Adjusting stereo with when recorded with Zoom H6

[ZoneIII]

Here is a screenshot. The bottom two tracks are the side track and the duplicate of it. The bottom one has been inverted. As you can see, there is virtually no difference although when I executed the invert, I saw a slight change in the graph but it's hardly noticeable.

I must be doing something wrong - obviously.

You mentioned a plug-in. Which one are you referring to and how do I access it. I have all the plug-ins that I know of for my Zoom. The only one I couldn't install was the 32 bit ASIO driver. I got an error when I tried to install that one.

[steve]

The plug-in is much less effort.

but less "educational"

I wish I could get that feature to work in Audacity

If you could post a (preferably short) sample somewhere on the Internet and then post a download link I'll have a look.
sendspace.com allows files up to 300 MB to be posted without requiring registration.

[steve]

The bottom two tracks are the side track and the duplicate of it. The bottom one has been inverted. As you can see, there is virtually no difference

Zoom in closer and you will see that it is inverted.
The quick way to zoom in and out is to hold down the Ctrl key and rotate the mouse wheel (assuming that you have a mouse with a wheel).

[ZoneIII]

I'll check that out (zooming again) but shouldn't I see the graphs moving in opposite directions?

BTW, I confirmed that I have both the 64-bit and 32-bit MS decoder .dlls in Audacity plug-ins.

I apologize if I seem to be an idiot. I'm not really but this stuff is new to me so my questions are probably pretty dumb. Again, I appreciate your help and patience.

[ZoneIII]

"If you could post a (preferably short) sample somewhere on the Internet and then post a download link I'll have a look.
sendspace.com allows files up to 300 MB to be posted without requiring registration."

Let's see if this works. Here's a zipped Audacity project. I just imported a song and didn't do anything with it. Sorry for the low audio quality. I didn't feel like repeating. I made it the lowest quality WAV format that the Zoom allows because the this feature only works with WAV files.


https://www.sendspace.com/file/vqtk1ling

[steve]

Let's see if this works. Here's a zipped Audacity project.

Almost .... I've got the _data folder but not the .AUP file. Both parts of the project are needed.
The AUP file can be posted directly to the forum - use the "Upload attachment" option below the message composing box.

[ZoneIII]

"Almost .... I've got the _data folder but not the .AUP file. Both parts of the project are needed.
The AUP file can be posted directly to the forum - use the "Upload attachment" option below the message composing box"

I hope the attached is what you need.

Like a dummy, I didn't see the Zoom plug-in in Audacity. When I read the track into audacity, the bottom track is clearly the side mic track. I thought I had it! But then I found that the Zoom stereo separation tool does really strange things. For example, I may turn down the side mic volume but it makes it go up. Or it makes both the mid and side mic go up. (I have the track selected correctly.) It does really strange and inconsistent things.

So then I decided that since I had a mid and side track, all I would have to do is what was suggested above. That is, split the stereo track into two mono tracks and then adjust he volume of each separately. At first I thought that the gain wasn't working because the graph doesn't show any change when I change the gain but I see that the volume does go up even though the graph doesn't show it. And, after inverting the duplicate side channel, I to see that is inverted now.

I just wish the Zoom add-on would work right. I'm thinking that maybe it just isn't compatible with Audacity. The effect is really pronounced as you adjust it while monitoring the Zoom but the Zoom tool acts crazy and inconsistently. One time it will do as expected, the next time it will do the opposite and the next time it will change both the mid and side equally.

The reason I wanted to get the stereo separation thing working is that I'm going to New Orleans next month and I realized that it would be fun to record in blues and jazz clubs as well as record street musicians. In clubs, it would be nice to balance the center mic with the side mics to get just the right about of audience noise, etc. It could work really well with passing street parades too. It looks like I will probably have to adjust that when I record if I want to have any reliable control of stereo separation. Or maybe I'll figure out why it's not working right. Even so, I learned a lot with your help.

[steve]

I hope the attached is what you need.

Yes, that's it.

By the way, to "quote" some text, scroll down below the message compose box and select the text from a previous post, then click the "Quote" button that is at the top right corner of that message. The selected text will be copied into the message composing box with "quote tags" either side, looking like this:

Code: Select all

[quote]quoted text here[/quote]

The technique that I described definitely works. Try importing these two files into Audacity, then using the mute or solo buttons, switch from one to the other and compare them. The difference is most evident when listening through headphones.

Doing an "A/B" comparison is easier if you set the solo button behaviour to "Simple". See here for how to do that: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tr ... ences.html

[Gale Andrews]

I didn't see the Zoom plug-in in Audacity. When I read the track into audacity, the bottom track is clearly the side mic track. I thought I had it! But then I found that the Zoom stereo separation tool does really strange things. For example, I may turn down the side mic volume but it makes it go up. Or it makes both the mid and side mic go up. (I have the track selected correctly.) It does really strange and inconsistent things. [...] I just wish the Zoom add-on would work right. I'm thinking that maybe it just isn't compatible with Audacity. The effect is really pronounced as you adjust it while monitoring the Zoom but the Zoom tool acts crazy and inconsistently.

It behaves completely consistently compared to doing the task manually, as far as I can tell.

You are running it on the original MS file, aren't you?

So then I decided that since I had a mid and side track, all I would have to do is what was suggested above. That is, split the stereo track into two mono tracks and then adjust he volume of each separately.

After splitting to mono, you have to duplicate the side channel, invert the duplicate then join the original side channel and the inverted, duplicate side channel into a stereo track.

At first I thought that the gain wasn't working because the graph doesn't show any change when I change the gain but I see that the volume does go up even though the graph doesn't show it.

The gain sliders and the pan sliders are applied in real time as the track is played but do not modify the audio data stored on disk.

When you mix and render the tracks, the gain is rendered to the data and the waveform will change.


Gale

[steve]

The task can also be done using the Nyquist Channel Mixer plugin (http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyqui ... nnel_Mixer)
Perhaps I should add a MS Decoder preset to it?