Any tips/tutorials for using Audacity?

[Sergeant_Skyrim]

Also, if I imported a song into my iTunes from my CD and then use that version in Audacity, when I save it it saves as an Audacity only file. How would I get it back to something that I could put back into iTunes and put on my iPod?

[nascarguy301]

Also, if I imported a song into my iTunes from my CD and then use that version in Audacity, when I save it it saves as an Audacity only file. How would I get it back to something that I could put back into iTunes and put on my iPod?

You have to export it as an mp3 file. Go to file and select export as mp3. You have to have the lame mp3 encoder though

[Decaf]

I wouldn't mind replacing the original post with any info that Pimpin/Decaf/SPLWGN/anybody else provides to be honest. I think that this could be a great Q&A sort of thread though concerning purely Audacity.

Another question I had though was when you add the Low and High Pass Filters there's a rolloff and there's a filter quality. When implementing either filter, is there anything wrong with doing 48dB per octave at the preset .7071 filter quality? Or should you change any numbers or use a different dB per octave rolloff? I know that it says:

the higher the db slope the sooner it gets rid of whatever you are filtering, I would use 24db or higher when attempting to add a bass line ontop of a song that already has bass. I've always left it at .7

"If using a rolloff of 12 dB, a [q] value greater than default 0.7 increases resonance ['ringing'] of the cutoff frequency and could result in clipping."

see above

So if I'm for instance taking a track and placing it there twice, and giving one track a HPF and the other a LPF after I've already slowed both down by the same speed and having both cutoff frequencies at 80Hz, then would a 48dB per octave rolloff with a q of 0.7071 hurt anything? You say to slap on a bunch of filters to get rid of the portion you don't want, but it seems to either amplify or increase the clipping whenever I play it back (Original track never hit red on the L/R up top but after throwing on a filter or two it did).

lower the amplitude by -2 or -3 before you do any HPF/LPF. after you have you might need to find whats clipping or at max and lower that

What I was trying to do was take Dirty Diana and split it into two portions - one less than 80Hz and one greater than 80Hz after they both had already been slowed by 16%. Then I was going to try changing the pitch of the greater than 80Hz to see if I could get his original voice back while keeping the slowed version with less than 80Hz at the new slowed peaks basically. So to summarize myself, keep the new lower tuning on the bass side while trying to restore the voice back to the same original pitch.

not gonna happen. you will notice the vocals will be warbly and off sounding when trying to change pitch on one and not the other. i have always used change speed and that is all, never tempo nor pitch

If you can decipher any of what I'm trying to say then I'd love a response telling me what I'm doing right/wrong, I really hope I'm starting to catch onto this! (Thanks again for all the help so far)

you want to choose a value higher than 80hz usually, even with a 48db slope you will still get some information between 65hz-80hz. trying using 100hz or a bit higher. this starts to become an issue if you are eliminating midbass that you want to keep, so not all songs can be messed with successfully.

decafe please do a huge right up on how you do your magic please

The easiest way for me to explain it is that you CANNOT modify every song, know that from the beginning.

I download songs and the first thing I do is run it through windows media player oscope so see if its even worth the time in audacity. Its hard to explain what exactly I look for, because I use my ears just as much as my eyes.

If there is excessive highs/mids that you can quiet it will allow you room to add bass via bass boost. so you need to use a combination of amplify, EQ, bass boost, declipper, limiter, normalizer.... whatever it takes to make room for bass, and plenty of times there isnt a feasible way without lowering something in the song too much.

I would not suggest doing this without decent headphones otherwise you can't even hear what you are doing to the bass below 80hz.

I only use change speed.

About 90% of the effects (after you download the plugins) are not used by me.

In the past i've used whawha to make the track move from left to right.

When the bass is quiet at the start i use a HPF@90hz, db level depends if i wanted to hear a little bass or 0 bass.

I slow between 6-30%.

Unfortunately I started saved the early zips at 192kbps but now I use extreme preset/320kbps. the reason is that when you use a lower quality it will cut off/clip small parts of the song to fit, which look red when you reimport the song after exporting it.

To add bass lines when there isnt any in the song to begin with you simply highlight the exact start and end of the note in the song, go to add new audio track(not stereo), generate sine wave, you will almost never be able to use an amplitude higher than .6. because you highlighted the exact place of the note you want it will be generated as the same duration. fadein/fadeout the first and last wavelength to eliminate the DC jump from note to note (sounds like popping or a click)

now play the track and watch the green stereo bar, if it turns red you need to lower the amplitude. keep doing this til it rarely turns read and can make it through the song with let says, 10 red spots or less. listen to it over and over again and mess with the amplitude of the sine wave until it sounds correct then hit mix and render. keep show clipping on because once mix and render is done you will have both waveforms combined. its a simple addition, you can go from 0-30 in loudeness and the mids/highs are 15, you can only add 15 in bass, if that makes sense. if you find that you cannot fit a loud enough sine wave you might have to quiet the mids/highs, but you should be doing this to the notes that are peaking, not an overall amplify.

The EQ on audacity its basically only limited by your screen size, you can easily get 30 bands out of it so its as verstile or more than the best eqs you can buy. I use EQ a LOT, sometimes with success and other times its just ok.

To finish you need to go back to the start. import the original and modified song into windows media player and watch them both on the oscope. pay attention to bass lines that look like a slide not a sine wave, triangular basslines the come to a sharp point, not smooth. Watch out for flat horizontal sections. Make sure the green line is actually centered and not lower or higher than normal.

The most powerful tool we have is our ears, so learning what distortion/clipping sounds like can really help, so i suggest to purposely ruin songs and ONLY play them on your headphone so you train your ear what you don't want to hear.

Am I leaving things out, yes... but between autr/spl/pimpn/me the average user has almost all the info you need in this thread already.

Remember I made all those tracks for me to listen to as a hobby originally and then I decided to share, I'm not perfect and it took YEARS to figure everything out. I've migrated away from audacity lately and I've been using FL, attempting to make songs from scratch the way we all want... so keep an eye out in the future

[Sergeant_Skyrim]

Also, if I imported a song into my iTunes from my CD and then use that version in Audacity, when I save it it saves as an Audacity only file. How would I get it back to something that I could put back into iTunes and put on my iPod?

You have to export it as an mp3 file. Go to file and select export as mp3. You have to have the lame mp3 encoder though

Thanks a lot man, it actually came up with the option/link to download Lame when I tried saving as an MP3

[nascarguy301]

Thanks

[Sergeant_Skyrim]

Thanks for the great info Decaf, much appreciated. I'm definitely not expecting quick results, I know that this kind of stuff takes a long time to master so I'm happy with learning and doing a bit of trial and error in the mean time

[Decaf]

[tf3090]

Bass boosting a song in audacity is very easy using the equalizer tool, just cut the mid/treble frequencies and boost the bass frequencies. If there is clipping in the song, undo and lower the bass a little bit until there is no clipping. Basically a trial and error thing. If you use headphones it is very easy to hear when it is clipping.

Alot of songs also have clipped bass to begin with (alot of Gucci Mane songs come to mind) which means no matter what you do with the equalizer tool, it will always be clipped.

I'm interested in making my own bass remixes after reading this thread now, though, should be fun. Always wanted to make my own remixes like bigpimpin does

[Decaf]

Bass boosting a song in audacity is very easy using the equalizer tool, just cut the mid/treble frequencies and boost the bass frequencies. If there is clipping in the song, undo and lower the bass a little bit until there is no clipping. Basically a trial and error thing. If you use headphones it is very easy to hear when it is clipping.

Alot of songs also have clipped bass to begin with (alot of Gucci Mane songs come to mind) which means no matter what you do with the equalizer tool, it will always be clipped.

I'm interested in making my own bass remixes after reading this thread now, though, should be fun. Always wanted to make my own remixes like bigpimpin does

this thread if meant for people who know what they are talking about

when you lower the amplitude of the wave with the EQ you are getting rid of the red and making the clipping quieter, but there will still be distortion from the clipping, you cannot fix that.

[Sergeant_Skyrim]

Alright, so the other day I slowed down Rodeo by Juvenile and it sounded like complete garbage. I'm almost positive that it's because of the type of file I saved it as, so what type of file DO I save/export it as to get the best possible quality? I think I might've left it at the default accidentally.