secondly, run a high-pass filter from 60hz and below, or whatever you prefer
third, is eqing to fix the sound. cut 300-400hz to remove echo, cut 2,-2.5,-3,-4khz to remove artifact distortion, which is the fancy word for ‘roughness’, cut 8khz to remove any sibilance, and if you need treble, work 5 and 10khz, but only if neccessary. also, cut 3 and 4khz less than 2 and 2.5, because 3 and 4khz affect the overall tone and should be kept as neutral as possible."
I’m a newbie when it comes to using Audacity, but can someone translate this for me into something I can understand for editing in Audacity?
It’s good you wrote that down because they appear to be, for the most part correct, if incomprehensible.
Did they suggest how you’re supposed to listen to your performance to set these values? That will kill you way before actually sliding correction adjustments around. For example, 60, 100 and below are rumble tones and if you get much lower than 40 or so, that’s organ bass notes at church and trucks driving by. Can your sound system do that? Generally, tiny “computer speakers” can’t be used for mixing anything and laptop speakers are actually worse than Cellphone on Speaker Mode.
If you don’t feel like blowing a wad on speakers, good headphones are an alternative. The Hollywood people like the Sony MDR-7506 headphones, both for the sound quality and that you can wear them around your neck and listen to one muff at a time. I know people on their third set having worn them out or destroyed them on a show.
Effect > Equalization and select Graphic Eq. That will give you sliders at each of the major frequency steps. It will allow you to experiment with what each of the different pitches do. Sparkly crisp audio is controlled in the 5000 to 10000 range, but that can cause hiss noise to go up and down, too. 3000 is also known as “babies screaming on a jet.” Sound that only goes 300 to 3000 is “telephone sound.” Etc.
You can’t actually get rid of echoes. If you’re recording in a modern bare-wall apartment with wood floors, stop. It’s very difficult to shoot a good show in a room like that.
You can post a bit of your performance here and we’ll see if we agree with the other poster.
we generally advise, strongly, that you start out life with a clear, even recording of good volume. Attached is a picture I prepared for another posting that has almost perfect voice sound levels.
If you play back the work and it sounds like this:
The Four Horsemen of Audio Recording (reliable, time-tested ways to kill your show)
– 1. Echoes and room reverberation (Don’t record the show in your mum’s kitchen.)
– 2. Overload and Clipping (Sound that’s recorded too loud is permanently trashed.)
– 3. Compression Damage (Never do production in MP3.)
– 4. Background Sound (Don’t leave the TV on in the next room.)
I assume they are telling you to compensate for the microphone’s frequency response by creating a complementary curve with an equalizer. I wouldn’t exactly recommend that… If there are any “terrible” peaks or dips in the response, you can try to correct those, but pros actually don’t choose microphones with flat frequency response, and they don’t use equalization to get flat frequency response. They choose a mic with the appropriate response for the application, and then make any EQ adjustments by ear.
secondly, run a high-pass filter from 60hz and below, or whatever you prefer
It’s fairly standard practice to high-pass everything except bass guitar and kick drum. But, usually the high-pass is set to around 150 or 200Hz. The idea is to keep out the “mud” (low frequency noise) to keep the bass “clean”.
third, is eqing to fix the sound. cut 300-400hz to remove echo, cut 2,-2.5,-3,-4khz to remove artifact distortion, which is the fancy word for ‘roughness’, cut 8khz to remove any sibilance, and if you need treble, work 5 and 10khz, but only if neccessary. also, cut 3 and 4khz less than 2 and 2.5, because 3 and 4khz affect the overall tone and should be kept as neutral as possible."
That’s totally confusing… You can’t remove echo and you can’t remove distortion without removing important parts of the sound. But, there’s no reason for you to be getting distortion… I suggest you just play with equalization to see what it does… The “meat” of vocals is typically around 200-300Hz (with female voices on the higher-end). Frequencies above around 5kHz contain the sibilance (“T” and “S” sounds), so boosting these frequencies tends to boost “clarity”, and reducing these frequencies will tend to make the sound “dull”. Condenser mics tend to boost these higher frequencies for “crisp” vocals.
Condenser mics tend to boost these higher frequencies for “crisp” vocals.
Or, they’re more sensitive to them. On a dynamic microphone (SM58), your voice has to horse around a spring diaphragm connected to a coil of wire suspended in a stiff magnetic field.
On a condenser microphone, your voice has to change the spacing between two almost zero weight slices of foil. I had a microphone lecture once where the teacher dropped a (demo) condenser microphone foil onto the table and it took four seconds to get there.
The delicate character of your voice has less work to do with a condenser microphone and the result is a clearer show.
On the other hand, a dynamic microphone is very difficult to break even under extreme conditions. This SM58 has paint missing and tape holding it together. It still runs very well.
