Audacity Tutorials - How to use Audacity - Part 3 - Quality of Formats
In this Audacity tutorial, we will review various sample rates and how different sample rates will provide different results for your Audacity sound and recording editor project.
So, let’s start by clicking on the Audacity icon, and a window opens with a new Audacity program.
The first thing we want to look at is the Project rate, down here in the left. A project rate is the sample rate, which means how many times the audio has been sampled. The higher the number, the more the sampling and also more the storage space is required.
Audacity is defaulted to 44100Hz. The important thing to remember here is, if you are mixing in other sources of audio, we want to have matching sample rates. So, when you are importing audio into audacity, you have to check the sample rate to make sure it matches here. And if it none of the preselected ones here, you can click on other and enter any rate you would like. Once you enter the number, click OK.
So, let’s take a look at an example of it. Go to Project and select Import Audio. Moving onto the Audacity folder, clicking on Example folder, choosing the Music folder where there is Acoustic Guitar Loop file. Double click on that. It’s an AIFF format sound. Now you see the project rate is 44100Hz, which matches our project rate here. So, Acoustic Guitar Loop is sampled at the correct rate.
The other sampling format to know is Bit Processing. 32-bit float is actually twice the quality of standard CDs. But, it’s a good way to work. Generally, what we can do is, work at 32-bit quality and then export in 16bits. Again, 32bit is going to take twice as much as storage space as 16bit. Well, that also depends on your computer space. 32bit is recommended for higher quality. Now let’s take a quick listen [Music Playing]. As you could see, we have a good quality audio from the Acoustic guitar.
Lets take a look at how do we set that. Go to Edit > Preferences (Hot Key Ctrl+P). Here we have our Audacity Preferences. Select Quality. Here you can see a Default Sample Rate. So, if you are consistently working with the system at a different sample rate, you can go ahead and set it in here. Again, 32-bit is generally preferred. If you want to work with a different bit, for less storage space you certainly can. For real time sample rate you go to Fast Sinc or the High Quality. Fast is found to be good enough. If you do a music recording, you probably want to go to High Quality. You can see its set here for High Quality as well. Dithering is a term, when you can bring samples of audio. Again depending on what you are doing and what your workflow is, you can try different adjustments on this. For Real-time, None is generally preferred and for High-Quality, Triangle is preferred. You get a last try on here on what you need your final project to be.
In File Formats, you can make a copy of the file before editing, which is a safer way to go. Though there isn’t any problem, if you read directly from the original file, it is always a good idea to make a copy. So, don’t be afraid to click on that. And in the Export Format, as it was said, most audio programs are 16bit. So, you can change it if you would like, again, depending on what you want to deliver, this is where you have to adjust it. And same with OGG and MP3 formats. So, that’s how you can adjust the quality for imports and exports.
The next thing I would like to talk about is Microphones. Whether you are recording your voice or instruments, microphones are vitally important. You generally get what you pay for in microphones. So, depending on your budget and what you are going to be using at and what you are going to be using it for, microphones come in all such price levels. And you do get what you pay for. So, it is recommended to get the highest quality mic chip you can, for your given situation.
The next important thing is microphone placement. You don’t want to have a microphone too close or too far. It might take some experimentation to get it just right. So, first is just move right in here, too close to the microphone or move away too far from the microphone. Just through experimentation we will be able to find the right distance from the microphone, which will vary from microphone to microphone and one instrument to recording.
Next important thing to look at is Levels. So, when we choose Project and add a New Audio track, if you don’t want to listen to the existing tracks, click on Mute and see how it changes to light grey. Now reset the cursor to the beginning and start recording. Now, you could see the current recording level, which is good. You generally don’t want to record too high or too low. So, the good recommended level is from -24 to -12, which are good audio levels. Now, click on Stop, to stop recording.
The final thing that is recommended is to test it out. Take short samples and practice your workflow. So, depending on what you want your end project to be, just do couple seconds of sample of what you want to do from start to finish. Either editing or other recording you want to do, and do it from start to finish, to make sure, your delivery files are exactly, what you or your client is looking for. Then, once you have your work flow and process done, go ahead and work on your whole project, using the same settings. That’s how you get good quality audio recordings.
