Topic: what would you do?

[admkrk]

while recording a show in wl5, i had a few "overs". no big deal. on playback the clip lights never go on and it sounds fine on the lappy. cd wave reports about 60 clipped sectors in all.

now for the question. would you leave it as it is? normalize it? or do something else? i've got to get copies to the band and venue owner btw. just looking for opinions before i send this out.

tia

[wbrisette]

now for the question. would you leave it as it is? normalize it? or do something else? i've got to get copies to the band and venue owner btw. just looking for opinions before i send this out.

As many say, trust your ears. The biggest mistake a lot of people make is to let technology get in the way. It's there to help you, but too many rely on it instead of experience or instinct.

Wayne

[Gordon]

normalizing will not help clips.  if you can't hear them great.  if you can hear them there is not much you can do for clips.

[ShawnF]

I'm of two minds about this.  The first impulse agrees that if you can't hear it, no harm, no foul.  On the other hand, if it was my recording, and I was giving it to the band, I might be tempted to remove the clips for two reasons, though neither are likely to be all that significant.  First, if they at some point decided to open it up themselves for editing, I would prefer that they not find any clips at all, and secondly, if it were ever to be converted to mp3, say for myspace or whatnot, would the clips possibly become a bigger issue?  The last thing is something I've noticed a couple of times in making mp3 sets for an artist--in CEPro2.0, using the built-in Fraunhofer IIS encoder, I sometimes get clips in mp3 files where there were none in the original file (though it occurs at the loudest points, of course).  This happens at lower to medium bitrates, but doesn't at higher bitrates.  Maybe it's just that particular encoder, I'm not sure.

Anyway, if it were me using CEPro and I did decide to "fix" it, I would convert to 32b.f. format, use the built-in Noise Reduction/Clip Restoration feature on the affected areas with no attentuation, and then use a Waves L2 limiter with 0 threshold and the out ceiling set to -.2  or so (or -.3 if mp3 conversion as described above might be a possibility) with dither back to 16bits.  Obviously I'd aurally check the results to make sure it hadn't introduced any audible problems, but this should be able take care of the situation you describe quite easily.  What one does in WaveLab, though, I have no idea, but maybe there's something similar that could be done if you wanted to mess with it.

[admkrk]

thanks for the input guys!

i know a clip is a clip and there really isn't much to do about it. i ususally don't have more than one or two, at the worst, right at the beginning. this was my first time out in 4 months so i was a little rusty. the band's not likely to use this tape for anything more than hearing how they sounded that night, although they did release the first tape i did of them.

i want it to sound good for the venue owner also as i might could shake that into a paying gig of some kind.

i think i'm just going to normlize to 0db so clips don't show up in any scans. it shouldn't have an impact on the sound that way that could be heard without close comparison, if at all.

btw, the band is honeytribe and i'll have it up on etree this weekend if ya'll wanna give a listen.

  thanks again and peace,                     kirk