Audacity and 8-bit Grittiness (?)

[ELC1837]

So I've decided to try my hand at "editing" 8-bit and 16-bit tracks with Audacity (I haven't looked into FruityLoops yet). Unfortunately, for some tracks,there is a bit of grittiness (for lack of awareness of a more professional term):

. And using noise removal ends up killing bits and pieces of the bass, so it's been tricky at best working with it.

Currently I'm amplifying the bass then using minimal noise removal, but some of the bass is still compromised. Any suggestions, generic or specific to audacity?

[zircon]

That's actually part of the song.. a low synth. 8-bit is inherently noisy and gritty. Why would you want to remove parts of the song?

[ELC1837]

That's actually part of the song.. a low synth. 8-bit is inherently noisy and gritty. Why would you want to remove parts of the song?

...did I mention I'm terrible at discerning what's intentional and what's just low quality hardware/software manifesting as bugs?...Well, in the case of the remix I'm working on, the low synth winds up sounding more like a distraction pre-bass boost and noise removal and post-other edits (slower tempo, lower pitch, delay-echo, fades at the ends)...perhaps I should ask for 2nd opinion though. EDIT: About the pre-boost/noise filtering version, that is.

[OverCoat]

There's no such thing as a non-gritty SID, that's just how that sound chip works and the reason I love the sid chip in the first place.

[Yoozer]

So I've decided to try my hand at "editing" 8-bit and 16-bit tracks with Audacity (I haven't looked into FruityLoops yet).

Audacity is a really great wave editor but I wouldn't consider sequencing with it. Give Reaper a try.

If you mean the effect that you hear on the notes of the lead sound starting at 0:57 - that's not "grit", that's the (in)famous arpeggiator of the SID chip. Since it only has 3 voices of polyphony (plus a 4th channel with some trickery), the really fast arpeggiator is used to fool your ears into thinking that it can play chords, while in reality it switches from one note to another really fast.

Anyway - obtain your SID files from the High Voltage SID Collection. The first version of SIDPlay has an option to disable certain channels so you can render them separately; perhaps that helps with getting rid of some of the noise?

For doing SID stuff yourself, consider http://refx.com/?lang=en&page=products/quadraSID/summary or http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2009/09/28/sammichsid-designed-to-be-the-ultimate/

[ELC1837]

@ Overcoat: I agree with you that the grittiness sounds great on the original, but after applying a few echoes (on audacity, it's effect>delay>3-num-0.2-delay-2-decay), the remix just sounds too busy within the lower dB range, so the grittiness just doesn't sound good without noise removal. Though I'll have to try Yoozer's advice and work from editing channels separately instead.

@ Yoozer: Sweet: I'll have to try look into Reaper as well. The only problem I have with using audacity so far is that it's impossible selecting a particular part of the song (either certain duration or a particular channel), which is a pretty big problem for me. Thanks for the links.