Thanks for all your replies, and I really don’t wanna keep bothering you about this. So, can you(or anyone) just answer one last thing for me…the questions about MP3s, which are in the thread right above steve’s last post.
After that, I guess I’ll be done because I really don’t wanna keep bugging you guys about this.
MP3 is a lossy compression format. In order to make the file size smaller, some of the information is discarded. The damage that is done by MP3 compression may be very small provided that the bit rate is high enough. However, the damage is permanent and irreparable. If an MP3 is decoded for editing (Audacity always uses uncompressed audio data) and then exported as an MP3 file, there is some damage done to the sound quality by the export encoding. Each time it is encoded the sound quality deteriorates a little more. For this reason, whenever possible you should avoid using lossy compression during the production process - if you need the final format as MP3, then encode to MP3 once for the final export, but stick with uncompressed formats up to that point. The damage is most commonly heard as a metallic “zingy” quality.
The top track is a mono track recorded from my microphone.
The bottom track is a stereo track recorded from “Stereo Mix”. It is the sound from a movie playing on Youtube in my web browser.
Both tracks were recorded at the same time.
I then exported the two tracks as WAV files and loaded them into Audacity for editing.
Kristal is excellent for recording and as a host for VST effects, but I think Audacity is much better for editing.
I strongly suggest that you take a closer look at it.
What I’m trying to do is…not just record my mic and stereo mix at the same time, but record them on their own channels. So that, one channel only records what goes in my mic, and the other channel records everything else(and not my mic).
That is exactly what I’m showing in my example above.
The movie soundtrack is a separate stereo track (or channel, as you call it), there is only the movie sound in it.
The narrator’s mic has its own mono track.
The movie soundtrack and the narrator mic are not mixed together.
As an editing example, here I have time-shifted the narrator track five seconds.
You’ll notice that the movie soundtrack stays put.
I’m still a little confused about what you’re saying. Sorry.
You’re saying that you got it so that whatever you say into your mic is only heard on either the left or right channel/speaker, and nothing else is heard on that channel/speaker…and every other sound coming from your computer EXCLUDING your mic is going into the other channel/speaker?
Because I haven’t tried using Audacity and Kristal together, but when I tried them each individually, I couldn’t record just my mic by itself on one channel because the only options I saw for inputs was mic and stereo mix…and if I do mic, then it records my mic, which is fine. But, if I choose stereo mix as well, well then it will record EVERYTHING my computer hears, including my mic…which is not what I want. I want my mic to only be recorded on one channel/speaker, not the other.
MP3 messes with the quality of the music. You can’t pin it down to “it sounds muffled” or “it has no low end.”
In real life, you can listen to three violins. Two of them are crappy quality and one is a concert quality instrument. In real life, you can tell instantly which one is playing and you can tell in the WAV file, too. But in the highly compressed MP3, they all sound exactly the same.
MP3 has carefully removed the sound quality of the expensive violin because, “It’s not important.”
No, my microphone is not heard at all in any speaker. I’ve switched off listening to it. Having speakers and a live mic listening to those speakers in the same room is seldom a good idea.
In the rare event that I do want to listen to it, I do it in headphones. My headphone jack does not affect Stereo Mix. I have a 5.1 surround speaker system, but my Stereo Mix is only what is heard in the front left and right speakers.
If you pan one track left and the other right and then Mix and Render, you’ll end up with a stereo track with mic on one side and everything else on the other.
Step one: Mix down the Stereo Mix track to mono. Make sure that only that track is selected and then Tracks - Stereo Track to Mono:
Step two. Pan the tracks left and right and then Mix and Render.
In the example below, the narrator track (mic )is panned hard left and the Stereo Mix track, which is now mono, is panned hard right.
First off, sorry for not replying earlier…I got caught up in some other stuff.
Anyway…
Thank you! I tried what you said and it worked!
Man, I’ve been at this for days now and I was getting really frustrated. I knew there was a way to do it, but I just couldn’t figure it out.
Now, only thing left to do, is try to reduce some of my mic’s background noise in real time. Lol.
If anybody asks how to do what I was trying to do in the future, you guys can direct them to this thread and to ragnar.jensen’s posts. It works. Just make sure you tell them to disable all ASIO4ALL devices and restart Kristal(unless their system supports ASIO and Windows Audio at the same time) or else it won’t work.
