AUD recordings: quiet music, loud applause

[joshd]

I'm sure this has been asked and answered before, so if there's another posting or an FAQ somewhere that answers this, then just point me in that direction. Otherwise....

I have a few audience shows that are way too quiet, except when the audience applauds. So, I'd like to boost the music and lower the applause.

I have Cool Edit Pro. The show I'm looking at now has very low levels during the music, but then spikes of applause in between the songs. The applause spikes are at roughly the amplification that the music should be, while the music is virtually a flat line, way too low.

What I'd thought of doing was amplifying the entire recording until the music parts are at the appropriate levels (which would make the applause way over the red line) and then going in and manually reducing the applause.

Is this the proper way, or is there some kind of tool or setting in CEP I should use that will zone in on those applause spots and reduce them for me automatically (in a way that doesn't sound unnatural)?

Any hints would be welcome. It seems like this should be a fairly easy task, and I have a number of AUDs that could use this treatment, but I don't want to do it wrong and mess up the recordings.

[shnaholic]

well, you could "normalize" and see if that does what you want. im not sure if cep has that feature or not but im betting it does. there are settings for normalization so fool around with it til you find out what you think sounds best. make sure you include a normalization note in the text file when you seed. i use soundforge for my processing but if i recall, the two progs contain similarities .

[paddington]

Try hard limiting, but drive it softly, if that makes any sense. Then maybe a bit of band-limited compression, depending. If you have a show like you are talking about, it's no good anyway, so don't worry about ruining it. Practice, pracice, practice. But more helpful is read read read. It's more of a theoretical thing than a point and click thing, if done right.

[AAR.oner]

here's a few threads that might help
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8819
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3514

[RPG]

What I'd thought of doing was amplifying the entire recording until the music parts are at the appropriate levels (which would make the applause way over the red line) and then going in and manually reducing the applause.

Don't amplify the whole thing, edit first. That way you'll have to change music level only once.

IMHO, you'll get good results by manually applying volume envelopes on applause passages. Experiment with the envelope level/smoothness and try to make it listenable but still natural. Audio behind loud applause is probably heavily masked so envelopes won't do much harm.

[Five]

if you decide to go in and apply volume envelopes on specific sections it might be easier to do it in multitrack view. that way its non-destructive until you commit to a final mixdown. If you need splined curves, stick with edit view (the splines in multitrack view aren't very useful imo).

also, if you apply any envelopes, etc in edit view to pieces of the show, be sure to select on zero crossings (use sft+o, sft+i, sft+j, sft+k, sft+l, sft+;).

Be sure to keep a backup, if the corrections don't go well you can always resort to the original. ppl who listen to shows are used to the applause coming in loud around the taper.