Song Editing The Way I Do it

As of now the way I do this is for 16 bit sound as I don't have a better
sound card or sound editor.
So here is what i do for restoring my old record album's
and adding them in to the computer.

I use my home stereo unit as in turn-table and cassette deck and equilizer.
I then play the records and record them to cassette tape using dobly "B" sound reduction.
and the 14 band equlizer set up for normal sound trying to match the freq's in the middle and raise them on the ends
that makes it look like a nice wave across the front of it. Which makes the bass louder
on the left channel and the treble louder on the right channel. and not too much of a curve to the wave either.

Then once I have the songs on the cassette tape I use a fairly good boom box.
What you younger kids call them now days I don't know
but it is a portable cassette deck that has radio cdrom and
lots of good sound effect knobs on them with loud speakers (Boom Box).
I use the headphone jack in it to plug in a patch cord to connect it to
the computer sound card,
when doing this you need to remember that the sound card can be
damaged by too loud of volume comming in to it through
the line in jack so keep the volume on the boom box
down to level 3 or 4 just to make sure it is low enough.
You can adjust the sound volume with the computer later
you just want to get the song in the computer without damaging the sound card.

Ok you're ready for putting the song in to the computer
good you will need some software called a Wav Editor.
You can get free ones online just look around for them or you can buy one that has more features on it.

I use both a free one and one I bought, there is also a wave editing studio
that comes with the soundblaster live sound cards you can use that one too.
You will also need large amounts of free space on your hard drive.
And you will need to make your swap file, virtural memory, page file, or
what ever it is called on your computer a large size and use a fast spinning hard drive.

You will see that the songs in the wav format
are about 10 mbs of space for 1 minute of music so that is why you need the large
freespace and the large swap file,
you also should have large amounts of ram.

Ok now you're all set sound software songs on cassette tape
patch cord pluged in you click the link to get the wav editor open
and you click on its link to start a new file,
you then click on the new file's record button and
press the play button on the boom box, you sit there waiting to hear
your song coming in to the computer, and sit there and sit there and sit there.
Something has gone wrong you think it must have?
And you might be right something did go wrong.
Check the batteries in the boom box check the power cord in it to
make sure it is pluged in to the wall, all is good there.

But still no sound getting in to the computer you stop all the recording and
you start to play music on your computer yepper you can
hear it but no sound when you click record, only the start program sound
from windows? so what is going on.

Simple you forgot to set up the sound recorder.
Go to the control panel find the sound panel for your system,
look for the place that says you can change the different system sounds
when you click on buttons and resize the windows.

When you find that you want to find the place that says you can turn off
those sounds because you don't want them
on your song file so turn them off.
Good now look on that panel for an avanced button or look on the different tabs
for an advanced button you want to open the mixer control panel
once you get the mixer up where you can see all the sliders for you to mute or
make louder. Look for the word "options" then click on that word
and find the word "properties" then click on it and
when the next panel shows up click on the radio button,
(radio button is what the little dot you select is called)
beside the word "recording "when that changes to the recording one
make sure you have the " line in " checked.

Then click the ok button on that panel.
Now the recording mixer control panel is showing find the
"line in slider" and select that one then turn the volume down to just
under half volume.
Then click the "X" in the upper right hand corner to close the panel.

Now you all set to record the sound from the tape and it sould work now.
So you rewind the tape to make sure your at the front of the tape.
And start all over with the making a new file in the wav editor and
clicking the record button for it, then press the play button on the tape deck.

Now you near the sound, when it is finished with the song,
you need to click the stop button on the recoding program to stop recording it.
Save it and then edit it which this is how I edit them.

I add in Chorus if the wav editor has that I first add in the higher sound with one echo here is the numbers I use :

Freq is 12 to 15 Modulation is 20% to 30%., Echo is 1, level of echo is 31% to 45% Placement of echo is 5 to 8 milliseconds.

That is the high ones up around the flutes and cymbols, the ones for the midtone sound if needed I use :

Freq is 25 to 30 depending on the voice style of the male singers, that will bring out their voices better it also helps with the female singers but it is low tone for them, Modulation is 20% to 30%., Echo is 1, level of echo is 31% to 45% Placement of echo is 5 to 8 milliseconds.

You see most of it is the same as the high freqs. But for the bass I use this:

Freq is 60 to 85 Modulation is 20% to 30%., Echo is 1, level of echo is 31% to 45% Placement of echo is 7 to 10 milliseconds.

Some of it is the same as the high and mid tones but some is changed too.
That is how I set up the chorus's now for the live style of echo i use this:

Echo 1 delay of echo is 11 to 18 milliseconds level of echo is 31%.

If your sound editor does not have chorus
then you can just do the echo. By doing the above your changing
the song file and giving it more sound, just a little bit
but that can help when you compress it, as sometimes you lose
words in the compression of the song file into, mp3 files or ogg files and
that makes for a bad sounding song.

The reason I said the numbers in the higher or lower number value is
because you need to listen to each song when you do this,
as some songs dont need much and some need more.

After I am done with the chorus and the echos I then raise the volume
level of the song to make the highest notes on the left and right channels
almost touch each other. Then save the file as a wav and do the next one.
I can get about 15 wav files on my harddrive at once before
I run out of room and need to convert them to another format.
( I use the Ogg format that is just my likes as it is free and open source code there is no copyright on it to get you in trouble with. )
When I convert it to the ogg format I also have the porgram normalize it for me,
and I have it set to make any thing under the 85% volume level
be put to the 80% volume level,
and anything over the 95% volume level
be put at the 98% volume level.

Doing all the above will make the song sound more like the record when you
listen to it on the computer.
It takes a lot of work for each song to be done this way,
but if your a person that likes to control how it sounds,
this will be what you'll like to do.


Enjoy music it is truely the one common language. 8-)

since the above puts the echo in to the song file if you have a modern sound card with an built in equlizer or use a preset on the equilizer that comes with your jukebox software, you might just get too much echo.