recording a sibelius file on to Audacity

[Pam Wilson]

I've written a short piece on Sibelius and can't export it direct as an audio file because it uses Wavetable. (I tried recording it with Sibelius's inbuilt virtual instruments program but it doesn't work).
I've been told that I can record it by playing the Sibelius file on my PC whilst Audacity is in 'record' mode - so far I haven't managed to make this work - what am I doing wrong?
N.B.I am a very un-technical musician; it takes me ten times as long to deal with the technology of recording as it does to compose the music so I'd be grateful for simple answers in non-technical language! Many thanks
Pam

[steve]

The easiest way is to switch to Sibelius's internal synth (or Kontact player in previous versions) and export directly from Sibelius.

If for some reason you can not do that, then the procedure is the same as for recording any other sounds from your computer. See here for details: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... e_computer

[Pam Wilson]

I've just spent 2 hours trying to follow Steve's advice - to no avail. (Using Sibelius Kontakt player's sound is a waste of time as it will not produce more than pianissimo volume on my woodwind tracks and won't play the percussion at all - I've no idea why!) My computer's sound system seems to be Realtek high definition speakers so I have set Input & output device preferences to that but Audacity doesn't seem to be recording it when I press the record button (&, of course, the play button on the Sibelius player). I've tried importing the file as raw data but it only played back as a rapid high-pitched squeak.
I've tried importing it as a midi file but that doesn't work either.
I'm getting desperate - any more ideas, please?
Thanks.
Pam

[kozikowski]

If Audacity plays your sound file as a high-pitched squeak, that's because Audacity didn't understand how the sound file was made. The squeak usually means a compressed file -- the file size is smaller than you think you would need to play the music. Almost all iPods use compressed files in order to contain the maximum amount of music.

A MIDI file isn't music. It's a list of instructions of which keys to press on a piano (for example) and how hard. A MIDI file is a sister to sheet music. A MIDI file is used by a computer to tell your MIDI keyboard how to play music. The keyboard makes the music.

In my opinion, you are the poster child for a swap. Give musical composition and management to a kid in a band that has no idea how to run real music, but that knows how to run the computer.

Koz

[steve]

Using Sibelius Kontakt player's sound is a waste of time as it will not produce more than pianissimo volume on my woodwind tracks and won't play the percussion at all - I've no idea why!

I've noticed that the Sibelius Kontakt player produces a very low volume level, but this can usually be (partially) overcome by opening the Sibelius mixer and pushing the master volume up to maximum. This is usually sufficient to provide a recording (exported wav file) that can then be imported into Audacity and amplified (using the Amplify effect with its default settings) to produce a good recording.

[Pam Wilson]

I'm afraid even with the mixer adjusted to max for the wind I'm still not getting more than a whisper and I CANNOT get ANY percussion to sound on Kontakt, so I've given that up as a bad job. The sound with Wavetable is excellent but I'm still trying to find a way of recording anything on to Audacity - don't know what I'm doing wrong! I've set the recording preferences to the same device as the output on my Sibelius audio engine so it can't be that. It says it's recording but there's no waveform appearing and no sound on the playback, so it clearly isn't. Am I missing something really obvious, like some sort of cable being connected, or what?
Pam

[steve]

It says it's recording but there's no waveform appearing and no sound on the playback, so it clearly isn't.

Well Audacity IS recording (which is good), but the trouble is that it is recording NOTHING (which is bad).

Are you running on Vista by any chance?
You need to enable recording from "stereo mix" (sometimes called "What U Hear").
There's some information about how to set that up here: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... trol_Panel

[Pam Wilson]

It works! Thank you so much for your help in dealing with a technical no-hoper! I have now managed to export a first draft as a WAV file, so things are looking up - all I have to do now is learn how to actually use Audacity's edit functions to get the right selection, at the right volume....
Many, many thanks for your help - I was starting to have nightmares!
Pam

[steve]

And now, hopefully, sweet dreams.