Sound editing: Want to make some money?

[MrScott81]

I shot a video of a live concert which of course was incredibly loud, so the problem with the recording (besides me not using a better external mic), is that when the sound is too loud or there is too much bass, the audio becomes distorted....now I am pretty well versed with computers so I was trying to mess around with ffdshow filters and also with Adobe Audition, but I am not the best with sound stuff....so if any of you sound geniouses wants to make some money (I can send you paypal or check or money order), then I can send you my wav file (either via snail mail on a cd) or over the net assuming your connection is decent (it's about a 550mb wav file), you can edit it, and send it back.

 

[Appledrop]

tried Audacity? A pretty good program

 

[MrScott81]

I might be able to do it myself, but I'm not exactly sure what I should be trying to do...Adobe audition had all sorts of filters, hiss/noise removers, equalizers and everything, but I'm just not sure what to do with it all. I will download audacity and give it a try

 

[MrScott81]

messed around with audacity, can't do any better than with audition..anyone anyone??

 

[fishbits]

You have Audition? Have you tried the normalize function? You might be clipping (driving the meter into the red so-to-speak) You mentioned loudness contributing to the audio mud, so look at the graph of the wave. Is it occuring where the graphed parts go past the caps at top and bottom? I don't have Audition here, but at any rate give normalize a try on your audio file (or even highlight and try it on a portion you know to be a problem and see how it treats that part as a test).

If that's your only problem, this might be the silver bullet for it, or you could just decrease the overall volume of the wave file by whatever percentage and see how that sounds. Otherwise, there are highly adjustable eq filters in Audition you can use to try and reduce the level of some of the bass. But in the end, the software can only do so much. If the recording is too crummy overall, you can't make something great out of it. Give it a whirl.

 

[MrScott81]

Originally posted by: fishbits
You have Audition? Have you tried the normalize function? You might be clipping (driving the meter into the red so-to-speak) You mentioned loudness contributing to the audio mud, so look at the graph of the wave. Is it occuring where the graphed parts go past the caps at top and bottom? I don't have Audition here, but at any rate give normalize a try on your audio file (or even highlight and try it on a portion you know to be a problem and see how it treats that part as a test).

If that's your only problem, this might be the silver bullet for it, or you could just decrease the overall volume of the wave file by whatever percentage and see how that sounds. Otherwise, there are highly adjustable eq filters in Audition you can use to try and reduce the level of some of the bass. But in the end, the software can only do so much. If the recording is too crummy overall, you can't make something great out of it. Give it a whirl.

Normalizing didn't seem to do much....when I play it back it goes to fast for me to tell exactly where in the graph the noise is coming from....I also tried decreasing the volume but you can still hear the noise at the same level as before....I tried going into the equalizer and basically cutting out all frequencies from 0-1000hz and i can still hear it....if I could provide a small 3-4 minute clip in mp3 format do you think you could take a look at it?

 

[minofifa]

basically, if you overloaded your mic and have clipping, you are humped. there are some tools you can use to make it sound better, but don't expect to cut a live album from it.

the normalize comment was a good idea. generally with normalizing, you are gonna shift the entire wave one way or another. a better tool to use is a hard limiter or a compressor.

If you post a clip of your sound, maybe 20 megs or so, i could take a shot at it. better et, if you post this again in the mp3 clinic at www.homerecording.com you will most certainly get some help.

 

[MrScott81]

Here's a link (20MBytes): Text

Thanks again!

 

[fishbits]

OK, opened the clip, thanks for posting it. The reason you can't isolate the trouble spot is... the whole thing is a trouble spot You can "zoom out" on the wave graph so you can see the whole file in the window btw. At any rate, each graph has a horizontal line pretty close to the top and the bottom. Think of this as your "redline" that you don't want levels to go past. The recording was way too hot IMHO, causing good data to be lost by being overwhelmed. Not your fault of course, you were just using the tools you had on hand. Being close enough with the camcorder to record the video you wanted probably did caused this.

As minofifa theorized, I believe you're humped. I'm just a rusty hobbiest though, but it looks like the static and mud are inseperable from the audio you want. You could try playing with various options in Audition, but wouldn't get my hopes up. You've probably looked into this, but did anyone else record the audio of the show, maybe from the mixing board? Perhaps you could replace yours with theirs. Good luck man.

 

[MrScott81]

thanks a lot for taking time to look into this....i also posted the problem on homerecordings.com, and they pretty much came up with the same conclusion....i do have another source for the audio, so I'll try to get it from them and sync it up...thanks again!