[justinthyme]

Hi guys

I've just posted a thread here

http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/fo...8481#post78481

with some BTs I've made for ear-training etc. This is my very first home recording, so I'd appreciate any comments/tips from the experienced home recordists on the forum.

Cheers!

[Matty22]

Ian, through my system, i had the volume maxed and had to pick my amp up a bit to get enough volume.... but that could well be my gear, knowing me...

I got a bit of noise on the vocal track but once the LH chanell picked up it wasnt noticable...

[Matty22]

Not that im an experienced home recordist, but still... opinions are like, eh nevermind

[justinthyme]

Thanks for that Matty - I'll wait to see if anyone else had the same issues.

[si16]

Hi Ian.

I experienced pretty much what Matty described. On my system the BT was pretty quiet at a reasonable volume setting. Also the tracks had bled into each other i.e even panning all the way to the left it was still possible to hear the right track.

Good idea though. There's nothing quite like getting new stuff to play with.

[justinthyme]

Ok, great - thanks for that Simon - I'll see if I can improve on it tomorrow.

[solidwalnut]

Hi Ian--

For the low volume problem, you might try checking the output level to the recorder and take it until it get into the 'red' and then back it down a bit.

For some reason, I can't listen to your tracks right now. It must be some sort of computer malo here at work. As far as total separation of tracks, be sure to use hard panning. If you have any effects on the guitar, be sure to also hard pan any effect return channels.

Steve

[justinthyme]

Originally Posted by solidwalnut

Hi Ian--

For the low volume problem, you might try checking the output level to the recorder and take it until it get into the 'red' and then back it down a bit.

For some reason, I can't listen to your tracks right now. It must be some sort of computer malo here at work. As far as total separation of tracks, be sure to use hard panning. If you have any effects on the guitar, be sure to also hard pan any effect return channels.

Steve

Thanks for that, Steve. The recording was done in Audacity and the inputs were maxed out without clipping - so I don't understand the low volume at all. The sound is fine on my system, which is very frustrating too, because I have to rely on what's happening to others.

As to the bleed from one stereo track to the other - the 2 tracks were recorded totally separately in Audacity and then merged into a single stereo track. Again, I'm at a loss as to how the bleed comes about - but I'll look into the hard panning thing next. Not even sure what it means at the moment - this is all new to me!

[solidwalnut]

Originally Posted by justinthyme

Thanks for that, Steve. The recording was done in Audacity and the inputs were maxed out without clipping - so I don't understand the low volume at all. The sound is fine on my system, which is very frustrating too, because I have to rely on what's happening to others.

Well, the inputs were maxed without clipping. So you probably recorded the tracks at the optimum. But what I'm talking about is your mix. I don't know anything about Audacity so hopefully someone will jump in here and help us. After you record, then you're going to be making an mp3 from the mix. So you need to monitor the audio that's going out from the mix when you're making the mp3.

Originally Posted by justinthyme

As to the bleed from one stereo track to the other - the 2 tracks were recorded totally separately in Audacity and then merged into a single stereo track. Again, I'm at a loss as to how the bleed comes about - but I'll look into the hard panning thing next. Not even sure what it means at the moment - this is all new to me!

I'm thinking that the bleeding audio is being caused by this merge operation. It's letting a portion of each track into the other to give it a 'stereo image'. In this case you don't want one. If you can, see about forgetting this merge operation. Try sending each track separately, track 1 for left and track 2 for right, when making the mp3.
Steve

[fly135]

You can try using the "normalize" function to bring up the volume. WRT track bleeding, in MP3 encoding there is a mode called "joint stereo", which merges the two tracks into a middle track. If you are encoding stereo at 128kbps, it's likely using joint stereo. I can't find a way in Audacity to control this setting.

Search this link for "joint"....

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mp3/chapter/ch02.html

[fly135]

I searched the web for audacity and joint stereo but found nothing. I would recommend that if you can identify the bleeding problem, then try encodings at higher bitrates to see if it goes away. I would think there is a good chance that stereo encoding would be used at higher bitrates.

[justinthyme]

Thanks, guys! I forgot to mention something that may be important: although the meters were maxed out for the mike input in Audacity, the resulting waveform was fairly small. There may be a clue in there somewhere. I'll keep at it.

[justinthyme]

Alright - with your help/advice I did the following to the I IV V variations track:

. separated stereo tracks to mono L&R
. normalised both tracks
. removed noise from voiceover mike
. increased project rate to 48kHz
. panned both tracks L & R in Audacity (not sure if that was the right place to do it)
. exported twin mono tracks to mp3 at bitrate of 192

Overkill??

So - hopefully that's done the trick. Phew - fascinating stuff, this. Thanks for the link, fly135 - loads of good info there. Had no idea what went into mp3 encoding etc before.

I've posted the new track back at the BT forum - its bigger and (with luck) better. All sounds fine on my system anyway. Look fwd to comments!

[fly135]

justinthyme, increasing the sample rate from 44.1 to 48khz will probably do more hard than good (in a theoretical sense). 44.1Khz should be more than is necessary, and the increased sample data will cause the MP3 encoder to waste more bits compressing unnecessary information.

[justinthyme]

OK, gotcha!