What's in a soundwave?

[heidiroderick]

So I'm quite a visual person and I want to try to understand why the soundwaves of my tracks look the way they do.

I've noticed that all of my tracks tend to have no big separations in the soundwave.

See the soundwave below, it has no gaps, just these thin kind of "constant" lines all the way through:


But, here is the same track after a mixdown (arrangement is the exactly the same as the one above):



Curious to know why that is - could this be to do with the lower frequencies being cut out in the mixdown?

 

[Mark.ThisBeat]

The sound wave basically goes bigger or smaller depending on how loud that part is. So where your soundwave goes smaller there is some absence of sound.

Google dynamic range, that will help you out.

 

[heidiroderick]

Thanks. But no instruments or volume have been changed in those areas so that's why I'm confused. Only thing that's been done is some EQing in the mixdown.

 

[rhythmgj]

Combined waveforms will always look different than individual tracks. It is in the nature of each individual sound and its properties (bass, treble, mid-range, dynamics, timbre, harmonics, etc.).

The shorter waveforms are quieter, the taller ones louder. The longer ones have more bass frequencies, the tighter patterns (higher frequency) have more high-end information.

If you want to see spaces (?), zoom in tighter on each form. You can go to the pixel level in your DAW, and see all of the spaces you want to...

GJ