Audacity Forum

Dear Audacity people,
I have an 8th grade science project were I'm recording different combinations of picks and strings(of different materials) being used on a guitar with Audacity. I need to determine which combination has the most volume and clarity. I'm planning to use a decibel format to represent the volume of each strum. There are a lot of numbers and decibels, so I was wondering...how can I find the maximum decibel volume of each recording?

Thanks for your time. -Nikki

You can't do "clarity," but you can do volume pretty easily. You can use an expanded version of the volume meters.

Click on the right edge of the sound meters and pull to the right. They will get larger and much easier to see.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity1_playback.jpg

You can even undock them and make them larger still.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity1_full.jpg

Those meter peaks are the digital volume values.

How are you going to control for strum? I can make any guitar string sound louder and softer by strumming harder. Also as with any instrument like this, the attack of the note is very loud and non-musical. If you try to analyze it, you will just see noise. So then you get to decide where in the note decay you wish to measure.

Koz

You might be able to do clarity with Analyze > Spectrum. This is an analysis of one piano note. G two octaves down, I think.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/piano_G1.jpg

So that's G1, not quite falling off the end of the keyboard. Everything to the right of that very high peak is harmonics and overtones which determine note "quality." You could make a case that the more overtones, the "clearer" the note. It's not strictly true. It can stay the same clarity and just get "richer" and "fuller."

Koz

nikkiscruz wrote:I have an 8th grade science project

Sounds much like this project: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 13&t=53280

Thanks, I figured it out. I made a machine that strums the guitar the same every time. -nikki