Topic: Advice on salvaging a fail-tape.

[tailschao]

So, I taped a band, but I was also videotaping, and, as usual, the best video taping spot is MAJORLY =/= the best audio taping spot. I was way in the back of the floor, under the balcony, extreme off to the left side, next to a big-ass pillar (hiding my cam behind it).

The audio mix sounded shite where I was standing anyway, and my tape is boomy, muddy, and the whole thing lacks clarity in a big way. I also set the levels on my pre-amp without looking at the meters. Foolish I know, but I had to set everything up to hide my camcorder before the show started and couldn't risk moving or it would mess up my set up. It turns out I set WAY too conservatively. Like, peaking at -25dB. So the Dynamic Range sucks donkey balls on top of all the other stuff.

Now, I'm not really expecting much, but I was wondering if there is anything I can do to this aside from the obvious EQ/bass roll-off?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1617882/BackSt_v4a.mp3
(Nothing done except a straight amplify/normalise).

I've had a play around with some EQ (very quickly, taped it yesterday and only got back home a few hours ago):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1617882/BackSt_v4b.mp3

Sounds... better, IMO, but still... pretty shite. I mean it's listenable (certainly good enough to dub onto the epically awesome HD 2-cam video mix so it won't be wasted), but I was just wondering if any of the pros here could offer any other advice. I'll have more gos at the EQing as the video editing progresses, but is there anything else that can help the rest of its problems? I tried a bit of light compression and it just sounded worse. I realise trying to get any kind of clarity into a tape like this is trying to sharpen an out-of-focus photo/video back to perfection (that is - impossible), but ya know. Gotta ask, right?

Samples will probably try to stream, if that causes problems right click the links and click save as/save. Also the weird noise at the end was coming through the PA, that's not an artifact.

Thanks.

[beatkilla]

Look for the vst plugin called modern channel.Its free and just using this single plugin you can turn crap into gold.

[ghellquist]

I did a five minute test. Not much I can do really, but there seems to be a lot of energy around 70Hz, typical of some rooms. Cutting a bit there and adding a bit here might do some bettering. Here the result file here: (Note the file will not be up forever, only til I need the space for other things).
hhttp://taperssection.com/index.phpttp://trombonisten.se/mp3/eq.mp3

These are the settings I used in Samplitude Pro, EQ112 (one of the include plugins, raving good if you ask me).

[tailschao]

Thanks a lot man. Sample & settings saved so you can take 'em down if you like. Will play around more with some of that EQ.