Sonar 4 Producer Question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rick Shepherd
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Rick Shepherd

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Hi,

I would like a detailed explanation of how to trim off unwanted pieces of recordings. In this case, the beginning and the end of a recording. Those parts have have unwanted romm noises and sounds of me moving around.
 
this one is easy...you can do one of two things.

1) grab the piece of audio at the ends and drag to the desired point.

or

2) place cursor right before the audio starts and press "s" for slice; then just select the unwanted piece and delete.

hope that answers the question fully.
 
you can use the mute tool. drag on the bottom half of the clip to mute it, and the top half to unmute it. you can alt-click to mute the entire clip. you can set it up either way if you want (clicking mutes entire clips, alt-clicking mutes time ranges.)
 
To add an extra part of "trimming off unwanted parts of a recording," once you've followed Step 1 of blueroommusic's suggestion, you might also want to right-click on your new clip, and select "Apply Trimming." This should remove the rest of the unwanted recording pieces completely.
 
In my experience (and specifically on tracks with a lot of noise), the above techniques result in the noise going from 0 to full in no time, which is VERY audible, even if its not that loud. I prefer to use a volume or gain envelope on either the clip or the track, and set it at 0db when nothing's happening on the track, but fade in to the correct volume with a linear curve right before the part comes in (and fade out the same way when the part ends). The length of the fades depends on the song - as short as possible WITHOUT drawing ANY attention to themselves is my goal.
 
Sometimes I record a hair dryer running in the background. By contrast, no one ever seems to complain about room sounds or even minor device noise levels.

This advice was free of charge and contained no caloric content. You are free to use or discard at your leisure.

(The above advice covered about all of it ... this was all I could think of to add)

:D

Kev
 
Lol, thanks for the help. Another question: How do I boost the overall volume of the recording after I am all finished. It seems that my recordings are too low-level on playback through my pc speakers when my soundcard volume is maxed out. Any suggestions?
 
To LFO: Interesting suggestion, and I suppose that it all depends on how many tracks you have in your project. For me, I've had up to 30 tracks of audio, and some of those "tracks" were just little fills on guitar or keyboard. I simply couldn't lose all the hard drive space that leaving all the "unwanted" parts in the song would allow. However, if there aren't that many tracks to begin with, this shouldn't be an issue at all. Additionally, I should have also added that I also leave a little bit of space on the tail-end of the clip, just to add a quick volume fade down to avoid any little clicking that might happen (which is almost always the case) at the end of the clip. Are you finding that there are other noise issues besides this?

K-dub, don't joke! I sincerely believe that Nine Inch Nails did just what you suggested for about 2/3rds of their entire music catalog (and I love 'em).

And as for Rick's most recent question, here's where it starts getting both tricky and dangerous (to your audio), and there are a variety of answers. My first observation is that you probably aren't going to any great sound out of your PC speakers to begin with, so that's a hard reference point to work from. From here, it depends on what plug-ins/programs you have to work with. Generally, using a limiter will boost the levels of your recording, but you have to be careful not to damage the audio during this process. Maybe if you posted up a clip of your stuff, and/or told us what plug-ins you use, I could give you more meaningful feedback.
 
Hi Bill,

Actually, couldn't I just boost either the trim or the volume on each track equally to accomplish what I need?
 
Rick Shepherd said:
Lol, thanks for the help. Another question: How do I boost the overall volume of the recording after I am all finished. It seems that my recordings are too low-level on playback through my pc speakers when my soundcard volume is maxed out. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Assuming your recording levels are good, this is usually done in the mastering phase.

The best tool I've found for this is the Waves L2 Maximizer. It's very transparent if you don't overuse it. If you want something that is decent and FREE, try Endorphin: http://www.digitalfishphones.com/main.php?item=2&subItem=3
 
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