Voice editing in Audacity

[psuneaglesfan76]

hey guys, I'm a newb around here, but this looks like the right place to ask my question.

Occasionally my friends and I get together to play a few songs and such, and record live, rather than one at a time. We realize we sacrifice quality, etc, but the one problem we often have is that the voice does not match the volume of the rest of the instruments all of the time. Sure, we could do several sound checks to make sure everything's in order, but one specific occasion was unplanned, and we literally only used a built in microphone on a laptop, and amazingly enough, it's not bad, haha.
But anyway, I was wondering if anyone here is familiar with audacity, and could provide some tips to solve this problem. I'm somewhat savvy with filters and such but I thought I may as well ask, seeing as you guys are likely more experienced.

So to sum up, does anyone know any tricks or tips, to make the voice louder/quieter when everything is in one track.

Thanks in advance...

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

So to sum up, does anyone know any tricks or tips, to make the voice louder/quieter when everything is in one track.

If you have recorded to stereo with the vocals pretty much alone down the center, there is a trick that can be run to somewhat isolate the vocals and manipulate their loudness.

But i'f you've recorded to a single mono track or in natural stereo with no particular center emphasis to the vocals, you're pretty much stuck with what you have.

G.

 

[psuneaglesfan76]

If you have recorded to stereo with the vocals pretty much alone down the center, there is a trick that can be run to somewhat isolate the vocals and manipulate their loudness.

But i'f you've recorded to a single mono track or in natural stereo with no particular center emphasis to the vocals, you're pretty much stuck with what you have.

G.

ya, that's what I thought, unfortunately I fall in the second category. I put some really light filters on it, and messed with the equalizer a bit, but the voice is just a little short of what I wanted. Thanks for the help though.

 

[cusebassman]

You could always try to replicate the vocals through a new track, pull them back a few milliseconds to get rid of the latency, and then mix down... it might sound really odd, but yea - that's all I got

 

[Charles Bullock]

I've used Audacity. I now use Pro Tools, but that's neither here nor there. Audacity was fine for a free program. Since I haven't used it in a while, I'll just give general advice:

If I understand you correctly, you're having problems with volume in the vocals. If you did not record using compression, you'll have to use it now. If Audacity has a compressor insert, insert it into the vocal channel and tweak as necessary. I can't give you specific parameters because your experience may vary. But that's a good place to start.

However, if you've recorded everything on a single channel--ain't no help for that. There's too much going on in a single track and trying to reach in and pull a specific frequency out for processing is way beyond what a free program like Audacity can do. Try to re-record if possible and boost your initial signal.

Of course, if I've totally read your question wrong, then ignore all this and have a great day.

LCB

 

[cusebassman]

I've used Audacity. I now use Pro Tools, but that's neither here nor there. Audacity was fine for a free program. Since I haven't used it in a while, I'll just give general advice:

If I understand you correctly, you're having problems with volume in the vocals. If you did not record using compression, you'll have to use it now. If Audacity has a compressor insert, insert it into the vocal channel and tweak as necessary. I can't give you specific parameters because your experience may vary. But that's a good place to start.

Of course, if I've totally read your question wrong, then ignore all this and have a great day.

LCB

Yea... he recorded his entire band live to his laptop using the mic built in on the compy itself.

 

[psuneaglesfan76]

ya, it wasnt the whole band, but it was completely unplanned...we actually played a song, 3 acoustic guitars, one singer, that's it...in the parking lot of a Target haha...it turned out better than planned and we wanted to see if we could fine tune it, but thats okay, I got what I needed, I didn't think there was much I could do...thanks to all of you for your suggestions.

 

[Dani Pace]

I've played with Audacity quite a bit (in fact I used it to learn the basics of digital recording.) The best results I was able to get on a mono, single track recording were by using a mono PA system as a preamp, then using the line out from the PA to the line in on the computer's sound card. This means you have to premix and balance volumes on the PA mixer (set it like you would for a live performance) before sending the signal to the soundcard. If you want to record on two tracks (you will need adapter/splitter cables to do this) you can use both the line out and the monitor out from a mono PA and send the signals to the right and left inputs (on the line in of your soundcard.) The split signal will allow you to get a "pseudo stereo" type of effect, not true stereo but as close as you can get with a mono mixer. By adjusting the volumes between the master and monitor volumes you can send more (or less) of the signal to the right or left chanels on the line in. A small, low wattage PA will work pretty well for this application, just be sure you have enough chanels on the PA to mic everything you need. Give this method a try, it's simple and works well with Audacity. (It works well with N-Trax too)