Hello.
I want to copy some of my old tapes on my PC. I have an Creative Audigy LS & Adobe Audition 1.5.
I am looking for a little program that can let me change the balance of my tracks. Let's say i am recording something from tape to pc. But the right channel is @ 0db and the left @ -6db. I need a program that lets me equalize the channels, in real-time. I have balanse in Creative's software, but it's not very "soft". I mean that i have to move the mouse very carrefully to make the channels equal.
I hope you know what i meen.
Thanx a lot.
best regards

First of all, it sounds like you have a hardware issue somewhere. I'd try to rectify that first. If that is not of a concern, just fix it in post with Audition. You should be able to normalize both channels to 0dB.

you should have used a better title, something like:
Program to copy old tapes to my PC.

and subitle:
let me change the balance of my tracks.

yulyo,

kwanbis is on a one-man TOS #6 drive. Please listen to the man.

Change made.

dreamliner77, i do not have a hardware problem, don't worry. the tapes that i will record are recorded by my father in ...the 80s so L&R channels are not equal. I do know very good Audition/Cool Edit Pro, i do know about normalizing, clip restoration etc etc. I just want to change the balance on real time.
kwanbis & Synthetic Soul: there's no problem my friends. You're right, your title is better I was a little busy, and i didn't saw you reply.
Thank you

If you have rockbox on a iRiver H120 this could be something for you:
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=2841.0

But wouldn't it be easier if you just normalized both channels seperately? Why do you need real time balance control?

Normally, you can adjust the sliders in a control panel software by highlighting/selecting them with your mouse and then use cursor controls ...

If nothing else works, you could try normalising with the current version of Audacity, which - for some reason - normalises each stereo channel independently.

You want non-destructive real time editing.
Magix Samplitude and Steinberg Wavelab were the two original softwares specialized in this. You can open your wav files in a new workspace, and set the volume, balance, position, dynamics, and many more things instantly. You hear the change as and when you move the sliders, like with a real hardware.
When your project is OK, you can burn it to CD or save it to wav. Then all the settings that you have done are really applied to the data.

It is possible that Audition and SoundForge can do realtime non-destructive processing in their recent versions, but I did not try them.

I can't think of how non-destructive changes are of any benefit. Adjust the file in an audio editor. You are probably better off converting it to mono, unless writing it as an audio CD is your goal. Save with a new name.

Now you not only still have the tapes, you also have an original, unmodified computer file as backup. More importantly, you have a corrected file, which means you never have to deal with the problem again.

It the original condition is important enough, do some sort of lossless compression, or high quality lossy compression, and write the uncorrected file to optical disk.

10 Times fatser, 10 times easier.

When you need to adjust the amount of silence between two tracks, with a classic wave editor, you can't listen to the result if the tracks are in separate files, and you have to create a given amount of silence at the end of your track, then paste the next track. Then undo two times, try a smaller amount, re paste the next track, listen again, etc
With a virtual editor, just drag and drop the next track closer or farther from the previous one with the mouse.

When you need to adjust balance, with a classic wav editor, you have to select a test passage, then play it in a looped preview while adjusting balance. Then apply the process to the whole wav. Then check other passages. If something is wrong, undo the whole process, select the other passage and try new adjustments after having selected this part...
With a virtual editor, just move the balance slider left or right and listen where you want. No preview, no apply, no undo.

Nonsense. Record as a stereo pair, most common place thing ever. Apply Normalize, tracks independent. This makes both tracks the same unless the relative level of the two tracks frequently changes. If the later is true, something was very wrong with the original tape recorder, or someone did a poor mix-down of some number of independent tracks. And if that not too likely situation is the case, it is still all the easier to do the job on a stereo pair, section by section, than any other way. Who would want to do a job like that more than once (i.e. every time you listen to it)?


Only if the two tracks contain different material is there any sense in making them other than equal level, which a reasonable program can do without your intervention. If they are not really stereo, but just someone speaking into a cassette recorder, the best bet is probably to choose the better track and lose the other one.

If it is stereo material, just not in reasonable balance, then independently normalizing, or amplifying, the two tracks makes the best sense. If this is a mix-down of originally independently recorded tracks that someone really screwed up, working on the two tracks together in an editor still makes the best sense.

Is there some possible condition of these tapes that has not occurred to me, and thus is not covered in this somewhat rambling reply?

yulyo!'s description of the problem sounds like the two channels are simply out of balance, no special complications. Therefore no gyrations or time consuming rituals are required to fix it once the audio is on disk. Extremely simple and every day ordinary.

Why don't you, yulyo!, reveal what kind of audio is on those tapes. Music or speech only? True stereo or simply two tracks of the same thing (but at different signal levels)? What do you wish to do with the audio once you get it balanced? Do you think it needs any other kind of processing, such as noise reduction, compression, EQ? There would probably be much less argument about reasonable approaches if we knew what we were dealing with.

If the levels are different due to poorly set recording controls on the original tape recorder, there are basic system and tape noises, especially the tape noises, that will be about the same on both channels regardless of the audio level. When you amplify the lower level channel, its noise will now be significantly greater than the noise on the higher level audio channel.

If the content allows it, i.e. both channels have the same content, you will probably be better off splitting off one channel into a new file by itself and not using the other channel. All other things being equal, chose the higher level channel to keep. If the two channels have different content, you may get a significantly better final product by doing noise reduction on one or both (but each independently) after you've balanced their levels.