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While I try to find out if I can use the music I’ve downloaded from Amazon and ripped from CDs I’ve purchased in the second mandatory assignment, I’ve decided to make my sound effect story include various portions of a drive to work.  Cue “More” tag…

http://soundcloud.com/gojoego/sound-effect-story

The first portion was hard to edit.  I recorded myself starting my own car, but in the middle of the “diiing…diiing…diiing” portion after starting the engine, there was some annoying clicking from my Sansa Fuze.  I wound up zooming in on various portions of that segment and using the Draw Tool in Audacity to level out those spikes manually.  Very, VERY tedious, but what’s left is a much more realistic, softer noise, like setting something down in a cup holder.

For the RxR Crossing sound, I had to do some trial and error to make the short sound clip loop seamlessly without a sudden jump” that would identify a poor attempt at looping.  I also lowered the dB gain to -15 dB to make the sound less overbearing against the approaching train.  Yes, I actually merged two files together to create the illusion of a RxR crossing stop, adding a “fade-out” effect from the Effect menu in Audacity to the last 5 sconds of the RxR crossing bell to held transition to the next sound.  Here’s the entire sequence described:

Get in car, start engine, driving, stopped at RxR crossing with train passing by moments later, engine off, get out and close door, lock car.

Sounds obtained from freesounds.org:

driving car loop.wav — File added by edwin_p_manchester on May 1, 2005

*06-2011 Passenger Train Pass #2.wav — File added by lonemonk on Jun 14, 2011

*rr_cross5.wav — File added by roscoetoon on Nov 30, 2006

Sounds I made myself:

070111-170112.wav — Created by Joe Proffitt on July 2, 2011

070111-192517.WAV — Created by Joe Proffitt on July 2, 2011

* These files were mixed together via Audacity to create a new file.  Credit still goes to the original authors.

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