Is my recording level too low? Is my amplified level ok?

[bgravato]

Peaks'd left at 1 db because I love to listen to loud (100 watts RMS), so the amplifier would fall in clliping.

Should be -1dB and not +1dB. Anything positive (above 0dB) will cause clipping.

Well there is a little foam cushion/filter on the mic which helped when we put that back on but did not eliminate it. Maybe we need a better filter?

Depends on what kind of problem your getting. Popfilter will mostly protect from the "pops" you get on the P's. If the problem is on the SSS's look at Trebor's advice.

[J,R,D, Ltd]

Well, this Sunday the wall wart for the wireless mic receiver got bumped so it was off, unfortunately this wasn't found till after our pastor started speaking and we got him using a wired mic because we couldn't figure out the problem.(We usually can't see the wireless receiver because the recording laptop blocks it) Surprisingly his voice got picked up by one of the mics on stage even though there wasn't one near him so I have what he was saying but it is faint and I have to turn the gain way up and then I get alot of noise. Can someone advise a way for me to amplify him and remove some of the noise? It doesn't have to be perfect but I need to be able to hear more of him then the noise.

Here is a copy of the faint track with where we got him using a mic at the end.

I also lowered the master Aux 3 volume which was set to 8 or the 3 O clock position and raised it on a per channel basis.

Here is a copy of the soundboard manual if you want to look over the board.

Here is all the information I could get off the wireless mic receiver, maybe one of you guys would know where to find a pdf of the manual.

galaxy audio
any spot
as-msmoor
uhf receiver

I noticed I didn't post my Audacity version or what OS I am using so I will do that now.
Audacity 1.2.6
Recording PC: Windows Vista
Editing PC: Windows XP SP2

[steve]

Everything before about 4 minutes 10 seconds is junk.
You won't be able to get it much better than this:

sample.flac

(270.34 KiB) Downloaded 77 times

Probably best to just do a tasteful fade-in at 4:10

[bgravato]

I noticed I didn't post my Audacity version or what OS I am using so I will do that now.
Audacity 1.2.6
Recording PC: Windows Vista
Editing PC: Windows XP SP2

The recommended version for Vista is 1.3.12 (and pretty much for all other OS's too), it has more features and is actually more stable in most recent OS's.

[J,R,D, Ltd]

Everything before about 4 minutes 10 seconds is junk.
You won't be able to get it much better than this:

sample.flac

Probably best to just do a tasteful fade-in at 4:10

Yea, you're right.

Ok, I ditched the junk and did some work with Compression, Amplify, and Normalize and then put a short fade-in(15 seconds or less) on the beginning.

I was going to attach a sample to this post but the forum keeps throwing errors, last night I think it was saying the attachment filesize limit was 2MB tonight it said 1MiB then once I got my sample down to 1 MiB it said "the board attachment quota has been reached" so I have uploaded it elsewhere and here is a link if you would like to hear what I have now.

The recommended version for Vista is 1.3.12 (and pretty much for all other OS's too), it has more features and is actually more stable in most recent OS's.

Ok, I guess I should convert over to that. I have had 1.3.12-beta installed for a while but haven't been using it, is that still the current version or is it out of beta now?

[steve]

I have had 1.3.12-beta installed for a while but haven't been using it, is that still the current version or is it out of beta now?

Yes that's still the current one, though 1.3.13 (beta) is likely to be released soon.
The 1.3.x series are all classed as "beta" (even though they are now more stable than the old 1.2.6 version for most users). The next version to be released without the "beta" tag will be 2.0.

If you don't want to be an "early adopter" of 1.3.13, just keep an eye on the forum - the regulars will start recommending it when they've had chance to check it out thoroughly, but for now 1.3.12 is the one to go for.

here is a link if you would like to hear what I have now.

I think you've salvaged all of the usable material. Shame about loosing the start, but that's the proverbial "spilt milk".

[Trebor]

I've applied all my magic tricks, (before-after here), but cleaning the lowest level audio does not reveal words which could not be understood in the original hissy audio.

[J,R,D, Ltd]

I've applied all my magic tricks, (before-after here), but cleaning the lowest level audio does not reveal words which could not be understood in the original hissy audio.

Thanks for the effort Trebor. There were no words that couldn't be heard in the original recording after raising the volume. I was just wondering if it could be amplified and cleaned some. I think I will just use the recording without the beginning though.

What tricks did you use to get what you got?

[Trebor]

What tricks did you use to get what you got?

1. Remove everything above 4KHz using equalizer, ( see Audacity's frequency analysis below).
2. Notch out the mains-hum spike (60Hz), and conspicuous mains-hum harmonics (120Hz, 180Hz, ...).
3. Noise reduction.

hematohidrosis (before - after) spectrograms.png (27.4 KiB) Viewed 1605 times

[parketching]

Thanks for everyone that posted in this thread.

I'm not very literate when it comes to recording but have been using audactiy for a while now to record dialog for webinars and websites. This discussion on setting levels has been most helpful. Now I'm a better educated newb to this type of technology.

Thanks Again

Thomas