Rural Blues

[64Guitars]

***If anybody wants to send me a crooning blues vocal as a raw file, I would love to EQ it to match what's here and drop it in the mix. A lossy MP3 would be fine as high fidelity certainly won't be an issue with this.

You're right that a lossy MP3 is good enough fidelity since you're going for a lo-fi sound anyway. However, you'll find that MP3s are a problem because they won't start in-sync with your other tracks. That's because the MP3 format pads the front of the file with varying amounts of silence which moves the start of the actual music so that it starts late relative to the other tracks. So, if people are going to send you lossy files, it would be better if they used OGG or WMA, for example, instead of MP3. If you do get an MP3 file, you can delete the silence from the front of the track and try to manually align it with the other tracks. It's not very precise but you should be able to get it close enough that it sounds okay.

[Blooby]

You'll find that MP3s are a problem because they won't start in-sync with your other tracks. That's because the MP3 format pads the front of the file with varying amounts of silence which moves the start of the actual music so that it starts late relative to the other tracks. S

The two things I posted with low levels are the first two things I did on the DAW.  I even spied that the waveforms were pretty flat. It sounded good enough through the speakers, so I thought I was all right. Lesson learned.

As for the silence, I didn't think that mattered any longer since I can now move the tracks around in the DAW. I figured this was the simplest thing in the world.  Not so?

As for the blues, I'm just going to do it over. Both passes were first takes, and it is two tracks after all. I also found out there is an included plug-in meter that you can resize to whatever. Even my failing eyes should be able to see when I'm not hot enough now.

And 64, I want to publicly say thanks for all you do. The spectrum analysis cracked me up. Not in a bad way mind you. It seems that any time somebody has a question, you give a measured, thoughtful response with visual aids and/or links. Your efforts do not go unnoticed around here.

Thanks for the comments, folks. And Hook, thanks. I have to tackle a plumbing issue tomorrow, but I hope to re-post late in the afternoon if all goes well.

Blooby

[64Guitars]

As for the silence, I didn't think that mattered any longer since I can now move the tracks around in the DAW. I figured this was the simplest thing in the world.  Not so?

You're right. You can move the MP3 track around to try and line it up with your other tracks. But my point was that it's sort of trial-and-error and imprecise. You click play and realize that the vocal isn't in sync. So you nudge it a bit to where you guess it should be and listen again. Close, but still not quite in sync, so you nudge it again. And so on. There's no absolute reference point to precisely align the tracks. You just have to do your best based on how it sounds to you.

But if you use any format other than MP3, there's no misalignment so you don't have to move the track. The vocal will be exactly where it was when the singer sang it over your backing track. That's assuming, of course, that the backing track he used matches your original tracks, which it will if you didn't trim the backing track or encode it in MP3 format.

In short, yes, MP3 can be used and you can move it around to align it with your other tracks. But WAV, Flac, OGG, WMA, etc. are more convenient and more precise because they don't pad the start of the file, so it will be precisely aligned with your other tracks.