[muzician21]

Looking for suggestions as to how to treat a particular audio file,
44.1 mono. Want to bring out the clarity and tame some harsh peakiness
and boominess, yet maintain the basic dynamic character of the audio -
i.e. don't want it sounding ultra compressed.

Here's a .wav file with 3 short sample sections that demonstrate the
issues. 1) Guitar and male vocal 2) guitar and female vocal 3) then
all together. The guitar is a bit peaky/brittle, the male vocal has
some issues with both low freq's and kind of a harsh graininess in his
vocal delivery. There are some harsh spikes in the female voice, even
outright distortion in a few places.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/...Raw_Sample.wav

Some things I'm specifically hearing. Resonance/boominess in the male
vocal such as in the phrase "...there's some kind of madness, *IN*
your eyes..." on the word "IN" -

Hot/harsh spots on the female voice on the second sample

"...mmmm*WHOAH*..."
"....*AND* I said we can't...."
"...*BABY* all this talkin'...."

What I have to work with is SoundForge 8, various VST plugins,
including the Slim Slow Slider 3 band compressor plugin.

So far, having a difficult time getting rid of all peakiness and
harshness and still retaining the "good" aspects of the sound. What
I'm shooting for is being able to play it fairly loudly without having
it bang your ears at a particular point ala commercial release CD's.

All input will be appreciated.

Thanks

[MarkK]

So far, having a difficult time getting rid of all peakiness and
harshness and still retaining the "good" aspects of the sound. What
I'm shooting for is being able to play it fairly loudly without having
it bang your ears at a particular point ala commercial release CD's.



scoop out about 5 dB around 250 to 300 Hz..

Mark

[Scott Dorsey]

muzician21 wrote:

Here's a .wav file with 3 short sample sections that demonstrate the
issues. 1) Guitar and male vocal 2) guitar and female vocal 3) then
all together. The guitar is a bit peaky/brittle, the male vocal has
some issues with both low freq's and kind of a harsh graininess in his
vocal delivery. There are some harsh spikes in the female voice, even
outright distortion in a few places.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/...Raw_Sample.wav

Some things I'm specifically hearing. Resonance/boominess in the male
vocal such as in the phrase "...there's some kind of madness, *IN*
your eyes..." on the word "IN" -

Your room is screwed up and the microphone is broken. The room has a huge
monster resonance around 250 Hz or so. The vocal microphone has a bunch of
narrow resonances in the 4-8 KHz range on top of the distortion issues.

If this came to me I'd send it back for a retrack but if you're really trying
to salvage it I'd first address the room with a wide filter, then I'd take
two filters with the highest possible Q you can set, turn them to boost, then
sweep them one at a time through the 4-8 KHz range and listen until you hear
the problem points. Then, when you locate them, flip the filter from boost
to cut and widen it out a little bit until as much of the problem goes away
as possible. You'll probably find beyond one or two cuts you're doing more
harm than good.

Make the vocals sound good. People will tolerate lousy guitar sound more
than they will tolerate lousy vocal sound.

You're always going to get that small-room constricted sound, there really
isn't any solution other than to get a better room. A touch of reverb with
a little pre-delay might open things up a bit; if there's enough that you
notice it, there's too much.

Hot/harsh spots on the female voice on the second sample

"...mmmm*WHOAH*..."
"....*AND* I said we can't...."
"...*BABY* all this talkin'...."

Yeah, this is what I mean by "broken microphone." This isn't really fixable;
you can notch the crap out of it and make it less painful but if you listen
to what is going on at these spots, you'll notice that the same thing is going
on with the rest of the track, just less dramatically.

So far, having a difficult time getting rid of all peakiness and
harshness and still retaining the "good" aspects of the sound. What
I'm shooting for is being able to play it fairly loudly without having
it bang your ears at a particular point ala commercial release CD's.

The parametric set up as a notch filter is probably the most powerful tool
you have for removing junk. It's already short on dynamics, you don't need
to compress it any more. Think about removing, not adding.
---scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[muzician21]

On May 17, 8:41*am, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Your room is screwed up and the microphone is broken. *


I probably should have mentioned, I didn't do the recording/setup.
It's "What U Hear" recorded off a webcast. Yes, I wish they'd made
more of an effort to tweak things sonically, the performances are
great.

Make the vocals sound good. People will tolerate lousy
guitar sound more than they will tolerate lousy vocal sound.


That's another problem I'm running into - finding a setting that makes
them both sound good that minimizes the overall problems. What seems
to make the male voice sound good makes the female voice sound
hollow.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[ChrisCoaster]

On May 16, 8:40*pm, muzician21 wrote:
Looking for suggestions as to how to treat a particular audio file,
44.1 mono. Want to bring out the clarity and tame some harsh peakiness
and boominess, yet maintain the basic dynamic character of the audio -
i.e. don't want it sounding ultra compressed.

Here's a .wav file with 3 short sample sections that demonstrate the
issues. 1) Guitar and male vocal 2) guitar and female vocal 3) then
all together. The guitar is a bit peaky/brittle, the male vocal has
some issues with both low freq's and kind of a harsh graininess in his
vocal delivery. There are some harsh spikes in the female voice, even
outright distortion in a few places.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/...Raw_Sample.wav

Some things I'm specifically hearing. Resonance/boominess in the male
vocal such as in the phrase "...there's some kind of madness, *IN*
your eyes..." on the word "IN" -

Hot/harsh spots on the female voice on the second sample

"...mmmm*WHOAH*..."
"....*AND* I said we can't...."
"...*BABY* all this talkin'...."

What I have to work with is SoundForge 8, various VST plugins,
including the Slim Slow Slider 3 band compressor plugin.

So far, having a difficult time getting rid of all peakiness and
harshness and still retaining the "good" aspects of the sound. What
I'm shooting for is being able to play it fairly loudly without having
it bang your ears at a particular point ala commercial release CD's.

All input will be appreciated.

Thanks
_____________________
Holy 80s flashback - that male vocal sounds a LOT like Richard Marx!

-CC

[polymod]

"ChrisCoaster" wrote in message
...
On May 16, 8:40 pm, muzician21 wrote:
Looking for suggestions as to how to treat a particular audio file,
44.1 mono. Want to bring out the clarity and tame some harsh peakiness
and boominess, yet maintain the basic dynamic character of the audio -
i.e. don't want it sounding ultra compressed.

Here's a .wav file with 3 short sample sections that demonstrate the
issues. 1) Guitar and male vocal 2) guitar and female vocal 3) then
all together. The guitar is a bit peaky/brittle, the male vocal has
some issues with both low freq's and kind of a harsh graininess in his
vocal delivery. There are some harsh spikes in the female voice, even
outright distortion in a few places.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/...Raw_Sample.wav

Some things I'm specifically hearing. Resonance/boominess in the male
vocal such as in the phrase "...there's some kind of madness, *IN*
your eyes..." on the word "IN" -

Hot/harsh spots on the female voice on the second sample

"...mmmm*WHOAH*..."
"....*AND* I said we can't...."
"...*BABY* all this talkin'...."

What I have to work with is SoundForge 8, various VST plugins,
including the Slim Slow Slider 3 band compressor plugin.

So far, having a difficult time getting rid of all peakiness and
harshness and still retaining the "good" aspects of the sound. What
I'm shooting for is being able to play it fairly loudly without having
it bang your ears at a particular point ala commercial release CD's.

All input will be appreciated.

Thanks
_____________________
Holy 80s flashback - that male vocal sounds a LOT like Richard Marx!

+1

Poly

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

muzician21 wrote:

Make the vocals sound good. People will tolerate lousy
guitar sound more than they will tolerate lousy vocal sound.

That's another problem I'm running into - finding a setting that makes
them both sound good that minimizes the overall problems.

You're then trying to fix the voice, that takes a vocal coach, fix the mic.

What seems
to make the male voice sound good makes the female voice sound
hollow.

You can only do so and so much. Anyway take a listen to

http://muyiovatki.dk/tasty_sample.wav

What I did was: eq as per Scotts suggestion (q4, I think it is -4dB at two
locations) and boost the low bass a bit, now there is a bit of 100 Hz guitar
body "issue", not gonna bother - there's just a bit more and I wonder why
you didn't mention it.

I then put it through a slightly modded (new frequencies, but same time and
treshold settings) classical music choir preset of my own in auditions
(izotope's) 4 band, 120, 1200, 5600, ratio 2:1 in all bands and supplemented
with a "saturation like" compressor-preset designed for singing wimmen
wearing robes and trimmed a few remainin stray peaks with a hard limit.

Added dither and converted it to mono, which it is, no reason to waste my
server-space. File will only be up until I remember taking it down in a few
days. It is still a turd, but it is shiny and it clearly gives away that the
vox mics are not optimally deployed for the context, feel free to get it
better along those lines, I really gotta go back to some book-keeping and
webmastering but a slight time of doing something else was nice.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[muzician21]

Interesting, the original engineering was done by a place that has
some prominent credits, slick website with various names dropped.
Doesn't seem to be a very good advertisement for their shop.

[muzician21]

If anyone's interested, here's what I've come up with.

For reference, here's an mp3 of the original


http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/...Raw_Sample.mp3


After fooling around with it some


http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/...ked_sample.mp3


Interesting to see what's lurking in a fairly tubby sounding original
file.

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

muzician21 wrote:

If anyone's interested, here's what I've come up with.

For reference, here's an mp3 of the original

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/...Raw_Sample.mp3

After fooling around with it some

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/...ked_sample.mp3

Interesting to see what's lurking in a fairly tubby sounding original
file.

Very interesting indeed, thank you for sharing!

The spatiality was well captured in the original recording, it is by that
and a other definitions not a bad recording per se, but it has challenged
listenability.

You are certainly not shy of "doing things" and generally the result is
pleasant in an aphexy kind of way, but beware of voice treble sounds
dissociating from the midrange and eigentones.

How do you reproduce the "below 60" range in your listening room?

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[muzician21]

On Jun 5, 5:24*am, "Peter Larsen" wrote:

You are certainly not shy of "doing things" and generally the result is
pleasant in an aphexy kind of way,


Aphexy? As in effects? Didn't actually use any effects per se at least
on this one, it was done largely with really persnickety application
of graphic EQ with what ended up being a really convoluted appearing
envelope configuration. When I found a freq that stuck out, I'd try to
tramp it down with as narrow a cut as would work. Also did some spot
application of a volume envelope to further even things out. Used a
bit of broad compression just to knock down percussive peaks from the
guitar so I could bring up the overall volume level without clipping.
My goal was to alter the original dynamic form as little as possible..

but beware of voice treble sounds
dissociating from the midrange and eigentones.


Dissociating? Can you elaborate?

How do you reproduce the "below 60" range in your listening room?


Reproduce? Um, I turn on the speakers - lol. To be honest, my
monitoring system and room isn't at all "pro". I try to get it to
where I like the way it sounds on my larger speakers listened to from
various distances and volume levels including outside of the room, and
also through headphones. I notice certain obnoxious spikes/resonances
will become apparent with the headphones that aren't as apparent with
the speakers. Since I notice one of the hallmarks of commercially
released recordings is that you don't hear a lot of "spikes" - i.e.
frequencies that really stab you in the ear more than others even at
fairly high volume, I try to achieve that same state.

I made an effort to reduce the boominess/muddiness of the guitar
evident in the original yet still retain a degree of the wood
"thunkiness" and a bit of the high-end jangle but taming sibilance in
the voices. A big problem here was trying to retain some semblance of
fidelity in the guitar, the male and female voices - they all seemed
to have different needs that didn't necessarily flatter the other two,
and the engineers seemed to do the worst job of mic'ing the female
singer.

Keeping in mind as well that the circumstances of how this was
recorded was "What U Hear" recording off a webcast. I'm actually
surprised as much of the frequency range came through as apparently
did. They seemed to have done a pretty good job of broadcasting a wide
frequency spectrum, they just didn't do so great a job of balancing/
eq'ing it on their end.

[Scott Dorsey]

muzician21 wrote:

Make the vocals sound good. People will tolerate lousy
guitar sound more than they will tolerate lousy vocal sound.


That's another problem I'm running into - finding a setting that makes
them both sound good that minimizes the overall problems. What seems
to make the male voice sound good makes the female voice sound
hollow.

That's because you can't really fix room problems and mike pattern problems
with EQ. You can make it sound okay in one place, but not others.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[[email protected]]

On 2011-06-09 (ScottDorsey) said:
muzician21 wrote:
Make the vocals sound good. People will tolerate lousy
guitar sound more than they will tolerate lousy vocal sound.
That's another problem I'm running into - finding a setting that
makes them both sound good that minimizes the overall problems.
What seems to make the male voice sound good makes the female
voice sound hollow.
That's because you can't really fix room problems and mike pattern
problems with EQ. You can make it sound okay in one place, but not
others.

PReach it brother preach it! Eq is a band aid. IF I can't
capture good sound with my intended technique, that means i
need to choose a different technique. THat's the beauty of
recording. FOr live sound reinforcement sometimes using the
better band aid is the only solution you've got however.


--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."


Richard webb,

replace anything before at with elspider
ON site audio in the southland: see www.gatasound.com

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

wrote:

PReach it brother preach it! Eq is a band aid. IF I can't
capture good sound with my intended technique, that means i
need to choose a different technique. THat's the beauty of
recording. FOr live sound reinforcement sometimes using the
better band aid is the only solution you've got however.

or: Know your trade-offs!

Richard webb,

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

muzician21 wrote:

On Jun 5, 5:24 am, "Peter Larsen" wrote:

You are certainly not shy of "doing things" and generally the result
is pleasant in an aphexy kind of way,


Aphexy? As in effects?

You did save my version I hope, try comparing the treble to the one on my
version and to the original, but I didn't dedicate a lot of time to it and
possibly undercooked it. Mostly however leaving some imperfections in work
better for me.

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

Didn't actually use any effects per se at least
on this one, it was done largely with really persnickety application
of graphic EQ with what ended up being a really convoluted appearing
envelope configuration. When I found a freq that stuck out, I'd try to
tramp it down with as narrow a cut as would work. Also did some spot
application of a volume envelope to further even things out. Used a
bit of broad compression just to knock down percussive peaks from the
guitar so I could bring up the overall volume level without clipping.
My goal was to alter the original dynamic form as little as possible..

but beware of voice treble sounds
dissociating from the midrange and eigentones.


Dissociating? Can you elaborate?

How do you reproduce the "below 60" range in your listening room?


Reproduce? Um, I turn on the speakers - lol. To be honest, my
monitoring system and room isn't at all "pro". I try to get it to
where I like the way it sounds on my larger speakers listened to from
various distances and volume levels including outside of the room, and
also through headphones. I notice certain obnoxious spikes/resonances
will become apparent with the headphones that aren't as apparent with
the speakers. Since I notice one of the hallmarks of commercially
released recordings is that you don't hear a lot of "spikes" - i.e.
frequencies that really stab you in the ear more than others even at
fairly high volume, I try to achieve that same state.

I made an effort to reduce the boominess/muddiness of the guitar
evident in the original yet still retain a degree of the wood
"thunkiness" and a bit of the high-end jangle but taming sibilance in
the voices. A big problem here was trying to retain some semblance of
fidelity in the guitar, the male and female voices - they all seemed
to have different needs that didn't necessarily flatter the other two,
and the engineers seemed to do the worst job of mic'ing the female
singer.

Keeping in mind as well that the circumstances of how this was
recorded was "What U Hear" recording off a webcast. I'm actually
surprised as much of the frequency range came through as apparently
did. They seemed to have done a pretty good job of broadcasting a wide
frequency spectrum, they just didn't do so great a job of balancing/
eq'ing it on their end.