Karaoke Forums

Can anyone tell me even the first thing to do with using Audacity to record my singing so I can submit it on the singer's showcase? I have it on my computer now and sure there's all kindsa nice icons on it but I haven't the slightest clue what to do first.

audacity.sourceforge.net/tutorials.php is a tutorial on the utility

KEEP IN MIND... I have heard the new Version of Audacity (1.2.2) will be out in a few weeks..

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Brian D.
(BHB)

Hey Knightshow (is your name "Wayne", I forgot sorry) and Brian, thanks for replying to this post. Unfortunately, I cannot hear the subs in the Showcase, and haven't been able to figger out why. Don't wanna make Phill look bad in saying I don't think he knows either. I have other sounds I can hear on my computer, like Media Player, etc. The one clue seems to be that I could hear them before we replaced my harddrive about a month ago. And that I have a Norton antivirus system, which I wonder if that has anything to do with it all (the firewall?).

So in light of all that, I haven't been doing anything with Audacity yet. Still reading everything though, and pretty soon want to post my bizarre experiences with this one dive club near my house where I first sang karaoke, to see if anyone else a. has experienced such thangs and b. can believe such stuff could happen!

fraid I can't help you on that... it may be JAVA related... does the box fully come up when you click on the musical notes icon?? You should see a player very similar to windows media start up, and a progress bar on the bottom... as well as a volume arrow on the lower right... just move that over with your mouse pointer to get more volume.

And the name's Man... Matt Man! !

Yes that box does come up. And when I move the volume icon way up, I just hear a sorta static.

Do you think it could be my firewall?

I had a problem with it for ages until I realised it was my pop-up blocker!

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Imagine!

Barry, I just posted on The Technical Forum that it was RealPlayer getting in the way! My hun uninstalled it and everthang's working just great now.

Now gotta tackle that Audacity program, oh lord......

you need to download an MP3 ripper program to convert it to MP3 format which is what yo have to submit it to the showcase in. Its easy to do --just do a search for MP3 Ripper and many will pop up--just DL one and go for it--then EMAIL the MP3 version of your song down to KS and the Singers Showcase.

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"You know that I sing the Blues and I do not suffer fools. When I'm on that silver mic, it's gonna cut ya, just like a knife"-The SWINGCAT

Oh my God thank you Kurt!! I still don't know even the first step to take with Audacity, and your simple instructions help me mightily!! If anyone else out there has some simple instructions on Audacity and how it results in a sub on this site, feel free to type away.

Tigger, I'm using Audacity and love it. All I do is:
a/. Click on "file" and then either click on "open" to import an existing mp3 file or "new" if I'm recording from scratch. Just to the left of halfway (under the RH large button) is the input selector. This may be where you are coming unstuck. Make sure the selection here is correct, e.g. mic; line in; what you hear etc.
b/. You can import an mp3 from you hard drive, then click "new" to open another channel. select "mic" , then press the record button. The second track for the mic pops up automatically and will be dubbed over the first (imported) track.

If the tutorial isn't helping, feel free to pm me. Like yourself, I'm not a pro at these things but I'm always happy to try and help out. If you have a moment, take a listen to one or two of my songs, they were recorded with Audacity.

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Those who bring sunshine to others cannot keep it from themselves  
Snoopy

Snoopy thank you! This is also the simple kinda instrux I'm looking for...now I just started school though so I'm busy with that but I'm gonna do this Audacity thing soon.

Oh and hey guy why don't you and me go round up Woodstock and Garfield and party like the wild animals we is???

OK, Snoopy and Kurt et al....I finally got a chance to try to record something. Well guess where I'm at?? My microphone metal end thing won't fit into the back of the computer! Neither do the red, white, and yellow plugs from my karaoke machine! Does any of this sound familiar to anyone?!

Should I get adaptors? Should I sing directly into the computer or thru my karaoke machine? I swear, I am not dumb or computer illiterate. How'd all of you learn all this???

Hi Tigger! I'd be inclined to go thru your karaoke machine because that gives you some mixing control of your mic level versus your backing track level.
You'll need some adapters (from radio shack). Firstly, you'll need to join both audio output channels into one, so you'll need a "Y" adapter or cord so you just end up with one 1/8'" mono plug to go into your sound card. Plug this into the "line in" hole on the soundcard and select "line in" in Audacity.
Feel free to "pm" me for the nitty gritty details.
P.S. I had to get these details from Woodstock and Garfield

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Those who bring sunshine to others cannot keep it from themselves  
Snoopy

(Yes I'm now fully addicted to this site that's why I check it so often....arrrgghhhhh)

Shnoopy I love you for helping me! I swear it makes me wanna take that fuzzy black and white head and just scratch it.

I felt so dumb asking "duhhh my mike won't fit into my computer" I mean geez that sounz like the blonde joke where she puts white-out on her computer screen but you had the answer (the karaoke machine wires). I'll get the adaptors tomorrow....can't believe I'm closer to doing this. Thanks to these instrux from you peoples.

My friend in Nevada loves Aussies by the way...think I'm gonna give her this link. She likes drama too.

FYI - when you go to Radio Shack for the adapters, go with those that have a short section of wire between the ends or are cables themselves instead of the solid adapters if at all possible. The keeps the stress off the connector and prevents expensive mistakes. I used to work at Radio Shack (many, many, MANY years ago) and saw LOTS of mistakes where adapters broke off or broke the equipment they were plugged into.

As for the input you can use stereo input on the Line In connector on the computer (as Snoopy mentioned) - you'll probably need an 1/8" stereo -> stereo RCA cable for this (depending on your karaoke machine). They also make a hard adapter for this where you'd use normal RCA cables but they can be hard on the plug on the computer (as mentioned above).

You'll likely only need the mono connection if you don't have a line in and only have a microphone input (but even then many of the newer mic inputs on computers are stereo or mono capable).

Just my .02 worth....

Yes, KM, You're right there. My apologies Tigger. !/8" stereo plug for the line-in (and you don't have to join the two channels together). Only use a mono plug for the mic socket. My mistake - your error (as they say in the classics!)

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Those who bring sunshine to others cannot keep it from themselves  
Snoopy

OK....now for the story of the wrassling with Audacity.

So I get the adapter, no prob, $5. My guy spent over 2 hours, count 'em TWOOOOO HOURSSSS trying to figger out this Audacity cuz I sure couldn't. I tell ya, there was so much cussin' and huffing and puffing from both of us. We figgered out that part of the difficulty is cuz my computer is so old, I mean ancient - 4 years old. That's a granny now isn't it?!

After much wrangling, we finally record something. Now the problem is that the QUALITY of the recording is just godawful. We deduced that my cheapa$$ $10 microphone might be to blame, since the vocal track quality is just terrible. The music track is a little better, but not much. We recorded the music from my karaoke machine, which is just a lil $80 kinda thing. (The output from the karaoke machine has always been bad, so I know it's the machine.) There is no way I'll submit this tinny, foggy, muddled, distorted crappy recording to this site.

We're thinking that maybe a good quality microphone and boombox are the solutions.

What do all the rest of you do?! How do you get such high-quality sounding recordings? Why is it such a mystery? Now I have the software down but the quality sucks!!

Step one - take a deep breath and relax.

Ok, feel better?

I use a laptop that's probably at least as old as your computer to record (PII 400Mhz). It's not that hard once you get some basic down (which I'll try to cover here).

1. Set up yoour karaoke machine w/ the mic you normally use to sing with.

2. Sing a song or part of a song to get the sound from the machine right.

3. Connect the output of the karaoke machine (the red/white or red/black RCA connections) to your computer line in.

4. Play the same song you just sang, but don't sing.

5. Start the recorder in Audacity. You're watching the levels of the audio coming across the screen (the wave looking thing). You want movement in the levels - without it appearing to 'cut off' on the top of the waveform. Adjust the levels of the input (it's marked line) until you're happy with the results. You can even play back the recording of the music only until you're happy with the sound.

REMEMBER - you didn't adjust any levels on the karaoke machine, only on the computer.

6. Sing and record.

7. Playback and see what it sounds like.

Remember this is only one way of setting up to record. I consider it the best for learning because you're using a method you're used to for singing, only you're now recording it on the computer. Once you're comfortable with this method we'll slowly make it more complex by changing one or two things at a time.

If the recording is jumpy try making sure your antivirus, instant messenger and everything else is turned off. If your computer is busy doing other things it can cause problems when you're doing processor or hard drive intensive tasks - like recording music and adding effects.

If you're not happy with the results this way let me know and I can give some more direction if someone doesn't beat me to it.

Karaokemeister...well I was recording the music thru the K. machine. I tried the audio too, but it sounded even worse than just thru the computer, which is why I just went thru the computer with the mike.

The other prob I didn't mention yet is that we could not get cd's in the computer to play in Audacity.

So here's something bizarre but good....out of pure frustration I was surfing the net trying to find something helpful. I come across this site called Audio mp3 Editor and download it.

Not only is it totally easy to understand, BUT it plays my cd rom in the computer just fine, and when I record singing right from the microphone into the computer thru this new program, it sounds totally great and hi quality!! So now I'm thinking the problem all along was Audacity....geez. This Audio mp3 Editor thing is a free trial that'll let me make 10 files. It costs $39.95 to purchase beyond that.

Is the prob that Audacity is free? I mean, I couldn't play cd's in the computer with it, and the sound quality is horrible. I dunno why this other program is so easy and works perfectly. All that time I wasted...argh.

Hope no one posts saying oh my God watch out that program is gonna make your computer explode! Just my luck after finding it. I wonder if there's any free shareware programs as good as this Audio mp3 Editor??