Hi all, .I Dj and record my mixes on Audacity. What do you recommend I do to the mix to enhance sound quality and make all sound levels consistent throughout the mix i have recorded. Sometimes I have uneven volume levels when mixing due to different song qualities. Are there any tips you can recommend to enhance the sound quality so it sounds great when played in a car, home stereo system, or ipod? Any advice would help a beginner like me. Much love. Thanks.
If you have each song/part of song on it’s own track you can use the volume slider on the left side of the track to adjust the volume level.
thanks for the reply, since what i have recorded is a continuous mix and in audacity it appears as one entire hour long track is there an effect or something i can do to it to even out the entire mix. can you also recommend some sound enhancing techniques that i can apply to my mix after i record it to optimize the sound quality? thanks
is there an effect or something i can do to it to even out the entire mix.
That we can do.
Chris’s Compressor
http://pdf23ds.net/software/dynamic-compressor/
It will bring up the volume of the whole and get rid of volume variations.
can you also recommend some sound enhancing techniques that i can apply to my mix after i record it to optimize the sound quality? thanks
That we can’t do. There is no “make it sound better” software package. Your skill as a sound engineer is in knowing which tools in the vast filter/effect toolchest is appropriate to the show.
If we haven’t said so yet, you need to be in Audacity 1.3 and not 1.2. Audacity 1.3.12 has much better tools and more of them.
Koz
For future reference, you will have a lot more flexibility in you post-processing options if you can record them as separate tracks.
You can either use the manual method (best, but takes time and effort) http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Envelope_Tool
or use a “dynamic compressor” effect - there’s the plug-in that Koz mentioned, or there’s one already built into Audacity 1.3 (there’s a dynamic compressor built into Audacity 1.2, but the one in Audacity 1.3.x is much better). http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Compressor
These are the tools in Audacity 1.3.12 http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Effect_Menu
Which ones to use depends on the audio material and the effect that you wish to create. It’s easy to go over the top with effects. Keep a backup copy of your original recording (Export as a WAV file) before you start editing it.
be careful of over processing and “hyper compression”. an over compressed program is tiring for the ears. This is one of the reasons the BEATLES tracks are still popular today, they are well mastered without hyper compression and many people are still not tired of them, partly for this reason. most tracks today are WAY over compressed and this can easily cause ear fatigue. people may not know exactly why they get sick of ‘hyper compressed’ material, but they stop playing it after a while and look for something less brittle to listen to.