Envelope Tool vs. Hard Limiter

[Black Dog Bluez]

... unless you have a noisy recording environment. Then you're battling ... It gets a lot harder to set the sliders if you have complex background noise. ... microphone hiss. Koz

Yes I have noise from mic or computer or low orbitting satellites? (joking about the last one...I think?), and I use noise removal as much as I can without effecting the overall quality of the track ...and I think the compressor is grabbing any floor noise I don't remove and amplifying it.

[steve]

but how do you measure the floor/background noise, in terms of decibels so you can set the "noise floor" on the compressor accordingly?

Select a section containing the loudest background noise.
Go to the Effect menu and select "Amplify".
If the noise level is greater or equal to -50 dB the Amplify effect will automatically show the amount of amplification required to bring the level up to 0 dB. So, for example, if the Amplify effect says "Amplification (dB): [ 42 ] then that means that the peak level of the selection is -42 dB, so you would need to set the Noise Floor a little above that, say -40 or -35 dB.

(Don't apply the Amplify effect, just cancel it).

[kozikowski]

You get killed when the two numbers cross. -35 or -40 is not unusual for a moderately noisy room. It's also not unusual for the quiet parts of your show. Say your show is recorded on average -12 which is about right for a live theatrical performance. Much over that and you risk overload which is generally fatal.

So the difference between the average show peaks and the compressor losing interest is only, what, [from five is three, minus one...] 23dB. You can't squeeze most musical performances into 23dB loud-to-soft without them sounding really weird. No fades and no single violins in the south forty.

We have people here who sing in closets with quilts nailed to the walls to get rid of noise. I was blessed with one single conference room at work which is remarkably quiet and echo free. I understand I'm not the only one to use it like that. We shot portions of a broadcast radio show in there about a month ago.

It doesn't have to be fancy:

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

Koz

[Black Dog Bluez]

Thanks yall', I think that helped a lot, appreciate it.

Yeah Koz -- that's probably why a lot of the music people are 'producing' these days is in-line, software, etc. type stuff with not much recorded with a mic, a lot of electronic type stuff without vocals, or rap/hip hop vocals over software/ computer generated type music where they never even touch a musical instrument.

[kozikowski]

Which you can't do in a club or on the road. It's only you and your Facebook account.

By the way, we wrote a terrific section on multitrack overdubbing. Keep piling your instruments on one after the other and vocals, too if you can find a quiet room.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/help/man ... rdubs.html

Or even not. I don't think these guys had anything special for a room. I think they may have lucked out because some of their more exotic song locations didn't work out so well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzzCFlMTZGU

The name of the band is "Two Thousand Triple Oh Twenty Eight." They're going to regret that.

Koz

[Black Dog Bluez]

... I don't think these guys had anything special for a room. I think they may have lucked out because some of their more exotic song locations didn't work out so well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzzCFlMTZGU

The name of the band is "Two Thousand Triple Oh Twenty Eight." They're going to regret that.

Koz

"Carson McKee and Josh Turner" ... more then luck I'd say ... it looks like they have (1) talent, (2) thousands of dollars worth of equipment! --thanks for sharing.

[steve]

it looks like they have (1) talent, (2) thousands of dollars worth of equipment!

The "microphone" in front of them is the ever popular Zoom H2. It's an "all in one" pocket recorder, that currently sells on Amazon for $187.00 US.