Taming occasional loud drums in Audacity

[Stylon Pilson]

Morning all,

I've been recording my band using a Zoom H2 set on "low" microphone sensitivity. I then import the files into Audacity and split them into individual songs. They're quite quiet, so I amplify them to get rid of wasted headroom.

For Saturday night's performance, I'm finding that an amplification of about 15dB gets the waveform looking nice and fat, but not too fat. The only problem is that on some of the songs, the drummer ends the song very vigorously, so if I try to amplify the songs by more than about 3dB, the drums clip.

I need to apply some serious compression to those drum passages. Audacity's "compressor" plugin isn't working it for me, because the peak volume comes instantaneously, and the plugin has a minimum attack of 0.1 seconds. The "leveller" doesn't seem to do much at all, even on its strongest setting, probably because it's designed to operate on longer sections of music.

I feel that the solution is going to have to be to use the "envelope" tool to manually quieten the drums, but I wonder if there's a better way.

Or do you think I should just say "sod the drums" and, for the sake of a few smacks of the snare drum, let them clip?

Thanks,

S.P.

[cheddatom]

If it was just a snare close-mic'd track clipping, then I would leave it. As it's the overall 2 track stereo recording, I assume it sounds quite bad? Any limiter should be able to sort it. I don't know what plug-ins you get with Audacity, but there are lots of free and "free" VST compressors around.

[bnt]

Does your Audacity installation include a plugin called [b]SC4[/b]? This is a more flexible compressor with an attack time that goes down to 1.5ms.

[lowdown]

The Kjaerhus CLASSIC free vst's are good.In Fact great.
[url="http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/download.php"]http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/download.php[/url]

Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
They Have an excellent comp and limiter that should do what you need.
Nice quick attack times.

Garry

Edited September 22, 2008 by lowdown

[charic]

If it clipped on the actual recording its going to always distort. If thats the case theres not alot you can do im afraid

[Stylon Pilson]

[quote name='charic' post='289253' date='Sep 22 2008, 03:50 PM']If it clipped on the actual recording its going to always distort. If thats the case theres not alot you can do im afraid[/quote]

Nope, no clipping on the recording. The drums got up to about -3dB on the recording, but everything else was down at about -15dB.

Thanks for all the plugin recommendations, guys - they sound very promising. I'll give them a try.

S.P.

Edited September 22, 2008 by stylonpilson

[charic]

Try cutting the eq at around 1.2-2.5k for a bit should tame it. Unfortunately i dont think you can automate in audacity. If i had logic on my comp i would offer to give it a shot for you.

[lowdown]

You could always download reaper...
All the tools you would need to do a good job.
Its free...
You are supposed to get a licence at some stage...
"REAPER is available for download without technological limitations for evaluation purposes. Once you have evaluated REAPER, you should purchase a license."

[url="http://www.reaper.fm/"]http://www.reaper.fm/[/url]

A few guys swear by it here at Bass chat.
I have tried it, and it is great.


Garry

[wulf]

I use the same set up (H2 for recording and Audacity for editing). My typical work flow for gig and rehearsal recordings is:

EQ (test on a short section and then apply to the whole song or even whole gig)

Leveller

Compressor (sometimes ... judged by ear)

Amplify

For the amplification stage, I have decided that it doesn't matter if short, sharp bursts of energy (like snare hits) get clipped. I set an amplification level that allows the peaks to clip and brings the body of the sound near to maximum for the loud sections.

One tip though - when recording, try to set up the H2 so it isn't too near the drums (or any other overpowering sound sources). Where you put it, which mic you use (front / back or both) and what they point at will make a huge difference. Getting a good recording makes the editing task much easier, even using a simple tool like Audacity.

Wulf

[Stylon Pilson]

[quote name='bnt' post='289217' date='Sep 22 2008, 03:10 PM']Does your Audacity installation include a plugin called [b]SC4[/b]? This is a more flexible compressor with an attack time that goes down to 1.5ms.[/quote]

SC4 and Hard Limiter are working beautifully for me. I did consider trying a different DAW, but to be honest I can't be bothered with the hassle of learning how to use it.

S.P.

Edited September 23, 2008 by stylonpilson

[bnt]

[quote name='stylonpilson' post='290279' date='Sep 23 2008, 08:02 PM']SC4 and Hard Limiter are working beautifully for me.[/quote]
Yay!

If you were using Audacity on Linux, you could install a raft of free [url="http://www.ladspa.org/"]LADSPA[/url] plugins - far more than you could ever make use of, though they're generally not as polished as VSTs.

[Stylon Pilson]

[quote name='bnt' post='290312' date='Sep 23 2008, 08:42 PM']If you were using Audacity on Linux[/quote]

I am. Ubuntu. I installed the SC4 and Hard Limiter with

[code]sudo apt-get install swh-plugins[/code]

S.P.