Is there a plugin that automatically envelopes?

Hi Audacity: Is there a plugin that automatically envelopes like Audacity’s envelope tool but automatically, that anyone knows of, and free? I find enveloping so much less sound altering for my type of music than compression or limiting sometimes - but so labor intensive!

Thanks Audacity! - Very much appreciated!

Blues enthusiast, Rev. Black Dog

https://www.soundclick.com/reverendblackdog

Corona is 5G

Not that I know of.

If you use multi-band compression it can do a better job than Audcaity’s native compressor which is single-band.

Gmulti is a free* multi (3) band compression plugin which works in Audacity on Windows

[ * donationware ]

Thanks all/no and yes — and I’ve noted/bookmarked those plugins to get back ASAP and delve in and maybe try but 'going to be hard to beat the envelope tool for accuracy being it’s so manual, thus precise. Great tool, an auto option would be interesting but again probably not as good as the accuracy you can get doing it manually. I’ll keep checking to see if anyone has even more recommendations, thanks. :slight_smile:

BTW Black Dog, you should remove all infrasound with a high-pass filter before applying compression …

RevBlackDog-HighPass.gif
Infrasound is inaudible to humans, but will interfere with the correct operation of a compressor.

Really?

I’ve tried both ways and concluded I’m losing something good when I do that, seems so but maybe I’m wrong. So I’ve been trying to keep as much low-end as possible, ie., “infra sound”. Why is it that it should be removed? — Well I know the compressor can only handle so much so I’ve been pushing the compressor to that point and then enveloping the rest and then finishing with limiting.

If the 20Hz high-pass filter is steep (48dB/octave) then you won’t lose anything audible.

Any effect which has a threshold (e.g. compressor limiter) can be influenced by infrasound. So such effects will act inconsistently across the track because they responding to the inaudible very low frequency (<20Hz) signal.


https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/plot_spectrum.html

Great info Trebor, much appreciated! PS I noticed you removed original recommended links/effects plugin links… I guess because this went a different way but I have noted them for possible future use. I think it was you that also led me to the GVST plugins, linked here, they are great free tools!!

I’ve redone this song and reloaded my websites with the high pass added versions of The Wolf And Me (edit E5) and will probably redo all my songs ASAP. I first redid and compared with and without high pass filter and decided you were right. Thanks Trebor!

My research shows a lot of songs retaining the low-end but is it the same type low-end I have? I guess not.

I still did the edit the same except I first did the high pass filter (20/48) as Trebor suggested (edit E5). Also, during editing: at the point I needed a little more volume because I didn’t want to over use compression (GVST GCom, a free plugin, compressor) I then used the envelope tool, again, and this time it needed considerably less! I then finished with GMax (GVST) limiter to give 'things a little ceiling/head room /at -15.5 LUFS, the same volume of Matchbox Blues by Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Fun stuff, thanks guys! And thanks Trebor!

Rev. Black Dog, high pass drifter

https://www.soundclick.com/reverendblackdog

Corona is 5G […corporate lies!]

PS I had 2 WAV samples I was going to attach: before and after but they are too big, what is the upload limit?

They’re all reliable compressors: but if you only want to learn one it would be Gmulti.
It’s multi-band, has a high-pass filter, stereo-width & gain for each of the three frequency-bands.
You can also monitor each of the frequency-bands in isolation.

NB: in this case the order the effects are applied matters. High-pass before compression.
Applying the high-pass filter after compression will not undo any problems caused to the compressor by infrasound.

2Mb per post, about 10 seconds of stereo WAV 44100Hz 16-bit,

I think I got it but I don’t think I can tweak this lo-fi session anymore than I have. It was recorded in my car with acoustic guitar with a Tascam DR05… I keep trying to get what I can get out of this, I don’t have anywhere else to record really and I don’t think I’m going to record like this again, it’s the worst scenario, very hard to do anything with but here I am… I had better results with electric guitar/mini amp and using an extension dynamic mic with acoustic guitar, all in the car, the dynamic mic seemed better than the built-in Tascam condensors. Here is a sample of the finished result with high pass filter (20/48) and the rest as mentioned earlier:

wolf e5.PNG
This is the edit currently online.

Here is the previous edit sample (E4) now rejected because it had too much infra sound!

wolf e4.PNG
It’s hard to hear the difference but I can and I still don’t understand why a lot of professional releases retain this low-end and it sounds fine… I’ll guess it just depends what the heck is making the low-end noise, something good or bad? And then based on that, where to cut, all, some, or none?

Could high-pass at 60Hz, rather than 20Hz …

Green area is just noise, not music.gif

Can add mini-amp effect …

like a mini-amp effect.png
“Helmet radio” plugin is here.

As usual I’ve redid things not happy with any approach, again: I’m working with a low fi recording recorded in a car! a lot working against it not to mention talent-that’s a whole other discussion. So just to get the best out of these here’s what I did:

Session 1: Odessa Edits (ALL-IN-1) 28 minutes! “EN3”/Edit New 3rd Try. All-in-1:

PRE[NR9/12]-noise reduction

TDR Nova (parallel dynamic equalizer - free plugin) [adding high pass 15/24, 22kHz-left filter compression 20 dBs/2 ratio] with EQ gain on

GMax9/1 (GVST - free plugin)

SPIT[en] (Spitfish - free plugin)

Loudness Normalization 13.

Side note/question: I mistakenly left the TDR Nova in stereo mode on these mono recordings, I do not want to do over! Does anyone think this changed the results/made a difference? I did a test and it did not seem to make a difference. I did not test mono-TDR applied on a stereo track though, versus stereo-TDR applied on a stereo track (not my concern here…).

“just noise, not music”

Does this spect./loga. (screen shot) look good? Is enough low-end cut (i.e., noise)? Screen shots are of whole project not of sample audio attached. The plot spectrum pic’ is of the first 237.8 seconds of the project. FYI: I edit with waveform (linear) color 1-orange.
spectrogram-logarythmic-28min-session.PNG
odessa session 1 EN3.PNG
New “EN3” edits are online (labeled EN3) at https://www.soundclick.com/reverendblackdog

New EN3 sample audio:

TDR Nova has “De-ess(linked)” preset which would allow you to dispense with Spitfish …

TDR Nova 'De-ess(linked)'.gif

That won’t make any difference to the result.

Infrasound is only potentially a problem if it is present before you apply compressor/limiters.


I’d be tempted to apply distortion to create higher harmonics …

Cyanide2 waveshaper (distortion) plugin

StereoTouch (pseudostereo-delay)

Update- My new edits are labeled Eao for edit as Odessa, Odessa being my favorite song edit result so far of my trial and errors, here: https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=14145195

My conclusion for my type of low quality recordings is to not cut anything except to get the volume up - so (for the most part) I just used harsh compression. GVST’s GCom at 6 ratio 20 threshold 10 limiter 50/50 peak/rms, basically the “Mix” preset modified some. The low-end I left, no high pass added, even noise reduction diminished things for me so I did not use it either. To me these sound best untouched-raw but the volumes are too low. Thanks for the help though and I remain open minded to any further help and will explore those links ASAP and update any new revelations I might have.

Thanks Trebor.

Multi-band is going to produce a better result than single band …


I still have the old version of Gmulti, the newer one looks different but acts the same.

Thanks Trebor I experimented with the GVST GMulti compressor and you’re right! I got better results, and I compressed/and more without having to use high pass i.e, low cut. It’s quite a learning curve though… more trial and error needed. I see I can lower or raise whole band levels along with adding compression, or not, in the three bands, dividing the song into three sections.

As far as the stereo width I wasn’t sure so I left them at default …(0, 100, 100)…(Control right click).

The stereo width goes from 0-200. Is 100 normal, untouched/unaltered? And would mono tracks be effected the same as stereo per this setting? The manual doesn’t explain this feature very well.

New edit using GMulti so far: “Blue Haze/TheresAlwaysBeenAMask… Egm” (Edit G Multi) -big improvement! Thanks again! :slight_smile: Have a great year all, Kill your television!!

Yes, 100 makes no change to the stereo-image, 0* makes that band mono, >100 makes the stereo image wider.
If you’re working on a mono track, the stereo-width controls make no difference to the end result:
Gmulti does not add pseudo-stereo, it only widens/narrows the existing stereo-image.

[ * the bass band (band 1) should usually be mono, i.e. 0 width ].

More thanks Treb! Rolling right along here… I used the Voxengo stereo touch! To good results and only on a mono, never duplicating to stereo and it worked assuming that is what it is intended to do work for just mono… though I need to seek a manual out for this plugin, or experiment with it on a dual mono stereo and see. It did work though on just mono - and I like the ease of working with mono, especially when I recorded mono, here’s a before and after “stereo touch” of a new song I’m still editing.

here’s with Vox…stereo touch

here’s without

Thanks 'gain Treb,

Reverend Black Dog
https://www.reverbnation.com/revblackdog

It will just add mono delays, (& if enabled, High Pass Filter & Low Pass Filter will be applied to the delayed signal only),
so no pseudo-stereo effect.

When I use Voxengo stereo-touch I duplicate the mono track, join them into a stereo-pair, beforehand,
then applying stereo-touch produces a wide pseudo-stereo effect.

Then I can tweak the stereo-width in Gmulti or OvertoneGEQ*, (e.g. reduce stereo-width of the bass).

[ * another freebie from Voxengo. It’s 2 equalizers: one for the middle & one for the side.
(On a mono track there is no side) ].