Hi, I have imported a long recording, edited it (noise removal, filters, gain) and have saved (exported as .wav) shorter selections from the longer piece. When I reopen the shorter segments (.wav from export) the spectrogram looks a lot different, and even though it seems to sound the same, the spectrogram looks a lot “noisier” to me. To me it looks like the colors have been changed. I like the level of clarity on the original edit’s visualization, i.e. the colors are easier to see. The second one (the exported segment) is not as visually clear. Why is this happening and is there anything I can do to prevent it or to change the colors on the spectrogram?
I have attached a screen shot of this issue. The top of the image is the original, full length edited recording and the bottom is the shorter segment that I exported from the original. On the bottom image, time 6.0 - 16.0 is the same 10 seconds as the top image, so you can see the differences.
Thanks!
Everything you did (noise removal, filters, gain) changed the spectrogram. The main difference between the original and the edit is the gain you applied to the track - do you remember how much gain you applied? If you want the edit to look more like the original, go to Spectrograms Preferences and reduce the Gain value (the default is +20). This will apply to all displayed tracks, so it will change the appearance of your original as well.
– Bill
On your original track, the Gain slider is turned up to maximum.
Track Gain (and Track Pan) are applied when exporting, thus the level of your exported file is much higher than the original.
Track Gain and Track Pan are not taken into account when the waveform is drawn (whatever the selected view) - the waveform is drawn based on the audio data, which is not altered by the Track Gain or Pan.
Thank you for your response! I did indeed adjust the gain to be higher so that I could better hear it, i.e. to make it louder… I’m not sure if that was the appropriate use of the gain slider. It makes very much sense that the exported file would carry the changes made to the original, however I’m wondering why the spectrogram did not change on the original file when I adjusted the gain.
Thanks again