editing a recording with cooleditpro

[pscraja]

I have recorded a lecture on a mp3 recorder which has no vol. control in recording.

When I play it in cool edit pro, the amplitude is quite high. If I use the effect/amplitude and reduce the amplitude by say -3db cut, the resultant recording has a flat extremes with no change in the lower db levels.

How do I reduce the amplitude so that the whole recording is reduced by the set amount uniformly instead of cutting off the peaks only.

Can some expert guide me.

Where can I get a good tutorial on using cooledit pro especially editing.

Thanks.
pscraja

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

If your MP3 recorder has no recording level control then it most likely has an AGC (Automatic Gain Control) circuit in it; which is a form of limiter. If your resulting file is a flattop even before you try reducing the volume (and I'll put better than even money on that), that's because the volume of what you were trying to record ran up against your recorder's AGC and it flattened things off at top volume.

If that's the case, there's not much you can effectively do to restore the dynamics to that recording. You can try to use the Dynamics Processor plug that's included with CEP to throw some low-level dynamic range expansion at the file, but that will most likely fail more than it will succeed.

If your file is not a flattop when you first bring it into CEP, then all you need to do is turn down the volume/gain on the track itself. Just left-click on the volume display for that track and drag downwards to decrease the volume. Alternatively, you can open the Mixer window (View/Show Mixer Window) and just drag the fader down for the track in which you've put the file.

The online help with CEP is really quite good, especially the "How Do I?" section.

HTH,

G.

 

[TimOBrien]

Or, as my programming prof used to say: "Garbage In, Garbage Out"....
If it has already been squashed, there may not be much you can do.

Here's a manual if that will be any help...

http://www3.baylor.edu/Comm_Studies/engineering/manuals/CoolEditPro_v2-0.pdf