So I am working on a project and in the project there is a part where it is a marching band bass drum and a snare that is being played in the background of a sports tv announcer and the snare is too quiet and not noticable at all. The snare and bass are the same track. I want the snare to be louder but without losing the thump of the bass drum and maybe even add more thump. I’ve already tried raising the eq of the higher frequencies for the snare but that lost the thump of the bass. Help is greatly appreciated.
And the sports announcer is on a separate track, right?
Koz
Try using the Equalizer effect. (For experimenting, I recommend the Graphic EQ mode instead of the Draw Curves mode.) The sliders on the left control the bass and the sliders on the right control the higher frequencies.
The bass drum should be easy to boost because there shouldn’t be much else in the bass range (although there may be low-frequency noise). Try boosting between 50Hz & 100Hz. Try to find the one or two sliders that have the greatest effect. You may have to try some slightly higher or lower frequencies. Be careful with the lowest frequencies… Most playback systems can’t reproduce deep bass… Strong-deep bass requires big woofers/subwoofers and powerful amplifiers.
For the snare try the sliders in the 2000Hz to 3000Hz range. Again, you may need to try some slightly higher or lower frequencies. This adjustment will also affect the “character” or “tone” of the announcer’s voice and it will affect the brass and any other instruments that may be present.
After boosting any frequencies with the equalizer, you may have potential* clipping (distortion). If Audacity is set-up to show clipping you’ll see red lines in the waveform display. After boosting, but before exporting, run the Amplify effect. The Amplify effect will scan the file and default to whatever change is necessary (up or down) for normalized/maximized 0dB peaks. Applying the default gain change will prevent clipping in the saved/exported file.
NOTE - All real-world sounds consist of more than one frequency. There are harmonics and overtones. This is why no two singers sound alike even when they sing the exact-same notes, and it’s why a piano sounds different from a trumpet when they are playing the exact-same notes. There is a LOT of overlap between voices and different sounds so you generally cannot isolate and adjust one voice/instrument without affecting everything else. To some extent, you may be able to “enhance” or “tone-down” certain voices/instruments/sounds, but there will usually be some effect on other sounds too.
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- I say “potential” clipping because Audacity itself uses floating-point and it won’t clip. But, the exported file may be clipped/limited to 0dB (depending on the format), and your digital-to-analog converter is always hard-limited to 0dB by the nature of it’s design.