Your ideal processing sequence (Edit: and headphones advice)

[Trebor]

... It looks like it would behoove me to experiment with using the Limiter instead of the Compressor, or perhaps in addition to the latter

The limiter acts much quicker than a standard compressor, (e,g, "Chris's"), and will trim off any occasional loud spikes ...

Limiter acts quicker than standard compressor.gif (113.99 KiB) Viewed 1183 times

then apply the compressor, (which wouldn't have been quick enough to cope with these transient spikes).

[kozikowski]

A note here about the BBC Peak Program Meter. It is intentionally designed to ignore occasional transient peaks. If you're worried about all peaks one at a time, maybe you should examine your goal.

Koz

[ABQChris]

...then apply the compressor, (which wouldn't have been quick enough to cope with these transient spikes).

Excellent tip. Thanks for that!

[ABQChris]

...You would produce your echo/reverb , Eq and other production special effects and let Chris take care of volume variations and waveform processing.

So in your opinion, it's best to apply Chris's Compressor after applying the reverb and EQ?
(Thanks again for all of your help.)

[steve]

You need to be very careful if you apply compression after applying reverb because it will tend to make the reverb louder.

[ABQChris]

You need to be very careful if you apply compression after applying reverb because it will tend to make the reverb louder.

That's what I've always concluded; I usually even wait until after compression to apply EQ, as compression tends to diminish the low end, and this usually has to be atoned for after the fact. But Koz's advice made me wonder if this particular plug-in behaves differently; I probably just misunderstood his post.

[ABQChris]

(Bump)

I'm still extremely curious to hear about any alarm bells that might go off for those who are more experienced with Audacity than I, concerning the actual order of the processes that I apply to music tracks. (If there are none, then that's awesome, of course; but it certainly seems useful to ask.)

For convenience, the original post is pasted below. Thanks very much for any input.

---

I've been experimenting quite a bit with the best sequence of processing events -- which is quite different, if my ears are being as truthful as usual, from Nero Wave Editor, which I'm used to.

To be honest, I'm finding it difficult to amplify everything so that it's reasonably loud, while still avoiding the constant "combination clipping" from having all four or five vocal tracks playing together.

They're fine on their own, of course (amplified to the software's suggested max, in each case). But when played simultaneously, the overall output exceeds the maximum decibels. So there have been hours of manual tinkering to try and combine everything while still coming just up to the threshold when they're all playing together.

I haven't messed with the defaults, DB-wise or meter-wise. As far as the sequence of processes goes, I think I've arrived at the best. Correct any glaring mistakes you might notice, if you would! Thanks!

After Amplify:

1. Noise Reduction -- I love Audacity's Sonic Solutions-type "sampling the noise" method. It hardly leaves any artifacts. Of course, I'm not coming in terribly hissy to begin with, but it's still a USB mic without any outboard processing, so there's going to be some gray noise in there. Audacity has no problem handling it. The upper field is set between 12 and 14, depending on the level of hiss.

2. Compression -- on the vocals only. It's around 3:1 and definitely helps with my quite varied singing levels. When they're too extreme to be handled by compression without unpleasant brick-walling, I change the volumes of particular stanzas by exporting to WAV, altering the volumes in Nero Wave Editor, and then importing back in.

This is because it's practically impossible to change the volume of just a few seconds in Audacity without hearing a pop, even if the difference is only, say, 2.5. One can certainly try using Repair, but as Audacity doesn't keep track of the points in time that have been altered, like NWE does, how does one even find the microseconds in question? The highlighted section certainly returns to being un-highlighted -- for good -- if anything else is done to the track, including merely clicking the cursor in another spot.

3. EQ

4. Reverb and/or delay (I hate the unnatural sound of dry vocals)

5. Combine and export as a WAV, and then import it back in as a single track and normalize the whole thing to -1?

Thanks very much for any suggestions regarding the above sequence. As always, I really appreciate your time, guys.

---

[waxcylinder]

This is the workflow that we honed for LP transfers - you may find some useful tips here: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sa ... ation.html

Re budget, flat response, cans - have a look at the Sennheiser PX-100, about 30 quid in the UK (the ordinary ones not the noise cancellers).

I use a pair of studio Sennheisers at home - and I've just spent a week or so on holiday with my travelling Px-100s/iPod - and this reminded me of how good these little fellas are.

WC

[ABQChris]

This is the workflow that we honed for LP transfers - you may find some useful tips here: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sa ... ation.html

Re budget, flat response, cans - have a look at the Sennheiser PX-100, about 30 quid in the UK (the ordinary ones not the noise cancellers).

I use a pair of studio Sennheisers at home - and I've just spent a week or so on holiday with my travelling Px-100s/iPod - and this reminded me of how good these little fellas are.

WC

Terrific. Thanks, WC!