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Gear / Technical Help => Post-Processing, Computer / Streaming / Internet Devices & Related Activity => Topic started by: WiFiJeff on December 12, 2022, 10:06:49 AM
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I have a stereo recording of violin and piano, in which the instruments are roughly centered, but the violin sound too low. IZotope Rx 10's Music Rebalance, at the elementary level I have tried it, does not help separating the stems or making the violin louder. Does anyone have any suggestions of software or how-to instructions to accomplish this?
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Tough one to try and tease apart in regard to frequency range as well as spatial position overlap. That leaves dynamics..
Rather than targeting either instrument individually, it may help to reduce dynamics to increase the perceptual level of the violin relative to the piano. Classic parallel compression will bring up the details without affecting the dynamic peaks, and will tend to sound less obviously compressor-squashed, but will also bring up the noise floor and ambient/audience noise details. Multi-band compression might work. I've had good results with Voxengo's Soniformer plugin that is a somewhat unique take on which incorporates 64 bands using a unique user interface to manage it by drawing curves across all bands. https://www.voxengo.com/product/soniformer/
There are tools emerging that separate sounds based on their attack envelope, separating transients from sustained sound. A link to one of them was posted at TS within the last couple weeks, which is the only reason I mention it, but I can't remember offhand what it's called. Could potentially be applicable if one instrument is playing staccato and the other legato, but it seems a reach to me.
I suspect parallel comp, mulitband comp, or some combination of the two are likely to be your best bet.
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Violin should be easy to see in the spectragram, you might be able to select it and use the gain module. May be a huge amount of work though. Hopefully 'find similar' works. Music rebalance will put these both in the same category, so probably not much that can be done with it.
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This is a tough problem. In my experience, Music Rebalance only works decently on recordings that were studio multitracked. What mic arrangement did you use for capture?
Besides the thoughtful suggestions posted already, you might try running it through a mid-side plugin and EQing the mid and sides separately. Maybe an upper-treble boost on the mid channel to give the violin transients more bite?
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Thanks for the suggestions. I will not have time to fool around too much until after the holidays, but will follow up and post if I have any luck. And yes, iZotope Music Rebalance puts everything in the same bin, and the frequency overlap is total. I can see and hear the two separate instruments, but trying to circle things by hand for 40 minutes of program looks like an infinite effort. Training an AI to do it would be something!