Recording other people

[kait]

Hello,

I am a speech therapist so I often record language samples of my students. I have some recordings already that I can only hear myself clearly and I can't hear the student. The volume is too low. Is there any way to turn up this volume? Thanks in advance for the help!!

[steve]

If you are both talking at the same time, then no, you can't fix it.
If you are talking in turn, then you could try this "AGC" effect: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 79#p194179

[kait]

Hi Steve,

Thanks so much for the help! But I just realized I didn't save these in Audacity, I only saved them as WAV files. Can I export it back to Audacity?

Thanks!

[kozikowski]

No. Export jams all the tracks and production work into one stereo (or mono) sound file. You can play that, but not the individual pieces.



The big kids use a special microphone or two microphones.



Generally, you can't stand back and expect the microphone to work. People still do this on news events in order to get clear speech.



Nobody would drag that much equipment around if they could fix it later at the station or studio.

Koz

[steve]

Thanks so much for the help! But I just realized I didn't save these in Audacity, I only saved them as WAV files. Can I export it back to Audacity?

You can open Audacity to create a new project, then Import ("File menu > Import Audio") the WAV file into the new project.

It's not "essential" that you save the Audacity project, though doing so means that you can carry on where you left off.
It's good that you exported as WAV rather than a "lossy" format such as MP3. "Lossy" formats produce smaller files but always lose a bit of sound quality and you can't reverse that damage. WAV format is "uncompressed", so large files, but retains almost all of the original sound quality.

What Koz is saying is that it's much better if you can get the two voices recorded properly during the recording stage. Once they are glued together in the same audio track / audio file, then you are at best looking at a "salvage operation". Give the AGC plugin a go and see how much you can "salvage"