piano sounds great going in, lousy in Audacity

[Jim Robbins]

Hey Trebor -- thanks for the input. Yeah----Bruce got everything he knows from me. (I'm a huge fan).

[Trebor]

... is there a tool in Audacity that you used to identify the noise and the way the sound spectrum should sound?

Audacity has frequency analysis: "Analyze" menu, "plot spectrum", showing you the frequencies which are present.

Audacity doesn't Superimpose the two frequency spectra like I did here, I did that using GIMP.

[kozikowski]

OK, well that's one problem right there. Channel 1 should be panned hard left and channel 2 hard right. Keyboard Left should be in Channel 1.That will put a stereo show into the mixer when you advance the faders. The GTR/Line switch should be in Line.

The Phantom Power button should be off unless you need it for a very specific reason.

When you record, do you get both bouncing red light metres and a two blue waves? Do the two meters match exactly now?

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity1_record.jpg

Your red meters may not look like that.

Koz

[steve]

Did you add that spacialization/verb in Audacity?

Yes, I used "Calf reverb" - I think the "Calf" LADSPA effects are currently only available for Linux, but there are other reverbs available for other platforms. The main objective was to restore some "width" to the sound.

As koz has indicated, the lack of "width" in the recording is because you have both the left and right channels of the keyboard panned to the middle and effectively turned it into mono.

is there a tool in Audacity that you used to identify the noise and the way the sound spectrum should sound?

The main tools that I used are on the sides of my head. I then used the "Spectrum View" to go looking for what I was hearing. To see the track as a spectrum, click on the track name and from the drop down menu select "Spectrum". The resolution and contrast of the spectrum can be adjusted by tweaking its settings which are in:
Edit menu > Preferences > Spectrograms.

For deciding which high frequencies to boost, I took a similar approach to Trebor - there's no point trying to boost something that's not there, so forget about boosting really high frequencies because there aren't any. I've got pretty good frequency recognition, but not good enough to say "that's exactly 16540Hz", I'd just know that it's somewhere around 16k - but the Frequency Analysis window and the Spectrum view can help to pinpoint frequencies pretty accurately.

I think Koz has covered everything else.
How about posting a new stereo recording so we can hear what a Roland KF-90 piano really sounds like

[Jim Robbins]

Hey guys -- you all have been really helpful. I'll get back to the keyboard early next week to record a new sample with panning, etc. I'll post it hear for you. Thanks again!

[Jim Robbins]

So a keyboard is a low-impedance instrument and a guitar is high? Thanks again.

[Trebor]

Did you add that spacialization/verb in Audacity?

Yes, I used "Calf reverb" - I think the "Calf" LADSPA effects are currently only available for Linux, but there are other reverbs available for other platforms.

Irish recently pointed out this freebee reverb which is rather good.

[steve]

Compared with a standard microphone input, both are high impedance. The guitar input is probably higher impedance than the line input. You can usually use a guitar in a line input or vice versa without too much problem, but if you have the option to choose you should usually use the guitar input for guitars and the line input for line level devices. Keyboard outputs are usually around line level. Some guitars that have active pickups may work better into a line level input. The really important thing is that if you plug a passive guitar pickup (or other instrument) into a microphone (low impedance) input it is likely to sound really thin and if you plug a line level instrument into a microphone input it will probably distort badly because the signal level is much too high (and could cause damage).

[Jim Robbins]

I think I found something that might be contributing to the problem: I put in the cables out from the keyboard into channel 1 and 2 on the board -- one at a time (isolating each channel by itself). With each channel, I got sound (the "clip" light illuminated, so I knew I was getting a signal.). However, in Audacity -- only the left meter shows activity -- the right shows nothing. It's like it's forcing the signal into mono.

P.S. That's also with the left and right pans panned out.

[steve]

Are you using Audacity 1.3.11 (recommended)?
If you are, go to "Edit menu > Preferences > Devices" and ensure that "Channels" is set to "2 (stereo)"