LAB NINE IN AUDACITY

TASK: PARALLEL PROCESSING

IN AUDACITY

Setting Up a Project

In a new project, import track 48, Subway, (which was used

in Lab Six).

Split the stereo track, remove one channel, and change the
remaining track to mono.

Duplicate the region twice, so that you end up with three

tracks containing the same region.

Using AudioSuite to Process the File

Select the region in the first track, then select the Equalization
process from the Effect menu.

Remove the low frequencies (you are created a Low Shelf with
cut) by setting the graph as below.

Creating a low shelf filter

Notice that the filtering process removed a lot of the energy in
the signal.

Normalize the new processed region.

Applying a Second Process

Select the region in the second track, then select the

Equalization process again from the Effect menu.

Create a peak filter (as shown below) to boost the frequencies

around 400 Hz, and cut everything else.

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Creating a Peak filter

Select the Peak filter, set the Gain to 12 dB, the Freq to 400 Hz,
and the Q to .5, and then preview the result.

Because this process boosted frequencies, there should be no

need to normalize the file. In fact, it might be verging on distortion.
Applying a Third Process
The third process will be limited to volume change, and wont be
processed timbrally.

Create a dynamic volume relationship between the three

tracks.
Here is one possible example:

Parallel presentation of multiple processes.

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Lab Nine in Audacity

In the example, the original and the two processed versions

cross fade amongst themselves. The result is a continually changing
sound that balances variation (the changing filters) and unity (only
a single sound object is actually heard).
In order to create a nearly continuous sound, with minimal
disruptions between the processes, notice that the arrival points of
my fade-ins coincide with the beginnings of fade-outs in another
track. This is an old analog studio mixing trick, in which, when
cross-fading, you dont begin to fade out a track until the new track
has already reached maximum volume.

HINT: DONT BE FOOLED BY WHAT YOU SEE

Volume automation, particularly in regard to balancing the
amplitude levels of all of your regions, is something that you
should practice extensively. You need to listen to every region
carefully in relation to those regions that occur before, after, and
during its playback. Taking into consideration whether the region
is in the foreground or background, for example, will determine its
relative amplitude; however, remember that some sounds, even
when normalized, will present a lower volume than others because
of their quality of sound, timbral richness, and ambient noise. For
this reason, you will need to adjust each clips volume with a great
degree of detail.
Ideally, you need to do this process while you are listening to
the music; making decisions visually will not create the best aural
result.
Do not allow visual representations to influence music and sounddesign decisions.

For example, one interesting method of presenting two sound

objects is to contrast their amplitudes. In the example below, the first
sound is a dramatic and loud sound object that has its own volume
envelopeit fades out naturally. Immediately afterwards, a
contrasting sound object is presented at a much lower amplitude.
The effect for the listener is one of partial masking: the first sound
will be very obvious, while the second sound object should be heard
almost as an afterthought, or an aural shadow. (This type of
gesture presentation is a standard compositional technique in
concert music; it is not limited to electroacoustic music composition.)

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Lab Nine in Audacity

Contrasting levels between two successive sound objects.

The second sound object should be barely audible, so at what
level should its volume automation be set? (Note that both sound
objects are normalized.) Based upon the visual data only, pulling
the volume level down to half would seem like a substantial
reduction; however, halfway down is only 50%, or 6 dB. Six
decibels is, in fact, half as loud as unity gain; however, remember
that our dynamic range is 120 dB. In fact, changing the volume to
almost nothing visually still presents a very audible sound, a
reduction, Im guessing, of only about 24 dB (unfortunately,
Audacity does not display the actual decibel adjustment). In the
above example, even though the second track visually seems to be
barely present, it is very audible (since it is the only sound
occurring at the time).

AUDACITYFURTHER REFERENCE
As mentioned in earlier labs, Audacity does not have the features
that commercial multitrack programs contain. Most of these
features are not necessary for this course.
Audacity, being a free program, also displays some bugs and
peculiarities, which have been noted in these labs. One aspect that I
found somewhat disturbing is that it sometimes will hang when
starting up (at least on the OSX version). This was solved was force
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quitting the application (command-option-esc), and trying again. In

some cases, this had to be done several times before it would
properly start up!
Another aspect that concerned me was upon opening an
existing project, I sometimes received the following warning:

This cant be good

Clicking OK brought up the following warning:

Guess Ill go with the recommendation

Simply put, this isnt something I want to see when Im
working on a project to which Ive dedicated dozens of hours.
A habit Ive picked up is resaving (Save As) a project with a
new name, usually the date, and keeping all previous versions.
Thus, if the day arrives that Audacity tells me that it cant open a
project, at least I will have the project from the previous working
project.

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