Audacity Forum

Who, me?

Koz

DonkerV wrote: I wanted to try to equalize the voice with the music.... the music goes up, the voice goes up and vice versa.

People seem to ask this quite a lot for example here. David Sky wrote an envelope follower. See here and this follow-up post but David's seems to produce an error for me. Maybe someone who knows Nyquist can make something of these posts?

If you wanted to do the opposite (make the music softer when the voice was heard), use Effect > Auto Duck.


Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:David Sky wrote an envelope follower. See here

Only had chance to have a quick look at the first one - the word "remainder" on line 48 has a spelling mistake (remaindmer).

There is a common problem with all tools that depend on following the loudness or volume of a track. There is no such thing and you have to make one up. It's the "How tall is that wheat field" problem.

Q. How do you want me to measure it?
A. The best way.

That dips you into attack and release times, gate durations, frequency contouring and all the magic settings that most compressors have. A volume compressor or manager is a cousin to all these tools.

Look Ahead is vital to getting any of these to work right and you would do well to follow Chris Capel's lead in his Chris' Compressor tool. He manages to derive the "volume" contour of a performance and apply it to various limiters and volume managers -- all effortlessly and without seeming to do so. No small feat that.

http://pdf23ds.net/software/dynamic-compressor/

So there is somebody who already has generated the first 2/3 of the tool and maybe with enough chocolate, could be convinced to build this one.

Koz

Loudness? It's not a "measurement", it's a subjective response.
Loudness is frequency dependent, amplitude dependent, distance dependent, environment dependent, and is different from one person (or other hearing being) to another.
Girl says "Dad, I wish you'd change that fluorescent light tube, it makes such a loud whistle"
Dad replies "What whistle?"

Three sound engineers:
Sound man 1: "Turn the bass down, it's too loud"
2nd sound man: "No, it's just the guitar that is booming"
3rd sound man: "Well if you'd listened to me in the first place and turned the vocal up you'd be able to hear it".
1st sound man: "Turn the vocal up? Are you mad?"
Doorman enters stage left "keep your voices down, you're too loud!".

Who in their right mind would hire three different sound people on the same show?

I stood next to the sound guy in a club where friends of mine were performing. The sound "booth" was an open cubical next to one of the customer's tables and easily accessible to one and all.

Multiple people trouped up to the booth during the performance and offered to "help." I didn't much like his mix, either, but I learned from his interactions with others that it was like talking to a wall. I suspect that was the only way he could keep his sanity and avoid running somebody through with his shotgun microphone.

Do you know how hard it is to get blood from a windscreen?

Koz