Hi Humberto, replying to the question of how to reduce the volume of the playing track while recording speech over it. If you mean that it's too loud so that you can't hear what you're saying, you can reduce the volume of the whole track using the track gain. With the track being the focus, press shift+g to open a gain dialog, and enter a gain in db, for example -12. If you mean, once you've recorded a voice over, how do reduce the volume of the other track or tracks while you're speaking, the easiest way is to use the auto duck effect. The requirements of the Auto Duck effect are that: 1. The tracks whose volume is going to be reduced are selected, and a time-range is selected to include all the audio you want to be modified. 2. The control track is the next track after the above tracks, and it isn't selected.
So if you've got one music track and one narration track in the project: 1. Make sure that the music track is the first track. You can move tracks up and down the table using the tracks context menu (application key). 2. Arrange for the music track to be selected and the narration track unselected. (pressing enter toggles whether the focussed track is selected) 3. Select a time range to include all the audio in the selected track: press j, and then shift + k. 4. Open the Auto Duck effect from the effects menu, and press Enter to press the default OK button. In fact the Auto Duck dialog contains a number of controls for setting various parameters which you may want to adjust. All the time parameters are specified in seconds, and the volumes in db. 1. The first control is a panel which graphically illustrates the parameters, and you can just ignore this. 2. The duck amount is the reduction in volume. 3. The maximum pause is the maximum time that the volume in the control track can be below the specified threshold before the volume in the selected tracks is faded up again. 4. The time over which the volume in the selected tracks is faded down to the reduced volume is made up of two parts: the time before and the time after the time when the volume in the control track exceeds a threshold. These are known as the outer and inner fade down lengths. 5. Similarly, there are outer and inner fade up lengths. 6. The threshold is the volume in the control track which if exceeded causes the volume in the selected tracks to be reduced. Note that whatever value of maximum pause is set, it is always at least the sum of the outer fade down and fade up lengths. Note also that Undo (ctrl+z), and redo (ctrl+y) are very useful when playing around with effects. David. original message: Hello Dean and all: Thank you for the links to the program and the tutorial. I have used Gold Wave for a long time and as a totally blind Jaws user, like its accesibility very much. The biggest problem I have is the noise reduction, which isn't that great in GW. After reading several posts about the new Audacity and the quality of its noise reduction to clean out old recordings, I downloaded and installed it. I am still no expert with noise reduction, but it seems to be better than Gold Wave's. I went through the tutorial, which is very complete and thus cumbersome, but I am still having two things I haven't been able to figure out: 1. Voiceover. How to reduce the volume of the playing track while recording speech over it. 2. How to tell the length of the track with some key stroke. I would also appreciate if someone can point me to a simple tutorial about noise reduction or applying effects with Audacity. TIA, Humberto To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: [email protected]
