I would like to get the best quality classical music sound recorded from the Internet to .Wav files. Lately I’ve found that some segments have a "garbled " sound to them. Sometimes the waveform is flatened at the top even though the recording level is less than .5 What kind of recording parameters can I use to get it right?
I hope I can show here a snip of one of my recordings with the tops flattened.file.php
If you are using the [u]WASAPI loopback method[/u] you are accurately capturing the streaming audio. If it’s clipped that’s what you’re going to get.
Many of the streaming services are now using volume-matching so that might explain why the volume is reduced to about 0.5.
No, I am not using WASPI, just simple default MME
Does the spectrogram I displayed indicate the top is sliced (clipped?) off - or is it nothing?
I thought there were options such as reducing(compressing) volume range or, using some setting so that the sound does not get clipped(?) from it being too loud
That’s the “waveform view”. This is “spectrogram view”: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/spectrogram_view.html
It’s not possible to tell for sure (just from the picture) if that audio is clipped or not. It looks as if it may be. If it sounds distorted, then it is probably clipped.
A lot of audio on the internet is poor quality. You can’t make good quality from poor quality.
It is generally better to “download” high quality music than “recording” it. If there is no download link, then it is probably not legal to download due to copyright / IP rights.
Here is a clip of music from YouTube that I have expanded. You will see the gaps. Is that something YouTube did or is it a fault in the transmission? Does it have anything to do with my download speed or interference in the line somewhere during transmission? My download speed runs around 22 Mbps. it seems that with streaming of music from a FM music station I end up with better sound than from YouTube. Maybe I should give up trying to get anything really good from YouTube?
Your thoughts are appreciated
Most likely is that some of the data has been dropped in it’s journey from the YouTube server to your computer. Network congestion is one possible reason for the “drop-outs”.
If you are using the current version of Audacity with default settings, then if the problem is at your end (if the drop-outs are occurring within your computer), then Audacity will show an error message when you stop the recording (saying that there are drop-outs). On the other hand, if the drop-outs occur before the data reaches your computer, then there will probably not be a warning because Audacity can not know what is happening on the network prior to reaching your computer.
Thanks, sounds like network congestion then,and it is what it is.