How to Post Audio Clips?

cotten · #1 08-29-2011, 12:39 PM

I have been asked to post some audio clips of my new AGF Award Guitar, a stunning McKnight. I have to confess that I have no clue how do do that. I'm not stupid, not totally anyway

, but I've never done this before. It took me forever to learn how to upload pictures to Photobucket for inclusion here. Is there a "Photobucket"-type place to which I upload and store audio files? Sorry to be so ignorant of such things, but if I don't ask, how will I learn?

No, I haven't actually recorded the guitar yet, but something tells me that with my Zoom H4N, that will be the easier part of the process. No, I have no editing software nor experience. Is it possible to record "live" and post that, and it still sound good, or do I need to import it into an editing program and tweak things a bit to make it sound more acceptable?

cotten

muscmp · #2 08-29-2011, 12:56 PM

cotton: you could use soundcloud, soundclick or reverbnation(there are a lot more) to upload your sound clips to. record it in wav format and upload it. note that as usual, you'll have to register on one of those sites and create a login and password.
as far as editing, if you need, you could use audacity since it is free. are you on a pc or an apple? if apple, you have garageband, which is free. if you are not used to using audacity or something similar, it may take a while to learn but in the long run you'll probably have tighter and better sounding clips.

hope this helps!
play music!
mikeB.

Acousticado · #3 08-29-2011, 01:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by muscmp

...record it in wav format and upload it.

I think you have to first convert from .wav to .mp3, right?

Scott Whigham · #4 08-29-2011, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cotten

Is there a "Photobucket"-type place to which I upload and store audio files?

Yes, http://soundcloud.com/ is exactly that. Free to join, free to upload up to two hours of music, and if you guys would get around to adding it they even have a SoundCloud vbulletin player that works great.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cotten

I haven't actually recorded the guitar yet, but something tells me that with my Zoom H4N, that will be the easier part of the process. Is it possible to record "live" and post that, and it still sound good, or do I need to import it into an editing program and tweak things a bit to make it sound more acceptable?

Yes, that's possible but not likely what you want. Unless you use some type of audio editor, we'll hear you click "Record", shift in your seat, move your hands to the right positions, start to play, then we can focus on your playing for a while, then when you are done we'll hear you shift over to hit "Stop". It's best if you can use an audio editor to make a clean file.

MP3 sound worse than WAV so, if you want to showcase a killer guitar, use WAV. SoundCloud lets you choose which you want to use.

Check out Audacity for audio editing - it's free.

Hope this helps!

cotten · #5 08-29-2011, 01:53 PM

Thanks guys! I'll mention the SoundCloud vBulletin player to J.R., though I think he's considered it before and ran into some issues. I'm on a PC, and the price of audicity is good, but having to get it up and running and learn to manipulate may well slow the process to a crawl. I work for a living, and "spare" time is often given to the joys of moderating this fine community. That is, after I'm done enjoying playing my guitar. That just might slow this process even more!

cotten

Acousticado · #6 08-29-2011, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott Whigham

MP3 sound worse than WAV so, if you want to showcase a killer guitar, use WAV. SoundCloud lets you choose which you want to use.

I haven't uploaded anything for a while. I guess file size allowances and speed of uploading for .wav are much greater than not so long ago.

cotten · #7 08-29-2011, 02:07 PM

Jumping ahead a bit, I know, but now is when I'm thinking of this question, so now is when I ask. My H4N is capable of recording WAV at up to 96kHz/24bit (or 16bit). I can't imagine using that, but it also as a good number of other WAV formats. For my purposes, which would you recommend?

WAV48kHz/24 or 16bit
WAV44.1kHz/24bit or 16bit

Or maybe mP3 VBR?

Yes, I'm a newbie to such things. Be gentle.

cotten

Scott Whigham · #8 08-29-2011, 02:10 PM

Avoid the MP3 and go for the WAV44.1kHz/24bit or 16bit setting. 16bit is "CD Quality" so it's "good enough".

And Tom, you're totally right. It used to be very difficult 3-4 years ago even to find sites letting you upload 300MB files (a large WAV, for example). Once Amazon and others got into the cloud computing game, file serving/storage costs dropped radically. There are now lots of companies with 1,2,5,10GB of storage at no cost!

Ivan Lee · #9 08-29-2011, 05:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott Whigham

\ it they even have a SoundCloud vbulletin player that works great.

Would be great if we got this for sharing sound clips.......

napman · #10 08-29-2011, 09:20 PM

Hi Cotten,

I'd suggest "Soundcloud", it's really a piece of cake to process your audio in there. If I can do it, you can do it (even better) :-)

Acousticado · #11 08-30-2011, 12:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott Whigham

Avoid the MP3 and go for the WAV44.1kHz/24bit or 16bit setting. 16bit is "CD Quality" so it's "good enough".

And Tom, you're totally right. It used to be very difficult 3-4 years ago even to find sites letting you upload 300MB files (a large WAV, for example). Once Amazon and others got into the cloud computing game, file serving/storage costs dropped radically. There are now lots of companies with 1,2,5,10GB of storage at no cost!

Cool. Thanks for the info!

ChuckS · #12 08-30-2011, 09:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cotten

Jumping ahead a bit, I know, but now is when I'm thinking of this question, so now is when I ask. My H4N is capable of recording WAV at up to 96kHz/24bit (or 16bit). I can't imagine using that, but it also as a good number of other WAV formats. For my purposes, which would you recommend?

WAV48kHz/24 or 16bit
WAV44.1kHz/24bit or 16bit

Or maybe mP3 VBR?

Yes, I'm a newbie to such things. Be gentle.

cotten

I seem to have similar needs as you. Soundcloud worked great for me. I'm also using Audacity and it was extremely intuitive to use (I struggleddoing simple things with Cubase LE). I use a Zoom H4 for recording. I'd suggest recording at 24 bit, 44.1KHz. In 24 bit recording I keep the peak record levels at about -18dB to -12dB and I don't use compression or limiting. In Audacity you can normalize the levels up to 0dB and save it as a 16 bit .wav file.

Recording in 24 bit, 44.1KHz sampling is a bigger file, but if you get something you'd like to keep it's worth capturing it in high resolution.

riorider · #13 08-31-2011, 05:30 AM

John, Audacity is pretty easy. The main utilities for me are fade in and fade out (eliminates those startup noises that Scott W mentioned), and the amplify, which raises the recording volume level up on the whole file.

Another good tool for your H4N is the remote - it doesn't cost very much and you can hit the start and stop without noise.

Then you can output it to whatever format you wish.

I've used box.net and it works well for me - at least I've figured it out! Some of the others were a bit too "helpful" or required me to learn some obscure structures. Box.net just is a file manager in "the cloud".

Best,

Phil

ljguitar · #14 08-31-2011, 10:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cotten

Jumping ahead a bit, I know, but now is when I'm thinking of this question, so now is when I ask. My H4N is capable of recording WAV at up to 96kHz/24bit (or 16bit). I can't imagine using that, but it also as a good number of other WAV formats. For my purposes, which would you recommend?

WAV48kHz/24 or 16bit
WAV44.1kHz/24bit or 16bit

Or maybe mP3 VBR?

Yes, I'm a newbie to such things. Be gentle.

cotten

Hi John
I use SoundClick the free version & it was limited to 128kbps mp3 for the free side, and I used my H2 or H4 and recorded mp3 @ 192kbps directly to the Zooms so no file conversion was necessary.

I only used an editing program (like Audacity) to trim the ends, fade & bump the overall level up a bit (if recorded a bit light to ovoid distortion).

They turn out just fine.

Just pick your service, and the bitrate they allow & record that directly on your Zoom & it will suffer less degradation than letting their software do evil things converting it.

Looking forward to hearing some samples!