Help for Audacity on Windows.
Forum rules
This forum is for Audacity on Windows.
Please state which version of Windows you are using,
and the exact three-section version number of Audacity from "Help menu > About Audacity".
Audacity 1.2.x and 1.3.x are obsolete and no longer supported. If you still have those versions, please upgrade at
https://www.audacityteam.org/download/.
The old forums for those versions are now closed, but you can still read the archives of the
1.2.x and
1.3.x forums.
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steve
- Site Admin
- Posts: 81628
- Joined: Sat Dec 01, 2007 11:43 am
- Operating System: Linux *buntu
Post
by steve » Sun Apr 03, 2016 4:34 pm
formeruser wrote:Your comment about -80 dB being not credible scared me.
I agree that -80 dB seems a bit low.
If you really are achieving -80 dB with the recording level turned up enough to get a good strong recording (peak level around -6 dB), then try holding a mechanical wristwatch about 10 cm from the microphone, then Normalize the "silent" recording to about -6 dB. Can you hear the watch ticking? With my setup and my watch, I can hear the ticking though it is almost buried below the background noise. When set up for voice recording, my gear / recording space has a noise floor of around -70 dB, and that is too high to get a clear recording of my wristwatch.
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formeruser
- Posts: 62
- Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2016 6:24 pm
- Operating System: Windows 8 or 8.1
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by formeruser » Sun Apr 03, 2016 6:25 pm
I'm using the contrast method. I leave silence at the beginning and end of each chapter and then I compare the speech to the silence and it routinely comes up -80 dB. The difference between speech and silence is around 32-36.
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formeruser
- Posts: 62
- Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2016 6:24 pm
- Operating System: Windows 8 or 8.1
Post
by formeruser » Sun Apr 03, 2016 6:36 pm
Thanks to Steve. I believe that I have not set my recording level high enough. I'm getting around -12 peaks when I'm recording. I was worried about clipping. Also I remember reading about gain staging a long time ago and I know it's not usually a good idea to max out the input gain on any piece of equipment, so I set my interface at about the 75% mark (I guessed. The dial is not calibrated) and did the same in Windows, about .75. I didn't want to go higher because I thought I would get more noise. I think that the way I did it is usable for this project, since I passed an ACX check, but in the future I suppose that I'll record a bit hotter.
I like the wristwatch technique. I'll try that.
