Hi.
For the podcast I produce, I rely on numerous field recordings of trains made in locations that are normally very quiet.. until a train goes by. In the field, I use a Zoom H6 recorder with any number of mics I have in my kit… but over the weekend I went out and recorded almost 48 continuous hours of material in the Pennsylvania hills using a pair of AKG 414 mics. EXTREME overkill for sure, but the results were spectacular. As you might expect, the majority of the recordings are of the surrounding hills so there's an incredible amount of bird activity amongst other things that make the recordings sound very real and authentic. I can't stay awake listening to it. But, when a train approaches, the quietude is shattered by the overwhelming presence of the diesel engine and the cars it's pulling. It's a pretty nifty experience especially if you listen on headphones.
Anyway… my point in writing is that I've been using the RX software for years to clean up wind noise and other anomalies, but one thing I simply haven't been able to get a handle on is whether or not RX11 can balance the audio levels somewhat without it sounding like a drastic increase or decrease in gain. I set the master input levels on the Zoom H6 so that the train wouldn't distort the recording, and they peak around -2db. Of course, when I do that, the ambient sounds of the birds and other things are so far down in the mix that they almost can't be heard without headphones on. I understand this completely… but I always want to try to bring the ambient background sounds up in the mix just to give them more presence and make the train a little less jarring. I tried numerous times to use the "Leveler" to address the issue, but all it did was peak the train audio to 0db and boost the quiet ambience 1 or 2 db.
I tried normalizing the train parts down to -6db or -10db… then attempted to use the Loudness Control but that didn't work very well either. I was thinking of bringing the audio into my DAW and separating the train sections into individual clips on their own channels. That way I can manually increase the gain of the background noise WHILE the train is fading into the distance so there's not a noticeable change in levels or background noise but that seems like more work. If RX11 can do this on its own, that would save a ton of time in mastering these recordings.
Thanks for any advice… and sorry for the long-winded explanation.
Aaron
