Topic: How to edit a recording (hard rock) in a boomy hall, with low PA sound (100dB)

[Jonas Karlsson]

Good morning 

Using SONY PCM-M10, Church CA14 omni + batterybox.

The other night I was recording a Danko Jones concert in town (www.dankojones.com) and as always they put on a good show. They played a place called "Pustervik" in Gothenburg, which has been rebuilt with balconys on 3 sides and the back balcony being quite large. They also added a bar in the back of the floor which has made the room smaller in front of the stage. Add to that the PA being hung quite far up. I postitioned myself on the right side of the room about 8 meters in front of the right PA (being hung far up, as I said...).

Now... Atom Willard is playing the drums for Danko at the moment - and.... he's hitting those drums pretty hard! That's great, but in Sweden bands are not allowed to peak over 100dB more than 3 times at a show. You can imagine hom many dB Atom is hitting!! This made the sound coming (far up) from the PA very low, and I was picking up a lot of ambience from the drums (acousticly!). This has led to the result of quite a boomy recording, with low vocals and guitar (since Danko was standing on the other side of the stage, and probably was heard more clearly on that side), but a lot of drums and bass.

How do I approach this recording to make it sound less boomy, and perhaps "tighten" the sound a bit? Any help would be helpful.

/Jonas, Sweden

[acidjack]

Having not heard the recording, generally:

Use an EQ to start tapering down the low frequencies, starting as high as 500Hz depending on the the exact way it sounds (be careful, as actual instruments are also up around 500Hz, like bass guitars.  Real boomy bass is more like 100Hz and down).  For a rough guide, look at the frequency response plot of a Neumann KM150.  If you mimic the amount of rolloff that thing has using an EQ, it should make it "clearer".

Also play with boosting the mids (1kHz-4kHz).  I do this less often, but that will bring up guitars/vox some.

Start upwardly tapering the mid-highs and highs (8kHz and above), probably as much as 3dB or more...

That's a really, really rough guide though and not a hard and fast rule. Every recording is different.  I'd recommend getting software with a good parametric EQ so you can isolate frequencies and really see how changes affect the sound.  Izotope Ozone 5 is my favorite, but there are many others.  It's definitely best to have an EQ that works in real time so you can hear the changes as applied, though before I had Ozone I would just run changes on a 5min section in Audacity and keep doing and undoing them until I liked it, then run it on the whole thing. More tedious, but works.

Good luck.