.)
firsttrack004.png

5

The trick with Clip Fix seems to be using Amplify afterwards to bring-down the “restored” peaks so they don’t clip again when you export.

Clip fix probably won’t fix all of the audible distortion but it may help.

although there are still a few clipped points in the latter part of the recording.

If you can’t hear the distortion, it may be best to leave those alone. You can try to see if it helps…

I recommend you split the recording into songs, or at least logical sections. At a minimum, I’d make separate files for the 1st two loud songs, the 3rd song with the volume-change in the middle, and the last part which is mostly OK.

Work on those sections separately to fix the clipping and to fix the volume change in the middle of the song. At this point, don’t try to match the volumes, just try to make each section sound it’s best.

How can I un-clip the whole performance and normalise the volume so that all songs appear to have been recorded at the same level?

Don’t worry about how they “appear”. :wink: Once the clipping is fixed as much as possible, and that 3rd song is evened-out, run the Amplify effect to normalize/maximize all of the songs/sections.

Then if they don’t sound equally loud, choose the quietest-sounding song as your reference and adjust the louder songs down to match (by ear).

Then re-join the sections with cross-fades (cross-fading the crowd noise/applause between songs). That will allow you to remove any excessive gaps or excessive talking etc.

Sometimes a long crossfade (several seconds) works best in a situation like this. And sometimes, I’ll steal some applause from one part of the performance and re-use and/or blend it in somewhere else.