Long time audacity user, first time poster, haha. I’m big into music trading, and from time to time use audacity to fix little issues with recordings, and have learned a lot about all the different plug-ins and effects. I love the program. I’m trying to figure out a way right now to fix a strange effect that happened in one of my concert recordings. At this concert, the band panned back and forth between the left and right sides of the stage, so the taper had some weird effects happening in his recording. I was wondering if anyone had any advice as to what the best way would be to correct this. When they pan to the other side from the taper, you can hear it in the recording, which would be cool to leave in, except it reduces the volume too much. One channel still has some of the song in it, but the other fades out. I tried boosting the weak channel when this happens but there is too little recorded volume (plus someone annoyingly clapping at one point). Should I mono-ize at these points, and blend the two channels together? Should I cut the weak channel all together and then just use the same channel for both left and right (which will sound weird)? The only way I know how to blend channels together is with a panning plug in set to start and end in the middle, which creates some weird effects.
I’m guessing a bit since I’ve not heard the recording, so you may need to work out some variation of this method to get best results.
Let’s say that it is the person taping was near the right hand speaker, so that when the sound pans to the left the recording goes quiet.
First, duplicate the track (Ctrl+D)
On the original track, adjust the pan position so that the left right balance is correct for the recording where the sound engineer isn’t messing with the balance. (mute the duplicate while you do this).
Click on the name of the duplicate track, and select “split stereo track” from the drop down menu
Delete the left channel from the duplicate.
Click on the name of the remaining duplicate track and change it from “right channel” to “left channel”.
Click on the name again, and change the view to “Waveform dB”
Use the envelope tool to reduce the volume of the track to zero, but bring the volume envelope up in the bits where the sound goes quiet.
When you now play back both tracks together (the original stereo and the new single channel track), where the sound previously went quiet in the stereo recording, you should now hear it pan to the left.
Whoa, just noticed that there was a response, thanks man! I will try your technique, although I found another recording of the recording that has a better sound overall but didn’t record the vocals as well. I’m thinking of lining up the tracks after fixing up the first one and seeing what happens.
Will keep you posted, thanks for the advice!
-Jack