I imported an audio recording and for some reason (I have “show clippings on”, the entire audio is red, entirely. The playback is really loud and very distorted. It’s unnoticeable. How can I fix this?
If you turn Show Clipping off, the timeline turns into a solid sea of blue, right?
That’s the sign you need to record it again. Audacity cannot recover from massive overload.
This used to be a sign that you crossed, for example, a sound mixer output connection to a microphone connection on the side of a laptop. Those two are super incompatible with each other and will turn the recording into crunchy, permanent distortion.
What is the show and where did you get it from?
Koz
Did it sound distorted before importing into Audacity?
Depending on the format there’s a chance it’s not actually clipped, and it’s just clipping your DAC during playback. Some formats, such as 32-bit floating-point WAV, or MP3 can go over 0dB without clipping. Audacity also uses floating-point internally so it can go over 0dB without clipping. In those cases, “red” means potential clipping.
Try the Amplify effect and note the default. If it defaults to some negative dB change then it actually goes over 0dB and it might not be clipped. And, maybe it will sound OK.
Note that you can “hide” the clipping with attenuation but if it is clipped attenuation won’t fix the distortion.
May I also share my experience?
I typically do multi-track recording. Some I import as an MP3 and others I directly record. Upon initial import or recording, the sound quality is great, but after repetition of playbacks, sound begins to distort and you can see the waves representing the sound also change. If I sing for example, at first it is perfect, but as more and more time you spend on your project, the sound distorts and your song begins to be a bit flat and quality becomes bad. I export the audio to see if it is just the editing, but not the end product. Unfortunately, end product sound exactly as bad.
I have this big project now where I have to gather different singing voices in our choir into one, but I am afraid the quality might be sacrificed due to distortions. What must I do?
I typically do multi-track recording. Some I import as an MP3 and others I directly record. Upon initial import or recording, the sound quality is great, but after repetition of playbacks, sound begins to distort and you can see the waves representing the sound also change. If I sing for example, at first it is perfect
Playback doesn’t change the original file. There (at least) two possibilities -
Mixing is done by summation so with multi-track you can easily push the levels into [u]clipping[/u] (distortion). Audacity itself uses floating-point so it won’t clip, but your analog-to-digital converter (recording), your digital-to-analog recorder (playback), and regular WAV files are all hard-limited to 0dB.
One solution is to export as floating-point WAV, then re-import and Amplify (attenuate by using negative amplification) or Normalize to bring the levels down before exporting to your final format. Or, you can reduce the levels before mixing. i.e. If you are mixing two files, -6dB is 50% and the sum can’t exceed 0dB (100%).
And/or, MP3 is lossy compression. If you open an MP3 in Audacity (or any normal audio editor) it gets decompressed. If you re-export as MP3 you are going through multiple generations of lossy compression the “damage” does accumulate.