Hi I have got about 15 2hr long live sets recorded off the local radio (prog-trance) some of them are good starting out with prog trance then winding up to a hard nrg trance ending,
So I want 2 record these onto cd, but i just need a little help with some settings in sound forge5 and cool edit

Sound forge: i recorded a set last night (shit it was 1.22gigWav) but it would only let me record at 44,100hz 16bit stereo, not 24bit is 16 bit OK?
the sound was a bit flat but not too bad, using my mic input(stereo)
its a laptop so dont have a line in (anybody know where i can get a USB line in?)

Cooledit:haven't even set the progie up yet, so i know nothing, some of the live sets have a bit of radio static.
any tips on how to mute un wanted sounds, and boosting poor sound levels would be apreciated.

encoding: what is the best mp3 rate, within reason, i hear that 128kbps is near CD quality, so is their any need to go over 128?

I know a bit about stereo and music (i used to install car audio systems as a part time job) but i have never used these programs before so any help would be greatly appreciated

cheers

If you recorded the sets off of the radio, 44/16wav 128mp3 should be fine. With all the crap that broadcast radio goes through, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 16 and 24bit other than the crap sounds clearer .

Soundforge: Just use this for recording, although Cool Edit can do exactly the same thing. You might just record with CE next time.

Cool Edit: As far as tweaking long recordings, probably the only useful thing that this program can do (given your patience level) is to Analyze > Amplitude > Normalize the recording. This scales the volume of the program (whole mix, scaled constant) to a given value (us. 90%) so that the volume doesn't overload/crack. As far as muting sounds, all you can really do is mute portions of the wave. This isn't a multitrack recording so you can't exactly kill the announcer's voice or whatnot. If you want to mute a section, just highlight it and set the amplitude to zero. I've never really gotten static/noise removal to work. As far as boosting levels... highlight the section and raise the amplitude... you can fit it to an envelope if the volume fades in and out.

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yeh i agree i rather use cool edit!

Thanxs guys i will give it a go, ive also got a soundforge promo CD which has Noise reduction software, but being a promo it doesn't let you save any changes
Do you use the EQ to boost levels?, mind you the track is 1.22GigWav,
also what cpression rate do peeps use 128, 160?
Cheers

You want to put these on CD right? Then don't encode them to mp3 at all. This will only lose you some sound quality.

If you are not putting them on CD, 160kbit is definitely the better option over 128. They are only about 20% larger (file size) than the 128 and the sound quality difference is instantly noticable (unless of course you're playing it on shitty laptop speakers!)

Thanx, I will re encode @160kbps, before i delete the file,
well shit, i equalised the trax shit it took 38 minutes to process the 1.2gig file, and i needed another 1.2gig free space to do the procedure, but it cleaned it up really well, but i normalised the trax then EQed it, next time i think i will EQ then normalise it
is it easy to cut traxs in cooledit? so i can burn it off onto 2 cds, i will have to do it b4 thursday, i need the space to record the next one (ive only got a 6gigHD)
Any suggestions for noise reduction, ive still got heaps of sets on tape and vcr that i would like to convert.
Thanxs