Improving an old recording

[kozikowski]

OK, got it. I dusted off the tone controls [cough, cough]. Pump the treble to bring the brightness up and restore a little of the sting to the drums. Turn the bass 3/4 the way off.

OK. I can listen to that.

"But the words you said just tore my heart in two."

Koz

[kozikowski]

Are you producing these songs using MP3 as mix clips? Stop that. MP3 screws up music and you shouldn't use it at all until the very last thing before posting and never for masters. It's making some of your instruments "honky" and cell-phony.

WAVs or Audacity Projects, although Projects without backup WAVs can be dangerous.

Koz

[kozikowski]

You're all the voices on "When did you stop lovin' me?" right? Koz

[kozikowski]

Why do the instruments on "Full Blood Country," sound so much better? It's like night and day. Did you mic them different? Koz

[Trebor]

... I did compress each track ...

If the infrasound was not removed from the vocal-only track and compression was applied, that could account for the vocal volume abnormally fluctuating : the vocal waveform is superimposed on the inaudible low-frequency infrasound waveform. If dynamic-range-compression is applied to a track with high-amplitude infrasound there will be noticeably more attenuation of the vocal where the infrasound has a peak or a trough.

The first thing you should do to any of your recordings before processing them, (e.g. applying compression), is remove the infrasound with the equalization shown below ...

Demonstration of removing infrasound with Audacity equalizer

Remove infrasound with equalizer demo #.gif (72.75 KiB) Viewed 1249 times

No-infrasound-in-Audacity.xml

An XML file preset for the equalization "curve" shown to remove infrasound for import into Audacity's equalizer, see " http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/EQCurvesDownload#Adding_the_Curves_to_current_Audacity " for how to import it.

(187 Bytes) Downloaded 180 times

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/EQCurvesDownload#Adding_the_Curves_to_current_Audacity

[Sam Houston]

Koz - "Sticks And Stones" was originally recorded 15 or so years ago on cassette then converted to digital.

[Sam Houston]

Koz - No, I'm not using MP3 mix clips. I record directly into Audacity creating tracks as needed for each item. Then export to MP3.

Full Blood Country was recorded by me but "fixed" by a pro.

[Sam Houston]

Koz - No I'm not all the voices, just the lead singing on "When Did You Stop Loving Me". And this is another one that was recorded on a cassette and converted to digital.

[Sam Houston]

Guys, obviously I'm not very good at recording and mixing but I'm trying to learn and do a much better job. I've always had somebody else (studios, etc) do this stuff. I just play and sing. So please be patient. And any help is greatly appreciated.

[Sam Houston]

Trebor - So the workflow would be to add effects, etc then run the "no infrasound" then compress that particular track??