Audacity Fixing an audio issue using EQ

J

Jalapeno

Student Of The Blues
I was updating my "How To Videos" I recorded back in about 2014 for another forum I frequent and thought maybe this particular video might be of interest to BGU folks, since it isn't about Electronica and about fixing an acoustic guitar track.

Because it is a screencast it might be best to watch on YouTube but I'll embed it here for a preview.

I used Audacity in the video but the same technique applies to any DAW with edit capabilities or an audio editor such as SoundBooth. I normally use Ableton Live but Audacity is free so there you go. It's done in Audacity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsHBPPSGzys


Let me know if it is helpful.

Thanks for watching.

Eric
 
CaptainMoto

CaptainMoto

Blues Voyager
Cool technique!
I've gone hunting for squeaks but never used a spectrum view in the transporter to do it.
I use Studio One, although there are a number of ways to see the spectrum I'm not certain if that particular spectrogram view is available in S1, I'll have to go check that out, it could come in handy if I have that.

I've used surgical gain reduction to handle such problems and EQ to a lessor degree.
However, I'm always leery of cutting across the entire track out of concern that I'm pulling out some good stuff.
I like using dynamic EQ for this, as it cuts only those instances where the offending frequency spikes.
 
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J

Jalapeno

Student Of The Blues
I hear you Captain, Spectral Analysis is the perfect tool to figure out which frequencies are ripe for adjustment. If I had a dense track with lots of instruments I'd prefer surgery with a scalpel rather than a Bowie Knife and the spectragram would help a lot. In that video the squeak was at a chord change in a solo guitar track so the Bowie Knife approach works just fine so I used the 10 band Graphic EQ as thats all that I needed to remove the squeak. I left enough frequencies sounding (including the highest frequencies of the squeak) and considering the micro second of time the EQ cut the 2k-4k bands no real surgery was required. There was no hearable loss of information (other than the annoying noise). That's why I zoom in close to get just to the microsecond of noise before bringing up the EQ.

To be more surgical with the EQ, in the place where I said "use the Graphic setting", there is a "Draw setting" that gives really fine control over very narrow frequency bands. I'd be more inclined to be more careful while carving out space for, for instance, a drum and bass guitar or synth and bass. Sometimes automation is just fine and sometimes its necessary to go in and make the adjustments manually. It depends on the track and what is to be accomplished.

If I were actually mixing that track I would not have cut all of the squeak out because it would not be true to the performance. I'm kind of a stickler on performance rather than perfection. I would have just reduced it so it didn't stick out so much. But that video is from a series I did (I'm updating some of them now, that one is a "first cut" draft update) called "5 minute Fixes with EQ" so the technique shown is as simple as possible to get the idea across without bogging down in complex details and stay under 5 minutes. There are lots of 30 minute videos on youtube already :)

Eric
 
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