I do a lot of old vinyl LP transcriptions and I used to do manual click removal, as Trebor suggests, until I found this software. For restoring clickung and popping LP recordings this software is little short of magic - so there is a good chance it may work on your recordings. It may leave a few if there are major noise events - but you can then deal with these few reaming manually as Trebor suggests.
All the tools we’ve been using more or less depend on a perfect or near perfect recording. The worse the original, the more work you’re going to need to do in post production so it comes out right in the end.
Your recordings have a very high background noise and that tends to kill automatic compression, although it did work. Applause worked, too, although it’s a little rattier than I would have liked, you don’t get the urge to leap out of your chair to adjust the volume so you don’t scare the cat.
I applied three filters - sometimes only two.
Effect > Normalize > Remove DC (deselect anything else)
Effect > Amplify (default values)
Effect > Compress Dynamics (this is Chris’s Compressor – compression set to 0.77)
The Loud sample didn’t need the Amplify step, but it wouldn’t have hurt.
Yes, I realized that. But unfortunately I couldn’t place the microphone anywhere else
then apprx. 30 mtrs away from the Chorus and apprx. 5 mtrs higher on a gallery.
I had to raise the Rec Level to 120 in order to get at least something recorded
Based on the samples, do you still recommend to apply the different filter to the whole
recording or to individual tracks ? @Trebor
In your sample, on what part did you raise the floor to -11db ?
Did you also applied all the filter like Koz did ?
Chris provides settings for threshold so you can choose the level that is intended to be and stay background. For example, below -30, take no action, and above that manage and compress the performance. That should give you loud, dense, matching performances and good low background room noises between the songs or phrases.
The problem is each of your samples has the background in a different level and in at least one case, the performance and the background volume are almost the same. It would be impossible to set the threshold accurately and if you miss it, the low volume performance might surge into and out of the show repeatedly as the singer got expressive.
I don’t think any of these tools will work without Effect > Amplify first. This tool advances the overall volume of the whole performance until the one loudest note in the whole hour reaches maximum – 0dB.
Then the show is loud enough to apply all the other tools.
I think any one of us could make any of the three sample sound pretty good, but we would be doing it manually, not with the automatic tools. You may need to get better at capture or you will be spending days patching together a good performance. The up side is that after about the third or fourth week, you will be a grand master at it and come back and lecture us how it’s done.
There is a joke about a Professional Audio Filter (PAF). No matter what you shot in the field, you apply the filter and it comes out like you shot it in a quiet studio. Unfortunately, it only works once a year – on April First.
When the grownups are faced with difficult capture problems, they resort to special purpose microphones like radio microphones and shotguns. Because these shoots are Very Important and the shows tend to have budgets, some of these solutions are expensive.
That’s the series that Hollywood likes. AKG, Sennheiser, and other makers are also available.
Radio microphones got a little more adventurous in the last bunch of years because of the scrambling of the television channels and the digital crossover. We used to “hide” our RF microphones in unused television channels for each city. You don’t need dead channels with digital TV, so suddenly there was no clean place to put the microphones. I don’t know exactly how this was resolved. I can’t see Las Vegas suddenly needing to use wired microphones on all their shows. It’s just not going to happen.
If they have a good sound reinforcement system then you can get a decent recording that way.
But if you are trying to capture audio with no sound system amplification at that distance then you will never get anything good and it will take a lot of work to make it usable for even a historical record.
If this was not a one off then see if you can’t arrange to be close.
Else look at different equipment which may be expensive.
many websites and mags show shure and others selling rf mikes for new bands that are legitimate. fcc banned them in whatever that old band was (700?)
may have to search for a clear freq to use them. may have to avoid interference to/from other devices. audio mags covered this ad nauseum in past few years. dont recall the details cause i dont currently use them .
first of all, thanks for all the information and your help.
I think audio processing is little bit like programming. You have to be creative and there is not
only one way you can go
I don’t have any better equipment then the ZOOM H2 Recorder, next time I’ll try to place it somewhere else, closer to the chorus.
The only audio processing equipment I have is my Computer and Audacity, which I’m just trying to understand.
The whole recording was done with the ZOOM H2, I set the levels at the beginning and did not change anything afterwards.
@koz
Since I’m not a native english speaking person I don’t know exactly what you mean with “background” ?
Do you mean noise from the audience (whispering or coughing etc.) or do you mean the other background noise ? @trebor
Why are you asking about synchronised movements ?
As far as I can remember they did not move very much.
Sometimes there was shush sound after the main choir sung, it was probably an artifact of compression: background noise suddenly getting loud.
However synchronised costume rustling could have caused it, or synchronised inhaling after singing a long phrase.
Apparently I have the old version of Chris’s compressor, I’d post a copy of this old plug-in but I don’t think Chris permits redistribution …
Authored by Chris Capel (> http://pdf23ds.net> )
;;All rights reserved
;;Permission granted for personal use, without redistribution.
We have been urging everyone up to Audacity 1.3.12. Newer Macs don’t support Audacity 1.2 at all and newer Windows machines support it with holes here and there. Audacity 1.3.12 is far more stable on all platforms – in spite of what the download labels say.
You can safely install both versions on your machine, but only use one at a time. Audacity 1.3 projects will not open in 1.2.
