Audio Recording

This is part 2 of the Audacity mixing tutorial. The part 1 of the tutorial talks about the general overview of audacity mixing tutorial in Ubuntu such as Importing Audio & Duplicating Clips.

In this part you will know how to apply parametric EQ in your mixing session. As an overview, there is no built-in parametric equalizer in Audacity (as of January 2011), so you will need to use its graphic equalizer and apply parametric-like settings describe in this tutorial: “Audacity Parametric Equalizer: EQ Application Concepts in Audio Mixing” . To minimize confusion in this tutorial, it is recommended to read that tutorial first.

If you completely understand the concept to be implemented, proceed with the steps below:

1.) Launch audacitymixingtutorial.aup by double clicking on it. This Audacity mixing session file was created in Part 1 of the tutorial.
2.) You will then see the two audio files to be mixed, the chorus bass and the kick drum. Screenshot below:

3.) Supposing you need to apply the following EQ settings for bass:

50Hz Q=0.83 +6dB
100Hz Q=1.0 -9dB
400Hz Q=1.4 +3dB

Of course, you cannot adjust Q settings since there is no parametric equalizer in Audacity. The solution is to download the Excel tool discussed in this tutorial: http://www.audiorecording.me/audacity-parametric-equalizer-eq-application-concepts-in-audio-mixing.html (find the Excel download link in that post).

Using the “Audacity Parametric Equalizer Conversion” tool, the following are the equivalent EQ settings that you can apply in Audacity:

For 50Hz Q=0.83 +6dB

Center frequency: 50Hz
Boost: 6dB
lower frequency boost: +3dB at 31Hz
upper frequency boost +3dB at 80Hz

4.) Implement this bass guitar EQ setting by selecting the bass track in Audacity then going to “Effect” – “Equalization” – click “Graphic EQ” – click “Flatten”.

Adjust the graphic equalizer using the Audacity equivalent EQ settings above. You will need to form the EQ boost like a near perfect bell curve (which is done by boosting the nearby frequencies), the resulting screenshot is this:

Do NOT yet click OK for the graphic equalizer, you still have to implement two more settings.

For 100Hz Q=1.0 -9dB

Audacity equivalent EQ settings:

Center frequency: 100Hz
Cut= -9dB
lower frequency cut= -4.5dB at 63Hz
upper frequency cut = -4.5dB at 160Hz

Resulting screenshot (combined with previous EQ settings at 50Hz):

For 400Hz Q=1.4 +3dB

Center frequency: 400Hz
Boost: 3dB
lower frequency boost: 1.5dB at 250Hz
upper frequency boost: 1.5dB at 630Hz

Resulting screenshot (now completing all EQ settings):

Finally, now that all the settings are applied in the Audacity graphic equalizer as shown in the above screenshot, click OK to implement the settings to the audio wave. You can then apply the same EQ concept to the rest of the mixing tracks such as the kick drum. Also Audacity doesn’t have decimal settings in EQ so a setting of 1.5dB boost can be roundoff to 2dB.