Audio Editing: A question about settings

[Zenith]

To all those highly experience tapers and editors - I require some help/advice if you'd be so kind.

I've been doing some experimenting with audacity today. I've brought in some audio samples from a couple of mini-disc masters I have from some shows I taped last year (these were edited and encoded by a friend for me), with a jack-to-jack analog lead into the input in the back of my machine. I was just wondering what settings I need to be working too. I recorded a minute and a half long sample, in stereo @ 44.1KHz/32 bit. These sounded great, but when I exported the wav file, it was 18.3 MB. Obviously, and hour and something long show is going to be huge! Is it possible/advisable to initially bring the master in at these settings, and then change them down afterwards to something a bit smaller like 16 Bit, or should I make the master 16 bit to begin with? - Does that make sense?

Also, is it best to have the output volume on the mini-disc player on full as it exports, and then adjust it in Audacity afterwards? I'd assume it was - but I'm not sure.

Basically, if anyone could offer some advice as to what sort of defaults etc I should be working to to get the best results, It'd be much appriciated. I'm pretty new to the editing side of things (hence the fairly nonsensical post), but I'm keen to learn!

Thanks!
-Ben

[bornalion]

i can't seem to remember what a minidisc records at but i know its not better than 16bit, you can't upgrade from the original recording (a minidisc source),but try both ways and listen to each sample,your ears will tell you what to do.

thats how i'd try it minidisc full and set recording level in audacity.

try the same source a few different ways and listen,listen,listen.thats the best advice i can give you.

dreyfuss might be able to help you a little better.he used a standalone burner.

i recorded to minidisc for 4 1/2 years and have 800 discs that need to be converted.i just can't handle the realtime transfer.

[dreyfuss]

When ever I was transfering my MD's (as bornalion said) I used a standalone burner, I would have the minidisc unit at full volume and then set the level's on the cd burner as high as I could. Most times there was still lots of room in the levels and I didn't have to worry about peaking (going into the red, distorting) at all.

If you're recording to the computer this should work the same, try to find the loudest point in the recording (hopefully your memory works great and can remember from being at the show), many times this is at the beginning of popular songs, when the band comes out, etc things like that. Once you know the loudest point set your levels according to that area.

You could also just record it at a safe level and then amplify it afterwords.

Record it to the computer via 16bit as that is the highest that the md unit would've been able to record at so there is no point in changing that.

Hopefully that helps

[Zenith]

Thanks guys, that's great! Thanks especially for the advice about the MD unit being 16 Bit. I'll have a bit more of a play and see what I can do.

[Zenith]

Hey guys. I just wondered if I could bend your ears again for a second?...

I've been playing around with the Ben Folds show that I taped. I'm yet to split all the tracks, but I did split the cover of 'Such Great Heights' as a test. The WAV file was 47 MB, but I converted it to a .flac file which brought it down to around about 19 MB. I used FLAC Frontend, and I was just wondering what Encoding Level I should be using? I had it set at six which was the default - but should I change that?

Thanks again
-Ben

[srb]

Hey guys. I just wondered if I could bend your ears again for a second?...

I've been playing around with the Ben Folds show that I taped. I'm yet to split all the tracks, but I did split the cover of 'Such Great Heights' as a test. The WAV file was 47 MB, but I converted it to a .flac file which brought it down to around about 19 MB. I used FLAC Frontend, and I was just wondering what Encoding Level I should be using? I had it set at six which was the default - but should I change that?

Thanks again
-Ben

This is a question I'm interested in having answered too. I had been using the default of 6 for a long time, but I noticed on markslog's cross-country tour shows, that he was using level 8. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the encoding process to establish what the difference is, but it would be good to know.

[chris]

I haven't looked into it yet, but should the theory that it only affects the compressed file size not be true? If FLAC is a Lossless compression, regardless of the setting the compressed file, when expanded should be identical to the original.

I'll see what I can learn about it...

[srb]

I believe I did a test, running the same .wav file through a level 5 compression, and level 8 compression, and didn't notice any difference in the resuling .flac files (in terms of size). That's why I'm confused about what it means/does.

[chris]

From http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=FLAC

Question: What is the best compression level for encoding my music?
Short Answer: The default setting, 5.
Long Answer: Encoding at the default setting will give the best balance between compression and encoding speed. Encoding at 8 can more than quadruple the encoding time, while having an insignificant effect on compression.

[Zenith]

Thanks for that, chris. I'll leave it on the default then.

I haven't looked into it yet, but should the theory that it only affects the compressed file size not be true? If FLAC is a Lossless compression, regardless of the setting the compressed file, when expanded should be identical to the original.

Well, that's what I thought - I just wondered what levels others used and why really.