1 Channel Seems To Be Higher Than The Other.....

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steve
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Re: 1 Channel Seems To Be Higher Than The Other.....

Post by steve » Wed Aug 24, 2011 6:52 pm

If that is as it is recorded, then the recording level is still too high. You need to be able to see clear daylight between the top bottom of the blue waveform and the top/bottom of the track.
If you look at the Green meter bar near the top, those two little red marks are "clipping indicators", showing that the audio is clipped on both left and right channels.
It would probably help if you click on the right edge of the meter toolbar and drag it over to the right. You can make the meters full screen width which makes it a lot easier to see the recording and playback levels.
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Gale Andrews
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Re: 1 Channel Seems To Be Higher Than The Other.....

Post by Gale Andrews » Wed Aug 24, 2011 10:08 pm

jb3funk wrote: Still The Lower Waveform Seems To Be Slightly Smaller) I Dont Know If This Is Much A Problem

Last Question About Normalize:

A Friend Told Me To Record My Songs At -2 On the mixer,Then Normalize It To 0 db To Get That Digital Effect (I Dont know If This Is True)

Remove Any Dc Offset...I Keep This Option Unticked Yes?
After you have turned the levels down a bit more on the mixer (so that you have some space above and below the waveform and do not get any red clipping lines on Meter Toolbar), then Effect > Normalize is good. If you are making an audio CD, -1 dB would be better than 0 dB because some CD players can distort at 0 dB even though they shouldn't.

You can just leave "Remove any DC offset" checked (on) - you can't trust you do not have offset given you are already recording unbalanced, though you do not have any serious offset from the centre zero position according to the image.



Gale
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jb3funk
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Re: 1 Channel Seems To Be Higher Than The Other.....

Post by jb3funk » Thu Aug 25, 2011 12:25 am

Untitled.jpg
Untitled.jpg (257.3 KiB) Viewed 1216 times
Did What You Said About The Volume On My Mixer..As You Can See The bar Going To -6 Or So But I noticed The 2 Bars Are Not At -6..One


I Dont If This Is A Problem Or How To Fix This But I Think All Is Good Now...

Thanks Again...

Great Help

Regards

jb3funk
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Re: 1 Channel Seems To Be Higher Than The Other.....

Post by jb3funk » Thu Aug 25, 2011 12:31 am

Untitled 3.png
Untitled 3.png (218.94 KiB) Viewed 1216 times
Got It Guys...

As You See From The Picture...No Red (Clipping)

After I Normalized It,It Fixed Itself And The 2 Bars Are Equal Now...

Thanks Again For Your Help


Great Forum

Regards

jb3funk
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Re: 1 Channel Seems To Be Higher Than The Other.....

Post by jb3funk » Thu Aug 25, 2011 12:37 am

Another Thing Is...

The Input Level Meter...

Is It Ok To Put At -6 Or What Would Your Recommend?

steve
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Re: 1 Channel Seems To Be Higher Than The Other.....

Post by steve » Thu Aug 25, 2011 4:34 am

Congratulations - got there in the end :D
While you are recording, a peak level of around -6 dB is ideal. In the days of tape recording it was important to push the recording level as high as possible because the "noise floor" of tape was relatively high, but not so with digital recording. The digital noise floor is extremely low, so you can afford to leave a little head room. Also, tape was quite forgiving if the recording was recorded a bit too loud, whereas digital distortion is much less forgiving.

Now that we can see all of the waveform you'll notice that the difference between the left and right channels was only about 4 dB, which is about enough to be noticeable on a good playback system, but really is not very much at all. So yes it was worth fixing, but it doubt that it was very noticeable unless you were really listening for it. I would guess that the "out-of balance" looked a lot worse than it sounded.
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jb3funk
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Re: 1 Channel Seems To Be Higher Than The Other.....

Post by jb3funk » Thu Aug 25, 2011 8:53 am

Ye


Thanks To You Steve & Gayle

Great Support Forum!!!

i Wouldn't Mind,I made Alot Of Recordings The Other Way (Vinyl Collection) With The Clipping

But As You Said,You Would Not Really Notice It (Only On A Big System)

Alot Of Time Went Into Recording Those....Lol...

Regards

jb3funk
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Re: 1 Channel Seems To Be Higher Than The Other.....

Post by jb3funk » Thu Aug 25, 2011 1:10 pm

Is There A Way That I Can Fix Those Other Recordings I Did (Without The Clipping)


Maybe Could Normalize It Bk To -6 (Dont Know If Will Loose Sound Qaulity That Way)

steve
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Re: 1 Channel Seems To Be Higher Than The Other.....

Post by steve » Thu Aug 25, 2011 5:11 pm

Unfortunately, clipping is notoriously difficult to repair. In most cases, "repair" will cause as much damage as it fixes, so it's usually not worth the time and trouble, as doing a good repair job is likely to take at least as much time and effort as re-recording.

Unlike tape distortion that "squashes" peaks if they go too high, digital clipping literally "chops off" the waveform at +/- 1. Any peaks that try to exceed the 0 dB limit are totally missing. To "repair" digital clipping requires that the repair tool can physically know what the missing part should be.
For very simple waveforms such as sine waves, the "Clip Fix" effect can make a reasonably good guess at what the missing part should have been, but on more complex waveforms it really does not stand a chance.

This difficulty is why we stress that it's better if the original recording is a bit low (easy to adjust with Amplify or Normalize), rather then too high (near impossible to make a perfect fix).

"Recording" is a skill (even "simple" vinyl to digital transfers) and the more you do, the more expert you will become at it.
It's not difficult to transfer vinyl to CD, but there's a lot of tips and tricks to making a really good professional quality job of it, which is why there's a lot written about it in the documentation (for example this tutorial http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Samp ... gitization ).
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waxcylinder
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Re: 1 Channel Seems To Be Higher Than The Other.....

Post by waxcylinder » Mon Aug 29, 2011 2:10 pm

steve wrote: ... "Recording" is a skill (even "simple" vinyl to digital transfers) and the more you do, the more expert you will become at it ...
I totally endorse this statement entirely. My biggest mistake when I started out as a keenie newbie was to start right off with my favourite LPs and singles - so when I got better later I felt I just had to go back and redo those. My advice would always be to start out with some LPs that you care less a bit and only ever played infrequently.

On thinking about it I may just add this advice to the tutorials ...


WC
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