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Post by hifidez on Aug 27, 2017 18:39:39 GMT
Me and my system are pretty well sorted so I just like to post a sort-of newsletter from time to time.
What's up next? Well I plan to re-decorate and re-fit my office-cum-studio. It will have a pretty good audio system.
I am buying back my Musical Fidelity A3.2cr power amp from the guy I sold it to and this will be the absolute heart and soul of the system which will be fronted by a DIY passive 'pre-amp' (yet to be built, where's the soldering iron?).
The office PC with Win 10 will accept inputs from either of my 2 turntables through a MF V-LPSii phono stage or my Electrovoice and Shure SM58 vocal microphones all connected to my new Behringer USB 24/192 interface . The PC will play out through an MF V-90 DAC (as will a Denon DVD2900 SACD/DVD-A machine) and the speakers are my LS3/5a clones.
I have been working on (or, rather, playing around with) recording a collection of swing jazz tracks, just for fun. I have been buying ;-) the backing tracks and then recording and mixing in my own vocals, using Audacity and Adobe Audition. Glorified Karaoke yes, but fun nevertheless. The most fun track yet was 'Me and my Shadow', the Robbie Williams version. This was a 'must try' as the vocal arrangement on this song is challenging enough, but I used it to try out some double tracking too... is that the term? Anyway it's time I added to my 'album'. Next track could be the Michael Buble version of 'Cry me a River. That's a tough one now that my my voice is not as young as it was.
So what's everyone else up to this coming winter?
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Post by marveltone on Aug 28, 2017 1:15:26 GMT
What am I up to? Goodness! Where do I start?
I have hay that needs to be delivered, a hayfield that needs to be reconditioned, ditches to mow, a firebreak between us and the swamp that needs mowing, firewood to be cut, and my factory is working overtime! This leaves precious little time for walking the trails, picking wild plums, and evening campfires.
For inside projects, I need to replace a noisy blower in our LP parlour stove which sits right beside my listening chair, so I can hear music, instead of the constant rattles of a loose, out of balance squirrel cage fan. I also have plans for either making or buying wall hangers for my guitars, so I can make my little cove in the end of the living room perfect.
But next Saturday, which is Labor Day weekend, we take a break from all this. Earlier this Summer, we catered to a nearby family reunion. Fed about 40 people. We've decided to use the money from that to drive 100 miles one way for a day trip to Grand Forks, North Dakota (the nearest small city) to treat ourselves to sushi!
All in all, life is good! A bit busy, but good.
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Post by timjthomas on Aug 28, 2017 9:18:10 GMT
Working, listening to music, and trying to improve my golf game. We drop our daughter off this Wednesday to University (woo hoo - one down and one to go). Been sick the last week with a lingering infection, so hoping to start feeling better soon.
All things considered, doing well.
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Rabbit
Administrator
Posts: 7,087
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Post by Rabbit on Aug 28, 2017 9:25:59 GMT
Planning the next trip to Menorca and editing 600 movie clips. 4 weeks next year!!!
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Post by ronzo56 on Aug 29, 2017 1:57:55 GMT
Working, eating, sleeping. The occational doctor visit. And of course listening to music. May get Adobe Audtion and try my hand at EQing albums that need some help. We will see. Right now just looking forward to Fall. Was 44.4 C today. But I can't complain. Poor folks in Texas are in for a very long haul.
Oh, and my wife wants me to learn how to play the Game of Thrones theme on guitar. Chords are a little challenging as I am rusty like an old nail. The picking pattern is going to be work from the video she showed me.
I want cool air! Inside of the car had to be 60 C after work. Almost burned my hands on the steering wheel. Gotta remember to cover it with a towel tomorrow.
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Rabbit
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Post by Rabbit on Aug 29, 2017 7:47:10 GMT
Try this.... The tune ... A D FG A D FG A D FG A D FG E . . . G C EF G C EF G C EF G C EF D Dm Dm Dm Dm Am Am Am Am C C C C Dm Dm Dm Dm I can't remember the rest of the tune but that's the start. If you hum it to me I can work it out!!
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Post by ronzo56 on Aug 30, 2017 1:40:53 GMT
Thanks. Ian! I'll give it a try. with some trepidation. Been a while since I played. Months at least. I get rusty so fast now.
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Post by hifidez on Aug 30, 2017 8:28:22 GMT
May get Adobe Audtion and try my hand at EQing albums that need some help. We will see. There's a workaround to get a legitimate copy of Audition (as well as a number of other superceded Adobe products, e.g. the InDesign DTP software). Go to (and if you don't already have an Adobe ID it will prompt you to register and get one): helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/cs2-product-downloads.html?promoid=19SCDRQK#and tick 'I Accept'. Then on the next page select your language, and this takes you to the download page with the whole list of software and relevant serial numbers.
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Post by ronzo56 on Aug 30, 2017 13:52:47 GMT
Thanks Derek. We have a 3 day holiday weekend coming up. I will give it a try. Do use Audition? If so what computer do you use? My HP is getter up there in age, still running XP and about as slow as molasses on a freezing winter day. So I mostly use my Dell laptop. Win 8.1 with Intel Core i3.
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Post by hifidez on Aug 30, 2017 14:37:03 GMT
Audition isn't fussy. I've used everything from XP to 10. The only thing that's a bit slow on older machines are things like upsampling from, say, 44.1kHz to 96kHz.
I tend to use Audacity for recording or tracking and Audition for audio analysis, finnal mastering and formats conversion.
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Rabbit
Administrator
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Post by Rabbit on Aug 30, 2017 16:31:59 GMT
I use Audacity to edit audio on my videos. It links directly with my video editing software so that when I've finished adjusting sound, it plants it right back into my video. Really good app.
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Post by ronzo56 on Aug 30, 2017 22:21:50 GMT
Thanks guys for the information. Just learning how to eq a badly mastered CD at the moment. Baby steps. Glad to hear my laptop will work. Been fooling around with a parametric EQ plug in for Foobar. Just for fun at the moment.
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Rabbit
Administrator
Posts: 7,087
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Post by Rabbit on Aug 31, 2017 8:29:46 GMT
Audacity has a lot of facilities actually and it's a question of trying to learn the ones that you need Ron. Depending on what you're doing, your priorities are different. For instance for video production, compression and limiting can be very important in a crowded soundtrack.
I've just been mixing a set of scenes from a water park in Menorca with a waterproof camera, which means virtually no sound. So it was filmed in the GoPro with a dodgy track with splash sounds and loud water gurgles that sounded awful. They had to be eq'd to bring up presence at the relevant 'splash' points, where I wanted the effect of splashing. Other than that, the sound was turned off.
I recorded ambient sound on a digital recorder for two hours in a bag which was then planted below the splash sections and throughout the whole video at lower level.
At one point, the sound was really low, so I addd another track of a swimming pool filter at very low level.
Then at various 'deader' points, some random comments made by us all from the digital recorder.
All tracks were 'normalised' and if needed eq'd and compressed, before adjusting relative volumes which altered throughout.
Then music tracks which were varied in volume through the whole film.
Final checks on input volumes and the output bus to make sure that there was no clipping.
All that after putting the actual film footage together, so really, the sound took longer than the film.
Funny thing is that we seem to be able to accept rough looking film footage, but sound is much more difficult to put up with; especially with any ropey shots.
All of my editing was done on Audacity and the mixing of the tracks on my film editing software.
The most useful switches for me on Audacity are Normalise, Compression, Limiting, fade in and out and of course, cutting clips. With music though, very little. compression or limiting. I only use that when I need speech to really stand out above a busy mix of background sound, or when I have really large peaks on speech which means that the overall level is too low. Compression takes those really fast peaks down so that the average volume comes right up, so speech can cut through much more easily when planted on thick background sounds.
I can literally plant soundtracks onto my video editing software and then right click them to get them to load onto Audacity for editing. When I save the clips, they replace the original film copy and the video software accesses them straight away. The film copy is also left on the computer in case I decide to revert back.
It is surprising that such a good piece of software is free actually.
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Post by ronzo56 on Sept 1, 2017 0:32:19 GMT
The free part is one of its best features! Obviously this is going to be a slow process for me. The only time I have right now is the weekends, and that can get used up quickly. Just trying out a few things I might want to do IF I ever get to retire.
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Post by drumdrym on Sept 1, 2017 0:33:18 GMT
Thanks Derek for the pointer to Adobe software free downloads. Got me a copy of Audition now. I'd been there for a copy of PS CS2, Alex (SandyK) posted the link a couple of years back. Ian I've been using Audacity for ages first to clean up a load of my vinyl taking out the pops and crackles. and finally digitising it. Try it for capturing any audio passing through your computer it's brilliant. As a recorder for audio for the blind covering our local newspaper and the Scottish Farmer weekly magazine when we moved away from tape cassettes to digital recording and distribution on USB stick about six years ago. We record with Audacity in a room in our local Art Centre but for the past two years I've been running the Farmer recording as a "Distance" recording. I have seven readers who read/record at home one is actually in Canada. Their resultant audio files are emailed back to me and I then produce the master copy from their raw recordings, in my own home. As an audio editor I think it's well worth the money!! Strange how some people dismiss it just because it's FREE. There are a few FREE "effects" Plugins that I've added to the Audacity effects menu. Molot a compressor/limiter...............Limiter No.6 and Tokyo Dawn Labs Plugins.....find them here www.tokyodawn.net/tokyo-dawn-labs/most recent being.... "TDR Nova" (NOVA is a parallel dynamic equalizer. Appearing in the familiar layout of a parametric equalizer, each band also includes a full featured dynamics section allowing the processor to cover an impressively wide range of applications.) I really like TDR Nova. Regards, Alan
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