Topic: Help in post-- what to do with that rascally SBD

[travelinbeat]

I recorded a jumpin' western swing group called The Hot Club of Cowtown using Busmans > PS2 > CA9100 > iRiver at stage lip, then took XLR > 1/8" > R09HR (24/88.2) from the board.  I noticed at the show that the fiddle was distorting in the mix, but my lip mics weren't picking it up.  The lip mics caught stellar music, but really muddy vocals, the board caught great vocals and upright bass, but also that nasty sounding fiddle (soundman on crack?).  Wondering what you guys would do.  I've synced the feeds and I'm providing you with two synced .flacs of the same song.  You'll hear the difference instantly and I believe you'll also instantly hear my dilemma.... are you guys able to mix out that distortion in the board or boost and clean up the vocals from the lip?  Please take a crack at it and let me know what you come up with!!!  (and please be sure to remember any processes you've performed so that I might be able to recreate your success!)


http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AY7OOXSU

idared.zip is 87.82mb and contains:
idared-lip.flac  -  18.7mb  (16/44.1)
idared-sbd.flac  -  69.0mb (24/88.2)

[page]

Short answer is yes, you can probably improve it fairly well.

My first attempt was to use a denoise plugin. Izotope RX will learn what noise sounds like and I picked a section which was just violin, used that as the sample, then played with amounts and ratios and all sorts of junk. Second, you can EQ some stuff off of the top end (say, 4-5db) above about 4khz to try and eliminate as much of the harmonic's first.

The downside is time. I think it would take about 30 hrs of work to fix this, most of it's finding the right settings, and then about 10hrs of system processing time (whether all at once in batch mode, or in segments).

I've attached the solo results and the original segment I used. Again, this was the 30 seconds quick and dirty, it could be improved more with some tweaking of settings. Rename the files to flacs (only shn's can be attached).

[travelinbeat]

Very good advice Page!  I played with it quite a bit and rendered a final version.  It still has some distortion on the fiddle, but now it's more of a "bite" sound than a really annoying blare.

I've posted a .zip which includes my "fixed" file and a text file which explains what I did and all the exact settings.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AYI6K6KK
20.69mb

[page]

Very good advice Page!  I played with it quite a bit and rendered a final version.  It still has some distortion on the fiddle, but now it's more of a "bite" sound than a really annoying blare.

I've posted a .zip which includes my "fixed" file and a text file which explains what I did and all the exact settings.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AYI6K6KK
20.69mb

was that the only track you had issues with or representitive of the entire show? (my time estimate was based on it being a full 60 or 90min set.)

[travelinbeat]

yea I fixed up one track nicely, then applied the settings to the whole show (two 45min sets).  I'm now in the process of taking out some of the slap from the upright, EQ'ing the synced files, maybe throwing the bass more towards the right channel for improved headphone playback, and then normalizing and tracking.

I was up till 6am, and now I've been working since about 11am... about..... 10hr so far?

[page]

yea I fixed up one track nicely, then applied the settings to the whole show (two 45min sets).  I'm now in the process of taking out some of the slap from the upright, EQ'ing the synced files, maybe throwing the bass more towards the right channel for improved headphone playback, and then normalizing and tracking.

I was up till 6am, and now I've been working since about 11am... about..... 10hr so far?

probably. I burned a lot of time learning RX and coming back to listen to samples the next day when I slogged through stuff like this so my estimate may be off. Glad it worked out for you.