The DijonStock Digital Home Recording Support Forum

I finally powered up my G again for the first time in three years due to health issues and ran minimal lines to monitors and for a few inputs.

For the moment to get my feet wet I want to preserve some original material from some old studio recorded demo tapes. To start I burned each demo tape as one song on the G. The initial run was a bit of an experiment but after some gain staging and playing with the Compander starting with the Limiter 1 preset I am getting a surprisingly good result so far on first impression.

My plan is to remaster the songs on the G just a tad and then burn some audio CD's with the songs as individual tracks. I know I can copy the individual tracks from the one big song (as the G see's it currently) and export them into individual songs within the G. The other option would be to burn the demo tapes as one song each onto CD's, import to my PC and then use Audacity (or FL Studio possibly) to "cut and paste" edit into the individual songs. The individual demo tapes are the mixed stereo tracks only and normalized etc.

Primarily my goal is keeping it simple with the fewest steps and least time consuming first (excluding the playing with the EQ and "mastering") and secondly to end up with the best quality result within reason. Although I have Audacity and FL Studio I have no experience with Audacity yet and very unsuccessful experience getting FL Studio to work with my brain's workflow process. Actually the reason I bought the G was to avoid PC interfaces as much as possible....not quite a ludite but I just don't get along with PC's no matter how hard I try. The other variable is my digital out on the native PC card no longer works so any mixing or mastering done in the PC sound quality wise would involve an additional DA-AD conversion at least to the monitors.

If anyone here has done something similar I see three options and would appreciate your recommendations;
1. Export the individual songs with in the G into individual tracks before going onto a CD or into the PC.
2. Burn the individual demo tapes as one song each onto a CD and sort it out with Audacity.
3. Go back and burn the individual demo songs on tape as individual songs on the G.

My thoughts so far;

Option 1:
Could start to run out of HD space in the process as there is probably around an hours worth of material combined from three demo tapes. The other concern is that I ran into some major editing issues on a previous song recorded on the G that involved cutting out a verse and chorus and some tedious cut and paste editing on individual tracks due to timing mistakes.... at some point after one too many edits all my tracks got unsynchronized from each other and it took weeks to fix. The benefit is a quick up front time getting the music into the G without getting too bogged down and messing with the tape controls.

Option 2:
Things that look like they should be a simple two step, five minute process in PC programs invariably run into lots of unexpected snags, hours of frustration and I get completely lost in the process. I have heard editing on the PC is much easier for many things but nothing on PC's ever end up as easy for me as promised.

Option 3:
Involves a lot more fiddly time up front with naming individual songs and going back and forth to the tape controls to start each song. The tedious stop and start process does not work well with my sleep disorder. I kind of live or die based on keeping some forward momentum going, minimizing steps involved and minimizing obstacles or frustrating problem solving.

Long post to ask a question so if you made it this far thanks for reading. I hope it all makes sense in the context of the complications of battling the sleep disorder to stay awake and maintain adequate focus along with my PC interface issues LOL.

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Refusing to make waves is not an indicator of a life well lived. Refusing to
make waves is the state that precedes drowning. - Paul Coughlin author

Hiya Scoot, great to see you again.

If you're breaking one big recording into smaller pieces (and nothing else besides a little mastering) the first thing I'd do is get it out of the G. Export the stereo track to wav on CD and copy that on your computer. Then, start a new project in Audacity and import the stereo track. Then, part by part, select bits from the track in audacity which you can export to wav. That way, with a minimum of effort, you have the separate songs in wav format.

Hope this helps.

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Don't judge the coffee by its cup.
The proof of the cheese is in the eating

Hi Scooter,

I agree with Robbie. Choping up wavs is extremely fast on the pc. In most cases if people struggle with the pc it's just a matter of getting some good how to's from someone that can explain how it's done. I've no idea where you live (timezone wise) but there are ways to get remote support nowadays provided you have decent internet speed. With www.logmein.com you can have a free version for home use. If you can get the wav file onto a cd i can help you cut i it up in Audacity and walk you trough the steps.

www.logmein.com will need you to make an online profile that allows me to remote control your pc, but only after you approve. You would have to pm me logins and passwords. It's just an idea.

_________________
In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

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Thanks for the replies.

I think I will give the Audacity route a shot. Fordirk I truly appreciate the above and beyond offer of help. If I hit a brick wall I may get back to you on that.

Off topic but related - I have been trying to get Samsung PC Studio program for their cell phones to work and have wasted at least 30 hours with no luck. Done tech support both by phone and online....I still knew more about it than the Tech Level 3 person did on the phone and the info I got from level one and two was completely wrong.

The bizarre thing is that the program worked with my phone before the last OS reinstall, it works on my laptop but it's an older and slower model I only use for travel. The phone recognizes its connected to a PC, the PC recognized a phone is connected via USB BUT they will not communicate. This should have been a 5-10 minute process tops but I seem to have a PC compatibility jinx which I why I opted for the G rather than a DAW.

I have an external stereo preamp I wanted to use to gain up the tape out signal that I can't find after my move yet. What I used so far was a two channel real tube buffer box I bought that is actually designed for running digital signals through to get a more analogue and tube like sound, had the G's preamps turned up to about 11:00 o'clock and still had to use 3.5 gain at the end of the signal path from the channel view mode AND some make up gain from modifiying the internal limiter settings.

I think I can get a little cleaner signal path if I can find the one stereo preamp that I have... will have to go dig around in the garage tomorrow some more. I'd like to compare and pick the best sounding one before I go into cut and paste work.

_________________
Refusing to make waves is not an indicator of a life well lived. Refusing to
make waves is the state that precedes drowning. - Paul Coughlin author