Hello. I have a mono wav track of two people having a conversation. one is quite loud, one is very quiet. how do I boost the amplitude of the quiet speaker and lower the amplitude of the louder speaker without needing to trim and do each selection individually, or creating audio artifacts and background noise discrepancies? they have about a 30 db gain difference. im using os x 10.4.1. i can go through to amplify and normalize each individual section, but that will take forever and possibly sound choppy. also, in order to reduce background noise, do i invert to phase shift before or after the amplitudes are matching? thank you in advance for your help.
phephe
So you were trying to record your cellphone with the Personal Sound Recorder?
Have you tried to rescue a portion of your performance manually?
You’re never going to get the background noise levels to work right, but you may be able to produce a workable show with Chris’s Compressor.
http://theaudacitytopodcast.com/chriss-dynamic-compressor-plugin-for-audacity/
Change the first value, Compression from the default of 0.5 to a much higher value like 0.8 or higher.
Here’s a wave example of nothing, default, and 0.77.
http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/ChrisCompressorBeforeandTwoAfters.png
I don’t know if it will rescue a cell recording.
Koz
thank you for replying. Yes i used an app on my cell phone to record an important phone appointment. My voice is quite loud with little background noise, the person i was talking with is very quiet with loud background noise, but still clearly audible. i will give what you wrote a whirl and see if i can figure it out. I know how to do this in Protools but it has been a few years so.
You were recording the acoustical leakage from the headphone to the microphone. It’s a design mistake. In a perfectly working phone, you wouldn’t be able to record the far side at all.
How would you do it in Pro Tools?
Koz
The volume spread may be too much for Chris, but this is the sort of thing that he designed his compressor to fix. He wanted to listen to opera in the car and hear everything from the whimpering maiden in the south forty, to the tutti-fortissimo orchestra, all accompanied by his car engine and road noise.
It won’t do noise reduction, but it should even out the show.
What two things were you going to invert to cancel out the noise? There’s only one performance track.
Koz
I would use various plugins, mostly the oxford dynamic compressor/limiter. As for the other question, I would create a duplicate track, invert it, and do multiband pass to phase cancel the inaudible highs and lows then play both tracks as a stereo pair. It won’t be perfect but should be better. I didn’t have time to try Chris’s compressor plugin yet but it sounds like what I need. Thanks again for the advice
As for the other question, I would create a duplicate track, invert it, and do multiband pass to phase cancel the inaudible highs and lows then play both tracks as a stereo pair.
There is a promotional announcement on PBS which does that. She sounds like she’s speaking from behind me. It’s super annoying.
Koz
I would use various plugins, mostly the oxford dynamic compressor/limiter.
Why aren’t you doing it in Pro Tools now?
Koz
There is a promotional announcement on PBS which does that. She sounds like she’s speaking from behind me. It’s super annoying.
Maybe if I write them a big check, they’ll stop doing that. See? It worked!!
Koz