Audacity Forum

Hi all. Have just recorded a 30 spoken audio for a new site that I will be posting 30 minute audio talks to. I am recording with a blue yeti mic into audacity on my windows xp pc.

The recording space isnt great with some 'echo' and hiss from the computer. Having moved the mic away from the computer and used the noise removal the background hiss seems to have gone but there is still a slight 'echo'. I will be recording again in a more quiet room later in the week. But I think that that room will still have a little 'echo' as it has a fairly high ceiling. When I recorded the first audio, I ended up with a top 'screen' and then another at the bottom. Both had a portion of audio. It seems that I got them into 1 but not sure how. I would like to avoid that in future if possible but not sure what I done!

When I open the audio now again there is a 'top' screen with the full audio in the bottom. is this usual?

So my questions are: how do I avoid the above and how do I add audio (a missed or extra line) without getting too funky screens. I find the help menu too much to go through sometimes as I don't know the glossary terms for which I am looking.

Many thanks in advance.
steve

Welcome to one of the restrictions of USB microphones. You can't easily separate the computer noise from the microphone by more than about 6 feet (2M). Broadcast analog microphones can go hundreds of feet.

Getting rid of echoes, hiss and other noises should be done at the shooting step, not later in post production, mostly because Noise Removal and the other tools frequently cause more problems than they fix.

People still rent studios for a reason. Even if you do manage to produce a reasonable recording at home, compression or sound processing may bring up background noises that started out very far background during the shoot, but are now a significant part of the show.

Don't record in your kitchen. This clip will always sound terrible.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/clips/EchoSample.mp3

I made a fake sound studio with pieces of wood and furniture moving quilts. It worked remarkably well. I had a quiet, bare room to work in. The "bare" part produced slap and echoes.

http://www.kozco.com/pictures/boothFini ... op-mic.jpg


I wrote a thing a while back about how to kill your show:

The Four Horsemen of Audio Recording (reliable, time-tested ways to kill your show)
-- 1. Echoes and room reverberation (Don't record the show in your mom's kitchen.)
-- 2. Overload and Clipping (Sound that's recorded too loud is permanently trashed.)
-- 3. Compression Damage (Never do production in MP3.)
-- 4. Background Sound (Don't leave the TV on in the next room.)

Koz

When you stop recording and start again, Audacity will produce another sound track under the first one. This is not dreadful. You can listen to one or the other by using the MUTE or SOLO buttons to the left of each track. You can also edit them individually and even export each one to their own sound file.

Click just above the MUTE button to select one entire track.

You can Stop recording and pick up again at the same place with "Append Record" Shift-R. Of course, while you're stopped, you can cut out the bad take.

You can add a label at the fluff point by pressing Control-M, [Enter]. Some people set the label and then speak the correction immediately and continue on, thus maintaining theatrical continuity. They go back later and edit out the bad sound.

"...and so Peter Rabbit was that rap...was that remm...[Control-M, Enter] was that rare woodland creature with a good sense of time."

Koz

ok thanks. i am playing with the original recording in order to get used to audacity.

are all sounds magnified when the file is compressed?
do i not export in mp3 then?
what is too loud?
are there any setting that i need to change before the recording begins?
can i just re-say the misread line and then cut it out later?

many thanks
steve