Changing levels in Audacity

[axis42]

Hi all,

I'm just getting my podcast going. I bought a new (to me) SHure SM58 today and am so happy! Now, I can re-record my first show and maybe get it up and going soooon. yay.
But.

I have a question. Right now I am thinking that I will use Audacity as it is free. But, I have a background in Cool Edit Pro and Auditon so have been imagining that I would do something I am used to being able to do in those programs. I am not sure I can do it in Audacity.

What I want to do is record one vocal track (mic goes into the mixer which is plugged into my soundcard) and then record a music bed track that will fade in and out under the vocals. The music track would most likely come from the computer (MP3 file) straight into Audacity. In Cool Edit Pro and Audition, you can adjust the levels of each track up and down and change to different levels inifinite times during the course of the track. So, for example, I'd like to start with a music intro, fade it down to ~30% of full when the voice comes in and then, when the speaking is done, fade the music back up to full. I've tried using the fade in and fade out effect in Audacity, but these do not allow me to set the speed of the fade or the level to which the sound fades and doesn't leave the track at the selected level...

Can I do this in Audacity? If so, how? If not, is there a plugin or a better program to use for this? I would love to use Audition or Cool Edit, but the funds are not available for that purchase right now, so if there is another similar program that will allow this for less money (or free) I'd love to know about it.

Thanks for your help!
Charlie
podcast coming soon.

[bigee]

you CAN do it in Audacity, but what you would need to do is record your voice track, then import the music file, after which you could adjust the music portion up and down depending on what your needs were.

Not the ideal situation, but hey....it's free!

[axis42]

That sounds like it will adjust the level of the entire music track not just a portion.... and won't fade it to the level I want it. Am I wrong? What is the command or button I would use?

Thanks!
c

[slodaddy]

Open a new, empty track in the same window below your voice track in Audacity. Open your music track in a new Audacity window and cut and paste the music track from the second window into the blank track of your first window. You can then adjust the timeline and volume cuts and boosts of the music track relative to the voice track. To cut volume on a portion of the music track, dlick on the track at the desired cut beginning point and drag a highlight along to the cut ending point. Then go to the effects menu and select the volume boost option. Audacity is great. All your editing can be done in a matter of minutes.

[axis42]

First of all, thanks. This is almost what I want and I appreciate the help!

But, I don't see volume boost in the effects menu. I do see Amplify and that does most of what I want, however, it doesn't allow me to time the fade in and out. All that does is drop the level of the entire selection (or boost it) to a level I set and then return it to the original level at the end of the selection. It does so with a slight fade, and is workable, for a free program, but is there a way for me to control the length of the fade? easily?

I guess I could make multiple selections and drop each one in increments... but that would take forever, wouldn't it?

thanks again!
c

[mesoed]

You can do a couple of things here...

If you want to fade in from nothing or fade out to nothing, select the length of the fade and select "fade in" or "fade out" from the effects menu.

To simply ease the volume of a section down, use the envelope tool. You can set control points for your track allowing you to increase and decrease the volume as quickly or slowly as you would like (and as often as you would like). Play around with it... I think this is what you are looking for.

[slodaddy]

It sounds like what you want is a volume slider which you can control in real time. Your mixer can probably be patched to and from your pc to accomplish what you want. If you want to do this within a software program, I can't offer much help. I do know that the free version of Sony's ACID (ACID Express) has active volume sliders, but I haven't worked with it much so I don't know it's capabilities. It does look pretty cool.

[Will-Casel]

To simply ease the volume of a section down, use the envelope tool. You can set control points for your track allowing you to increase and decrease the volume as quickly or slowly as you would like (and as often as you would like). Play around with it... I think this is what you are looking for.

Yeah, the envelope tool is exactly what I used for my first four shows, before I started fading the music manually on my fifth an current show.

Import your music into Audacity after you record your vocals.
Select the envelope tool.
What you do next depends on how you want to fade and when. Experiment.

For my show, I play about 5 seconds of the intro at normal volume, select a point where I want to begin the fade, then select another point a few seconds later that will determine the quickness of the fade (you'll see what I mean when you experiment).

But, anywho, envelope works great for this.

Will-Casel

[axis42]

Y
To simply ease the volume of a section down, use the envelope tool. You can set control points for your track allowing you to increase and decrease the volume as quickly or slowly as you would like (and as often as you would like). Play around with it... I think this is what you are looking for.

THAT'S IT! I thought envelopes did something entirely different....
THANK YOU SO MUCH! I can't believe the answer was there.... and I ignored it.
thank you! yay!

I promise my cast won't be as geeky as that just was. But boy am I excited...
Charlie
Podcast coming soon.

[mesoed]

Good luck!

[SFEley]

THAT'S IT! I thought envelopes did something entirely different....
THANK YOU SO MUCH! I can't believe the answer was there.... and I ignored it.
thank you! yay!

One caveat: The envelope tool in Audacity is powerful, and it works really well, but because it isn't real-time it takes a little while to tweak for exactly the effect you want. It's also a little hard to get fine precision at low volume; you have to play around with the graphical scaling to zoom in first, and if you really want to fade music into the background you'll have to make the envelope smaller than you thought you needed.

I'm using Audacity to mix my music intro/outtro in Escape Pod (http://escape.extraneous.org), and while I think it sounds pretty good, it took a while to get right. I first used the "Amplitude" effect to reduce the music volume by -10 dB (it's really loud surf rock), then did some careful envelope shaping. My intro starts loud and then tails off over the first minute; the outtro is a sort of crater: louder at both ends, quiet in the middle. I then added fade-ins and fade-outs from the "Effect" menu at both ends.

When I did this for my second podcast, I decided it was too much work to do every week, so I copied the music tracks and pasted them into a new Audacity project for later use. Now, when I need to do it again each week, I can just paste the tracks out of my "Music Bed" project and it keeps the amplitudes and sound envelopes intact. Saves me several minutes each time.

One of these days, of course, I'll get a real mixer and make the whole thing moot. But for now this works well and it sounds good, as long as you're willing to take the time to play with it. >8->