higher/lower content volume separation

Effects, Recipes, Interfacing with other software, etc.
Forum rules
If you require help using Audacity, please post on the forum board relevant to your operating system:
Windows
Mac OS X
GNU/Linux and Unix-like
Post Reply
atenzor
Posts: 24
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 12:32 am
Operating System: Please select

higher/lower content volume separation

Post by atenzor » Tue May 27, 2014 5:02 am

Hi guys, im sure some of you might help me with this.

Im looking for a feature that allows you to mute either higher volume parts of a song or lower volume parts.

For example:

the sample starts and you barely hear a thing in terms of music and all of a sudden a vocal is heard at higher volume than the background music.
is there a way to filter or mute in terms of dB levels with a threshold where you want to mute or cut the volume below or above that threshold?

so, in effect, you can be left with either the background sound that is low volume or vocal (or other instruments) that have higher volume.

Keep in mind im not trying to elevate all sounds to sound the same, just trying to mute them (silence). you might say to use the silence command, but that takes too much
time manually, im looking for a script or tool/software that can automatically mute all sounds (or frequencies, depends) below or above a certain threshold set.

I hope you guys understand what im looking for, and im not sure if this is the correct place to post this. Thanks!

Dan

kozikowski
Forum Staff
Posts: 68902
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2007 5:57 pm
Operating System: macOS 10.13 High Sierra

Re: higher/lower content volume separation

Post by kozikowski » Tue May 27, 2014 6:39 am

suppressing low sounds is easy. Effect > Noise Gate. It's designed to strip off quiet noises in performances. Higher is harder. I don't think there's a pre-baked effect for that — although Noise Gate may have an option.

You understand it's not going to split a performance into just low or just high? When a gate allows a high level sound to go through, it's going to allow everything through, low and high. Similarly, when it "ducks" a high level sound, the show is going to go to silence, not leave the low sounds alone.

This question is dangerously close to "help me split the violins from the oboes in the orchestra." We can't do that, either.

Koz

Robert J. H.
Posts: 3633
Joined: Thu May 31, 2012 8:33 am
Operating System: Windows 10

Re: higher/lower content volume separation

Post by Robert J. H. » Tue May 27, 2014 7:12 am

Duplicate the track, apply the noise gate and invert one track, this should you give back the suppressed low-volume sounds. The lookahead might interfere with that though.

Gale Andrews
Quality Assurance
Posts: 41761
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 12:02 am
Operating System: Windows 10

Re: higher/lower content volume separation

Post by Gale Andrews » Tue May 27, 2014 7:18 pm

I don't think there is a feature request here so I moved this to "Audio Processing".

Audacity does not ship with a Noise Gate but you can install a Nyquist Noise Gate from http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyqui ... Noise_Gate . Installation instructions for Nyquist plug-ins are at: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Downl ... ns#install .


Gale
________________________________________FOR INSTANT HELP: (Click on Link below)
* * * * * Tips * * * * * Tutorials * * * * * Quick Start Guide * * * * * Audacity Manual

atenzor
Posts: 24
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 12:32 am
Operating System: Please select

Re: higher/lower content volume separation

Post by atenzor » Tue May 27, 2014 11:19 pm

Thanks guys, that Nyquist plugin is exactly what I needed! many thanks to all! :)

Dan

Post Reply