technical help, please.

[wyeuro]

i've been using audacity on previous laptops, but since last year when i got a new one suddenly, i can't get the full-bodied sound of my acoustic guitar out of it anymore. it all sounds excessively 'clean', even 'squeaky clean' in some bits, and there just isn't any resonance in the lower frequencies. someone told me that the particular toshiba satellite i have is notoriously bad, sound-wise, and that i should start by getting a sound card, which i've done but i still can't make a decent recording.

i bought a condenser mic at about the same time, and that gives beautiful full recordings of voice, but the guitar is patchy - comes and goes but fades out towards the end of a recording.

fortunately, i am about to get a new laptop, so could anyone advice me on the best brand to get, and on the simplest set up necessary to make recordings good enough for this message board, without spending too much or taking me too far out of my technological comfort zone?

[katie bridgewater]

Explorer had a similar problem. Why don't you read this thread before it gets autopruned and see if it helps:

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=37126&start=0&hilit=corwen+audio

[malcolmb]

Hi Wyeuro - Corwen's advice in the thread Katie offered is excellent and well worth the read. I would just add a few points. My own experience is that no matter how hard you try to avoid having to learn the technical side, you can't! Being a composer nowadays means you must know at least the basics of sound engineering if the music you produce is going to sound reasonable. You then end up with a bit of a dilemma. You can use basic equipment and cheap or free software and then have a huge technical job in make it sound right. Or you can spend money on good quality equipment and studio software which will take a lot of the hard technical work out of the job but severely damage your bank balance!

The computer you buy is not really an issue. It will need a fast processor and a reasonable amount of RAM (at least 4 Gigabytes or more). It will also need a slot for you to add a good soundcard as the one that will come with the computer will be designed for basic gaming and music playing, not creating your own music. Then give serious consideration to buying a DAWS (just Google DAW and you will find out more than you could ever wish to know about them!). Basically, a DAW is a piece of software that allows you to record a number of tracks, add them together, balance them by mixing the sounds and then improve the sound quality. A DAW has an 'audio engine' that will control your sound card to produce the best possible sound. While I have and use Audacity, I do not see it as a DAW. It is excellent for basic work on a sound file but lacks the tools and the quality audio engine that you get with a proper DAW.

If you want to chat further, please PM me here and I will happily help in any way I can.

Blessings
Malcolm

[DJ Droood]

If you want to experiment with a quick fix, google the wiki article on the Gverb filter and various presets that may give you the tones you are looking for...my limited experience tells me that the quality of the original sound you capture...good mic, good micing and room acoustics, is crucial, and you can only do so much in 'post' to rescue a bad sound.

[malcolmb]

Above comment is good advice. I use Sonitus reverb within Sonar so don't use Gverb (correctly applied reverb really does make a huge difference to sound quality). A quick scan via Google seems to suggest that it wasn't included in some versions of Audacity (I wonder if this might be the reason for the change in your sound quality?) but is in my version 1.3.12-beta - there is an upgrade to 1.3.14-beta available at:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

There is some good advice for adding it here and some useful settings for Gverb to experiment with:

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=GVerb

Blessings
Malcolm

[wyeuro]

thanks everyone. as to software, audacity is fine for me. it used to be enough for my modest ambitions as a backyard folk singer, and all i want is to retrieve the sound quality i had before whatever it was that went wrong went wrong. i think the problem is with the hardware, so i suppose i'll just have to take the time with the jargon (and spaghetti) as best i can.

thanks for the link, katie. i noticed it at the time but was snowed under with work and couldn't follow it up, as i can now. i love your music, incidentally, yours and corwen's. very thrilling, exciting, stuff for us colonials - a drop of the pure!

and i'm beginning to understand that the digital keyboard has a lot more to offer than i originally thought, but still the same sound problem.

i'll tinker with what i've got. thanks everyone.

[Explorer]

Let me teach you a trick to get a much fuller sound from your guitar.

- record the guitar part (without the voice) first. (listen to it, so you can compare the difference later).
- copy/paste that track in your software, so now you have 2 identical tracks.
- pan one track all the way left (so you only hear it with your left ear/speaker), and the other track all the way right.
- move the second track roughly 15ms to the right (it can be 5ms or 20ms also, fiddle with it later).

Play it, and your jaw may drop as far as mine did when I first did this.

And then you can record the voice in a third track while singing along with your recording. Use headphones, so that the sound from the speakers doesn't spill into the microphone.

Goodluck!

[wyeuro]

thanks, explorer. i've been told that before, and i've been trying to, but i gave up. as a teen-ager i learnt to play the guitar in a style i later saw described in a book by pete seeger called something like 'the fake guitar player' - really loose rhythms and you break all the rules as you go along for calculated effect - like dylan did, or woody guthrie, or pete seeger himself. it's a style you often find in country singers and folk where you pick it up organically and can't read music and never learned to count the beats/bar. i just belt out the song and bash out a sequence of spontaneously flexible guitar phrases to accompany it. i speed up and slow down, insert irregular pauses for dramatic effect, and get loud and raucous or soft and expressive as the song suggests, with song and voice in sync responding to the flow of feeling in the song. i'm finding it nigh on impossible to adapt to singing to a disciplined accompaniment. like horse and rider - guitar and voice are one in the making of a song. with a pre-recorded guitar line, i either get pedantic and joyless or totally out of sync after the first few bars. even when i get it right i feel like it's not my style of singing, so there's no value for me in sacrificing the freedom of spontaneous variation for technical improvement. i think i might need two microphones, one for voice and another for the guitar. i'll see what i can find.

[Cerani]

I've just found this thread and find it of use for myself. I 'dabble' at composing nowadays (gone are the days of teaching music in school) and have both Audacity and Sequel 2 with an M-Audio key studio. Your comments have given me the impetus to do better! Thanks. Blessings, Gladys

[Explorer]

i think i might need two microphones, one for voice and another for the guitar. i'll see what i can find.

Yes, that would be an alternative.

Another alternative would be a guitar that you can plug into a monitor/soundcard. I've got one with two sockets, one for the guitar, one for the (voice) mic.
But to be honest, I never use it because I like the pure accoustic sound better than the amplified sound.

I don't have a second mic, so I have to play disciplined .

[Corwen]

Audacity really isn't up for the job of doing decent recordings. There is a DAW called Reaper that has a time unlimited free trial offer for the full software and only costs $50 if you decide to register it. It is a proper DAW though which makes doing things like Explorer said (panning and adding delay) easy, though it is a bit of a learning curve. Reaper also allows you to pseudo-master your finished tracks which makes them stand up volume and tone wise alongside commercial recordings.

By the way an external 'digital audio interface' does the same job as an internal soundcard only better and often cheaper. A good one will also supply phantom power for a condenser mic and have at least two inputs- instrument level and mic level so you can record guitar and voice at the same time if you want to, and have a headphone out for easily controllable monitoring (listening to the tracks you already have as you play so you can add another track to go with them).

[wyeuro]

thanks, explorer and corwen. you both gave me something to think about. i'll look into the DAW offer. you've given me a place to start anyway.
wy

[Fox]

I've done it both ways. When I just had the one mic I recorded the guitar track first then sang over it, as explorer suggests. Then I got a soundhole pickup for the guitar and plugged it straight into my m-audio box so I could play and sing along at the same time.

BUT, the quality of the sound from the guitar recorded this way just isn't as good as it was playing directly into the mic. I think that is a given. But for my own rough and ready recordings, it's "good enough" as my main aim has always been to have a record of the sound of a song, not to produce a polished end piece.

I know what you mean though, when something works, then stops working - and trying to figure out why!

[wyeuro]

thanks for this, fox. i find the main thing i'm trying to do is eliminate extraneous noise - not easy on a farm! the idea of getting through a whole song without goat-bleat erupting in the tenderly poignant parts was what drove me to look for more technology. but you're right, the sound and everything is better with less. i love my condenser mic though. right now i'm getting the occasional gig and so i'm putting a bit more into that.
good to see you back again. have missed you