Audacity Forum

Hello everyone, I am very new to this and have nothing at all to do with sound as a profession. I am working on sounds for radio controlled tanks which use a system made in Germany called El-mod. The system has all kinds of sounds that are loaded onto an SD card and installed in the tanks sound board. They recommend using Audacity to create custom sound sets for eninge and everything else. I have no problem getting the sounds to work while using this program, my problem is trying to make the engine sound true proportional. It seems to be all over the place, no matter what I do. Here is a video of one of the tanks with the sound file I made using the software. It is just not fluid enough and I was wondering if anyone here might take some time to help me out? I would appreciate it very much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpoLc_pWh4g
I am just not familiar with using this type of software and it seems that no one I know is either. Frustrating.....

Hi Yellowshaker. That little thing is a beauty. I'm sure the forum can help you figure out your issues.

The first step should probably be to clarify some of the terms you're using, so everyone can tell what you're aiming for. For example, what do you mean when you say you want it to be "true proportional"? How is it not "fluid? Do you mean that the volumes of different sounds are not right relative to each other, that they are louder or quieter than they should be? Do you mean that you can hear the 'looping' of the engine sound? Once we know what you would like to hear, we can help you get there.

Take care
-J-

Well, if you listen to the sound in the video it sounds good in parts, but not through the entire range. As the tank sits still you can here the idle sound, which is a file of its own. As soon as you hit the throttle, the engine should begin to climb in rpm as a real one would. It should change tone and pitch as it does this. I am using video sources from youtube of real tanks to get the sounds. I then put them into audacity and take a portion of about 10 seconds starting from an idle and contuinuing on as it revs up. I break these into roughly 300ms parts and then install them to the soundcard. My information from elmod states that the soounds need to be looped to make them continuous and clean through the rpms. He speaks german and not very much english, so it is difficult to communicate. Here is a part of an email he sent with some hints...perhaps you can undertsand it better than I?

Hello Joseph,



well, audacity has many functions/effects even I didn't understand yet.


You see at the top level indicators - you should never go over 100% output (more, you see red indicators) -> use "normalize" in "effects" at -0,8 db otherwise you cut off some bits in the sound ,-)


Use also "invert" and "revers" in "effects" - I take a piece, copy&paste it at the end of the piece and reverse it, After that, the new whole piece will be copied in the same manner, but inverted afterwards (or vice versa??). So you get a loop.
Connected tracks can be "repaired" to avoid "clicks". I hope you understand my bad english... Try it out and see, resp. listen to the result. I did it by try and error by myself. Not easy, but it works.


We want to improve our products of course, so I beg you to give us detailed information what functionality remains unclear or abstruse - no way, we are "blind" and cannot see the difficulties by ourselves - so we need help from outside to detect misunderstandable expressions etc. Thankls for doing this in advance - feel free to push us


BTW: I'm writing this weekend the german manual for the gearboxes, the item will be released in the shop on sunday if nothing goes wrong. The translated english manual will be online ASAP.


Cheers


jk