DAW Audacity Tips

Jon3b

Blues Newbie
  How to record with Audacity is one thing. It can be a bit rough in the beginning just getting the program to recognize your input source, but once it's working, click Record and off you go. This post is aimed at refining your track once you have a piece of audio that you want to keep, and especially in the case of soloing over a backing track for repost in the VJR. The Basement as it's more affectionately known to by those who've been around for a couple years. Since it's beginning in my case.
  So, let's start with Fig 1; the upper left quadrant of the attached image. There's two tracks here, the backing track with recordings from previous participants and my own recorded track. The view here allows the full length of the backing track to be seen. At this level everything looks good, but it playback, my track sounds out of sync with the backing track.
  Let's zoom in and look at what's going on. Fig 2a is a Zoom In button that can be used at any time by left-clicking on it. It will magnify any selected area, remaining in the center of that area if it exceeds the window size. Fig 2b applies the zoom tool to the cursor. Using this tool will magnify centered on the cursor's position. I've zoomed in arbitrarily and looked for the peaks at the beginning of a note. Fig 2c shows that the backing track has a peak that is about one quarter of a second behind my own note. Ah ha!
  In the next section, Fig 3, I've zoomed in even more so that the window fits about one second's worth of audio. Go up to the tools and select the Time Shift tool (Fig 3a). By click-dragging on my track, it can be moved forward or back in time (Fig 3b) until the two peaks at the beginning of my note and the backing track are well inline vertically with each other. Scroll left and right to look at other sections. Depending on your own ability to play on time, other minor adjustments can be made so that your track is in sync as best as it can be. At this point, use your ears.
  Fig 4a & b show where you can actually adjust Audacity's latency rate to fit your own set up. A good way to do this is to use a drums only track, or make a click track using the available options featured by Audacity, then just play along with single quarter notes while focusing on playing in time. A higher negative number will move the time of your recording in relation to the click track farther to the left. A lower negative number will do the opposite.
  Fig 5 and 6 are about matching your tracks volume relative to the backing track. The empty area in Fig 5 is called "headroom" Most professional recordings will have a well apparent amount of headroom. While guitar players tend to want to drive the headroom out of their amps for that overdrive effect, doing so in the mastering process isn't desirable. Peaks that exceed the available headroom cause unwanted distortion in playback.
  Using the Level slider (Fig 6a) will adjust the audible volume of that track in 1db increments and will be applied during the Mix and Render process. Another option with finer control is to use the Amplify effect. This tool will, by default, give you an amplification value that will bring the highest peak to it's maximum 1db level. We don't want that, usually. Using the slider (Fig 6b) and moving it to the right will lessen the amplification factor to something more realistic and usable. Apply the effect, and listen. Yes, we want to hear you, but it will sound better if we can hear you in the context of the backing track.
  This has been a peek into what I do before you get to hear my recordings - at least the actual mixing process. Deciding what licks and notes I'm going to use is another can of worms. Not going there!
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
Chris, I'm no expert, but it sounds like you need to adjust the Latency (Edit/Preferences/Recording)
 
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