I’m not sure if this is really relevant to this forum but perhaps someone can help?
I have some live recordings that I have mixed and processed in Audacity. I’ve ended up with a mix wheree everything can be heard but it doesn’t all sound “together” if that makes any sense.
I hope later tonight to have some mixes uploaded so that I can post a link so that you can hear.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Were these tracks recorded via line-in (e.g. keyboard) or via an open-mic recording? If open mic, were they all recorded in the same room on the same day? Were they recorded in a proper studio where the environment could be controlled from one day to the next? This line of questioning is trying to establish whether the lack of “togetherness” is caused by a mixture of different room acoustics. Having some short samples to listen to would be a great benefit to the diagnosis process.
PGA thanks for your interest and apologies for my tardy reply.
These recordings http://soundcloud.com/four-rivers-band/sets/four-rivers-band-demos
Were recorded mixed and mastered in October last year on my Zoom R16.
The recordingsa were all done in one afternoon in the back room of a local pub.
Vocals and rhythm guitar were on a line in from the PA, Bass Guitar and Lead Guitar / Fiddle were on line in from their respective amps. The drums were close mic’d bass drum, snare drum on an overhead.
Later tomorrow when I’ve had a chance to remix them I’ll uplopad some tracks recorded at a live show a couple of weeks ago using the same techniques but them mixed in Audacity.
Regards
Mike
You’re much better than Val Doonican .
Steve made a “limiter” plugin which will get rid of the percussion spikes … http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyquist_Effect_Plug-ins#Limiter
Thanks for the comment about Val Doonican I’d forgotten it was on there.
All being well by tomorrow evening I’ll have some more tracks up where I have taken some more time.
Here is my normal processing on these recordings where would you suggest I add the limiter?
1 Record on my Zoom R16 using no effects aiming for good signal levels without clipping.
2 Import the tracks into Audacity and Normalise everything.
3 Copy tracks for reverb / double track vocals etc
4 edit as required
5 Eq as required
6 Compress as required Normally using
3:1 on Rhythm guitar / vocall and Bass Guitar
8:1 in Bass Drum and Snare drum
7 Export Mix to a stero track
8 Compress again uising 3:1
The response time of a regular [dynamic range] compressor is not fast enough to cope with the very steep attack of percussion. Steve’s limiter is an ultra-fast compressor which can cope with percussion. ( use a regular compressor for vocalists, rather than a limiter ).
If you have a separate track of the percussion on its own I would apply the limiter to that alone so none of the percussion hit noises exceed a threshold, [ this will cut back any occasional abnormally loud percussion sounds which will be difficult to deal with later if not dealt with at this stage ].
Applying the limiter to the final mix, as I did above, rather than the percussion track only, does damage the other sounds : the limiting effect applies to all the sounds on the track when the waveform goes above the threshold.
When mixing the final track my suggestion is have the percussion track at a much lower level in the mix than in your original of “tomorrow”, there shouldn’t be percussion spikes protruding way beyond the rest of the rest of the waveform, (e.g.)
[ If you have a look at the envelopes and frequency content (spectrum) of professionally recorded country music in Audacity it will give you clues about the volume and frequency content of the different components, it’s not cheating 
]
BTW IMO your (very good) singer, e.g. “rambling fever”, would benefit from being louder in the mix with a treble boost, e.g. approx 3dB-6dB boost in the range 4 to 8Khz, (via Audacity’s equalizer) . This treble boost should only be applied to the singer, not the entire final mix.
Hi Trebor,
Thanks for your assistance. I’ll go back to some of the tracks I’ve already mixed, fortunatly I still have the original untouched source files, and try Steve’s limiter in the drum tracks.
Next week we are planning to record at our singer’s place where will will use a somewhat different set up.
We will record on the R16.
We won’t be using vocal wedges or backline amps and will monitor on headphones.
This will get away from the problem of vocal monitor overspill onto drum mics.
Then we will mix in Audacity.
Mike
On the music page of this website http://www.four-rivers-band.moonfruit.com I’ve uploded some more tracks.
I’ve not had time to try the various suggestions so far.
I have had a brief look at the Spectrum Analysis of my tracks against tracks recoreded in America.
The differences are obvious.
Here is a before-after of the treble boost I was on about …
it should only be applied to the singer, (it will exaggerate sibilance so you may have to de-ess ).
[ original … http://soundcloud.com/four-rivers-band/if-tomorrow-never-comes-mix-3 ]
