Audacity Forum

This is probably a premature thread, as I've yet to sit down and start playing with settings, but I figured since I'm here...

In short, the recordings of my come out sounding extremely muddy and just absolutely horrible. Too much bass, though I killed the bass on both my amp and my fx processor. Basically it sounds like pure trash, something I wouldn't even give to a friend.

Any suggestions?

I should add that I am recording is such: Guitar -> FX processor -> Line 6 15 watt amp -> SoundBlaster Live soundcard.

I've literally just starting recording guitar for the first time like a day ago, so I am completely new to it. Vocals weren't too much of an issue. But this...

The guitar recordings I'm trying to achieve are thick, crunchy, punchy. Not much I can do with a 15watt amp, I assume, but I'll upgrade later. I told myself I wouldn't buy another amp unless I thoroughly put forth more effort to play my guitar and record the CD I'm putting together. So, this session is just to get my back into playing guitar, was well as getting a feel for where I want to take this album (just something to share with family, friends, and myspace).

Any advice will be highly cherished.

Cheers!

<<<Basically it sounds like pure trash, something I wouldn't even give to a friend.>>>

This is me not wanting to be a friend.

<<<thick, crunchy, punchy. >>>

That's an excellent description of what happens when you get the sound card connections wrong. We assume that everything outside the computer sounds fine? The live performance is clear and not distorted? Yes, I know you're not going to blow away the goldfish with 15 watts, but still.

Are you plugged into the Mic-In of the sound card--sometimes pink? That connection is designed for really low level microphones and your amplifier will drive it into severe distortion. Hopefully, there is a Line-In connection-- two fans with an arrow pointing toward the middle. Sometimes blue?? Then go into the Windows Sound Panels and select the Line-In for recording.

Youc an use a little known Audacity tool to see what you did. Launch Audacity and click once inside the red record meters. They should wake up and start metering the sound level without you going into record.

If you get meters that smash up against zero and stay there while you play, then you are overloading the sound card. Sometimes it's not zero. The show will go up to some number on the meters and stay there smashing against an invisible barrier. Natural recordings are adjusted so the bouncing light meter never goes above -3. Have you tried just reducing the level with the Audacity input control--the microphone symbol slider?

Koz

A note on your amplifier. Because of the way your ears work, you need to double the power of a sound amplifier to get a significant increase in volume. Somebody with a 15 watt amplifier "upgrading" to 20 will notice little or no increase. 30 watts is good. 60 watts should rock.

Koz

<60 watts should rock.>
Cool! I thinking I needed at least a 100watt amp like the Marshal I had years ago (Why did I give that up?). My neighbours hated me because of that amp. I'll probably get a 100watt anyway just to make some enemies.

I am reasonably sure I'm plugged into the mic input of my soundcard. And you know what: someone mentioned that plugging an amp into the mic in would do just what you said. I have a short memory. I do have a line in which has been largely ignored until you just mentioned it. I will definitely give that a shot.

As a side note, I altered my setup today. Instead of recording from the amp, I recorded from the L port of FX Processor into the soundcard. The R output I had going to my amp so I could hear what I was playing above the live recording because the live recording had a lag that was really throwing me off. The result, a nice, cheesy practise amp guitar playing. Not much punch, but at least one could at least hear the notes I was playing. (Or attempting to play whatever the case may be.) However, I played around with the effects in Audacity, adding Gverb here, and flange there. I did a noise removal and normalised the tracks. The most dramatic change came when I began toying with the EQ. It gave me a thick, guttural crucnch that I lacks that Rammstein sound I'm looking for, but it definitely holds possibly once I get MY act together regarding hardware. (And playing. I don't play/practise like I should.)

The guitar drowns out the electronic portion of my music, but that's because I've yet to receive the monitors I've ordered so I can't adjust the different elements to specs yet. An that could also be because I approached this project with the intention of it being purely industrial. The guitar was an afterthought. So the goal is to marry all of the instruments (and vocals) into a nice orgy that even Caligula would be proud of.

Ok, on another forum I overread someone smashing Audacity's ablility to record a "professional" CD. I'm in no position to try and prove him wrong as I'm just learning to walk with this programme. And I'm by no means a "professional". I guess I'm all excited about that EQ thing. If I can I just want to put together a nice quality set of music using all free programmes.

I will use the Line in jack of my soundcard when I record and will report my results. I wouldn't have even thought of that because I just wouldn't have thought of it. I'd still be tweaking knobs while performing voodoo rituals that entails the use of goat's blood and chicken bones.

Cheeers!

<<<smashing Audacity's ablility to record a "professional" CD.>>>

Being as you are on a Windows Machine, you're stuck with Windows Media to author your music CDs. Audacity won't burn a thing.

I don't use Windows Media. I use a full version of Easy CD Creator, Veritas, and Nero Burning ROM. Windows Media, I believe, works like iTunes in that it imports music to its own internal compression scheme, and then blows it back out to uncompressed for the CD. Except in the case of Windows Media, you can't stop it. In iTunes, it's a setting. If you do it just right, the files you produce in Audacity go straight to the CD with no compression management in the middle. Standard Music CD sound is 16-bit 44100 KHz sampling, Stereo.

As far as "professional audio" goes, I've captured live vocal tracks for theatrical shorts that the company produced using Audacity and that worked just ducky. Yes, if you're determined to use the latest and greatest keyboard shortcuts for the top special effects, then you may be looking somewhere else, but as long as you stay out of MP3 land, Audacity edits just fine. Do you remember what they were complaining about? Audacity is about to issue 1.4 which works worlds better and with more tools than 1.2.

You know you can install 1.3 and 1.2 on your machine and you're good to go as long as you don't use both at once? 1.3 has much better production tools than 1.2 does.

Koz

No, I never touch Windows Media Player. If my obsessive game playing wasn't an issue, I'd leave Windows all together. I use Nero 7 (came with the DvD burner; first copy came with cd burner), but not in the method you described, which sounds quite interesting. In fact, I'm eying a copy on Amazon.com as we speak. That would be a welcomed addition to my arsenal of tools. Thanks!

I don't if there are other software programmes the allow the ability to remove pause between tracks (I'm sure there are), but I'm grateful Nero is one as I have a few songs that run into each other. I heard Easy CD Creator rocks!

The person didn't elaborate as to why Audacity couldn't perform as professsional tool (probably just another person's opinion, which is pretty much 95.9% of the internet anyway). Probably blowing off steam because he couldn't find the toolbar. I can see places in the program that could benefit for a more professional interface, but for the most part I love Audacity. AND it's free? Come on..! It gets no better than this.

I just downloaded 1.3, which is a Beta version. I'm usually wary of beta versions, but I think I can live through this one.

<<<I don't if there are other software programmes the allow the ability to remove pause between tracks>>>

The two-second hole between songs is a Red Book Recommendation, not a law. Symphonies routinely mark movements right in the middle of a violin note. You will note that management of things like that doesn't generally come with the free version of the software.

Koz

So you are recording from a "Line out" or a "direct out" from the amp? (rather than using a microphone to record the sound that comes out of the amp).

A very common issue with practice amps is that they massively exaggerate low(ish) frequencies. This is because they only have small speakers that are not able to produce very low frequencies and they do not produce lowish frequencies very well. In order to produce a sound that appears to have some bottom end grunt, the lowest frequencies are ignored and the lowish frequencies (not really bass, but the low end of mid) are boosted so as to drive the speaker harder. This can work well for guitar amps (even big guitar amps often do not have much very low end response due to the open back design - this is a design feature and not a failure - it is what is required to produce the characteristics of an electric guitar sound).

The problem with this is that when you take the same signal that drives the speaker and record it directly, without it being modified by the loudspeaker, then that boost in the low mid range makes the recording sound like mud.

Using a microphone in front of the speaker to record the sound can produce excellent results.

A friend of mine would regularly use a little 20 watt Gorilla practice amp for both recording and playing live, even at large venues, and would mic it up. When on a large stage he would have the amp raised up on a stand, and would also have a bit of the sound put through the monitor speakers (so that he could hear it), and the sound was fantastic.

aean wrote:The person didn't elaborate as to why Audacity couldn't perform as professsional tool

I use Audacity, ProTools, Cubase, Sonar and Audition, and can assure you that there is no difference at all in recording quality. Some of these programs have features that others do not, and some have higher quality effects than others, but the actual recording quality is the same and is limited by the hardware, not by the program.

Nero vs. Easy CD Creator: There are fans in both camps. Both are good CD burning programs and both are way ahead of Windows Media Player for burning CD's. I've used both and currently use Nero at work and K3B at home (a Linux program) which are my preferred applications for CD burning on Windows and Linux respectively.

kozikowski wrote:Symphonies routinely mark movements right in the middle of a violin note. You will note that management of things like that doesn't generally come with the free version of the software.

I don't know if all of the "free" or "give away" versions of Nero support this feature, but the copy that I have does.

<<So you are recording from a "Line out" or a "direct out" from the amp? (rather than using a microphone to record the sound that comes out of the amp).>>

Yeah. I've heard of mic-ing the amp, but I haven't tried it because I'm paranoid about outside sounds interfering with the recording. Where I live is quite noisy. But, apart from all of that, I think I'll go ahead and give it a try.

Also, I'm currently using the Line In jack of my soundcard. Definitely a marked difference in sound quality.

<<If you get meters that smash up against zero and stay there while you play, then you are overloading the sound card. Sometimes it's not zero. The show will go up to some number on the meters and stay there smashing against an invisible barrier. Natural recordings are adjusted so the bouncing light meter never goes above -3. Have you tried just reducing the level with the Audacity input control--the microphone symbol slider?>>

The reply I'm making isn't really isn't too much of an issue, I must keep telling myself that I'm not working of a "finished" product until I get my monitors for sound accuracy. But, you mentioned the meters, which leads me to a question.

I have a few tracks in .wav format, exported from Reason. When I created them, I wasn't using a monitor, so when I played everything on my car stereo, I noticed some elements needed to be louder, some softer. Fine, get my monitors and I'll be ok, I'm thinking. Not a prob. When I began recording in Audacity, I started by opening one of the .wavs and recording over them. Since you've mentioned it, I've since noticed the the .wav tracks sends the level meter well to the roof. I can control the guitars and vocal with the mic input. Is there a way to adjust that? I tried to decrease the volume in the slider, but it still hits the threshold.

In future, on a day I'm not feeling lazy and lethargic, I'm going to go back Reason and re-do all the songs. But, I'm thinking of taking the Vocal and guitar recordings from Audcatity and importing them into Reason so I can adjust things properly. I think I mentioned before that my original intent was to go totally electronic/industrial, but decided to add the guitars later. During playback, certain elements of the electronic portion of the track I'd like to keep are drowned out and everything seems to run into one another.

Again, I'm thinking my solution would be monitors. I have a pair on order, so I'm anxious to see how they can help.

Again, this isn't really an issue such much as a fact-seeking venture.