Hi,
I have tried recording at all different bit rates and project rates to get the recorded wave in audacity to sound like the original as it is coming into the computer. Some tracks seems to sound great and very similar, but others seem to have difficulty with sub bass, which is diminished sometimes. Also, the vocals, acoustic guitars and cymbals seem to be amplified significantly on a lot of the tracks I am trying to process. The mix sounds completely different, which has a more balanced and less jangly tone. One song in particular, “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne, has a carefully produced mix that is nicely balanced and sits really well at every stage when I listen to it on Spotify. When I listen back to a recording of it, no matter what setting I use, the chorus sounds really harsh and brash. I have tried turning the recording down so it does not enter the red part of the input meter, and I have not processed it with Normalise or anything. So I am hearing it exactly as Audacity thinks it should sound. I have settled on the following settings:
Default sample rate: 48000Hz
Default sample format: 24-bit
Real time conversion: Best Quality(Slowest)
Dither (None)
High Quality Conversion: Best Quality(Slowest)
Dither (None)
I’ve got some studio quality AKG semi closed headphones and mid-upper price-range Yamaha studio monitors.
I’m not actually mixing anything myself - the mix I was referring to is the mix that was released as the single edit “complicated” by Avril Lavigne. It’s nicely balanced, soft, not harsh or jangly, and has sub bass programmed.
Yes I’ve noticed the sub bass is quite lacking on a lot of the radio edit recordings I’ve made, compared to the originals. The big roundness of the classic sub bass sound seems to be split up into bits that makes it sound more like a bag of low wasps. It’s interesting. You can’t bring back what has been removed down there. This morning i found “Acceptable in the 80’s” by Calvin Harris has a completely different sound to it once recorded in Audacity, that lovely round bass has gone.
I’ve decided what I’m going to do. I used to make an eq preset which processed all my tracks in the same way. If there is excessive treble added and the bass has gone a bit, I’ll have some presets that can adjust things. No-one will ever know.
For me the convenience Audacity brings, such as export multiple, normalise, eq presets and metadata at export, all mean it is still the best for what I need. The quality is good enough. I’ll just turn the bass up and the treble down for now on specific tracks.
the other thing is no-one else is listening to songs side by side, they just hear a song they know. Not many people will listen to it and think “hang on - the bass on this should sound rounder - I refuse to listen to it!!”
Audacity does not modify the audio data that it receives during recording. Whatever audio Audacity receives is the audio that it writes to the track, so if the track sounds wrong there are two possibilities:
Audacity is not receiving the audio that it should be receiving
Something is changing the sound on playback.
How are you recording? Are you using WASAPI loopback? Are you recording as stereo?