Opposite of Bass Boost?

[Gossettk]

I am using Audacity 2.0.0 to edit a live recording of a jazz combo. Everything mixed great, except the bass is booming in the room where it was recorded. What effect would be best to lower the bass presence without effecting anything else?

Thanks!

[billw58]

A boomy recording may or may not be helped by reducing the bass, but it's worth a try.

Try the Equalization Effect.

-- Bill

[kozikowski]

This kills live recordings all the time. It's not unusual for the bass line to overload the microphone making anything else you do irrelevant.

The blue line in the middle of the equalizer is a rubber band and you can click-set control points and pull them around to boost or dip groups of frequencies.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/voiceEq.jpg

There's no connection between the analyze tool and the equalizer tool, so if you figure out which notes are the worst with the Analyzer, write down the frequencies and droop them in the Equalizer tool. As a general, fuzzy rule, you can start at 120Hz and droop everything below that.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/100Hz_Rumble.jpg

That should go a long way to getting rid of theatrical boom. Note that bass curve has twelve control points in it.

Koz

[Gossettk]

So, I used Equalizer>Bass Cut, then Equalizer>Leveller, then Equalizer>100 Hz Rumble. Please compare and evauluate.

[billw58]

Equalization > Bass Cut is probably too extreme. It cuts everything below 300 Hz.

"Equalizer > Leveller" - do you mean "Effect (menu) > Leveller"? I'd advise against using the Leveller effect - it introduces distortion. From the manual:

The Leveller effect makes quiet passages louder and loud passages quieter. It does this in a way that is different from the Compressor effect. As a result it does add some distortion to the processed audio. The only way to be sure if the effect does what you want is to try it. For example, applying this effect twice at its Heaviest setting on a normally-recorded voice can produce an "air traffic controller" effect.

Equalization > 100 Hz Rumble might be a better place to start, but you should really be drawing you own Equalization curves to deal with your specific situation.

-- Bill