Improving the sound of a real piano recording

[mjwillyone]

Dear Friends,

I have attached a brief recording of my daughter playing our piano. I am trying to make the sound more crisp and less muffled. Can anyone give me any idea on how best to do this? I used the first three seconds of audio as criteria to remove any background noise. I just cannot determine what filter might clean up the muffled sound.

Thanks in advance,
Mike

[Trebor]

I have attached a brief recording of my daughter playing our piano.

There is no audio in your attachment. You could try attaching a 3 second .WAV file in a ZIP file, or posting a link to audio on a file-sharing website.

I am trying to make the sound more crisp and less muffled. Can anyone give me any idea on how best to do this? I used the first three seconds of audio as criteria to remove any background noise. I just cannot determine what filter might clean up the muffled sound.

If there is a bit of your recording only with noise (no piano) you can sample some of this noise and subtract it from the recording using Audacity's noise removal feature {before/after example attached]. I strongly suggest using Audacity 1.3 rather than 1.2 to do this as 1.3 noise reduction is much better. Boosting the higher frequencies using Audacitiy's equalizer will give a brighter, less muffled sound.

[kozikowski]

Audacity doesn't save sound files. An AUP file is a project manager, not sound.

While we're waiting for that, describe the room, microphone and other capture details. Model numbers are good. Sound mixer?

What type of piano is it? Size? C7 concert grand Yamaha?

Koz

[kozikowski]

We never explained what you did wrong. The only way to get a real sound file in Audacity is File > Export. Not Save.

Koz

[mjwillyone]

I am sorry the sound file was not attached. I attempted both a .wav and .mp3 file and receive a "the extension ... is not allowed." Any ideas on what I am doing wrong?

I have the following equipment:

Eurorach UBB02 mixer
S8 2 Zs Soundblaster Augidy PCMCIA card (laptop)
MXL 990 condenser mic

The piano is a Kawai upright grand

I have already gotten rid of the noise ... it is the muffled sound that I am attempting to clear up.

Thank you, in advance, for your help.

Mike

[Trebor]

I am sorry the sound file was not attached. I attempted both a .wav and .mp3 file and receive a "the extension ... is not allowed." Any ideas on what I am doing wrong?

If you put the wav or mp3 in a ZIP file it can be attached, (like I did above), provided it is less than 500Kb, (i.e. only about 3 seconds worth of CD quality audio).
As you have found posting files in a .wav or .mp3 formats directly is not allowed in this forum.

To allow people to hear longer sounds you could post the audio on a file sharing site and post the link to the audio here.

Re: muffled sound. Audacity has a graphic equalizer option, like a stereo, you can experiment with the sliders to improve the sound quality.

eq.PNG (59.58 KiB) Viewed 9905 times

[steve]

I have already gotten rid of the noise ... it is the muffled sound that I am attempting to clear up.

There should have been very little noise in the original recording and it should not be sounding muffled. With the equipment that you are using the sound should be clear and clean without doing anything, so we need to go back a bit to see what is wrong.

Let's start with the laptop computer - what operating system are you using?
The microphone is a condenser type - these usually require phantom power - where is the power for the microphone coming from?
Which version of Audacity are you using?

The piano is an upright acoustic piano? Is that in your living room? Carpeted with lots of soft furnishings?

[mjwillyone]

what operating system are you using?
The microphone is a condenser type - these usually require phantom power - where is the power for the microphone coming from?
Which version of Audacity are you using?

The piano is an upright acoustic piano? Is that in your living room? Carpeted with lots of soft furnishings?

I am using windows XP Pro. The power from the mic is coming from an electrical outlet. I am using Audacity version 1.2.6. The piano is in my living room (hey, have you come to my home?? ) Yes, there is carpet and it is against a wall. Furnishings? Yes. The microphone was placed on the floor (on a small stand) on the side of the piano.

I have attached a ZIP file of the audio file. Thanks for letting me know that ZIP was the file type I should have used to upload the music.

Thanks,
Mike

[Trebor]

mjwillyone piano before and after.zip

(315.79 KiB) Downloaded 484 times

I can hear some weird phasing-like effects in the above : this can be a result of overdoing the noise removal, (I'm not guilty),
I just amplified it and boosted the higher frequencies (3000-5000Hz) by about 6dB.

Below is a schmaltzy pseudostereo version with a bit of reverb

mjwillyone piano - schmaltzy remix (pseudostereo).zip

(169.77 KiB) Downloaded 471 times

[mjwillyone]

Wow ... what a difference. I am new to Audacity, but will try to find out where the controls are for doing what you did.

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it.

Mike