Topic: Ethical question

[stevetoney]

I've long since gotten over trying to think what I do is "archiving". 

Most of the time, my motives for taping are personal. 

OTOH, back in 1997 I recorded two blues artists that both passed away within six months of shows that I recorded.  It's a life blessing that these recordings exist now. 

Also, lots of bands I record don't have many high quality live recordings that have been made of themselves. 

So, I always keep it in the back of my mind that there are multiple reasons why I record.  I do feel that 'archiving' is one of the things I do.

[goodcooker]

I cut anything that doesn't have sound coming from the stage. If there is considerable between song banter or even noodling I'll leave it on the end of the previous track. You can always skip to the next track if you don't want to hear it. Crowd noise, silence, long drawn out tuning and other stuff gets cut.

[mountaintaper]

I have actually been asked by a few local bands to cut out any long pauses between songs before uploading.

[jagraham]

cutting out silence/crowd for an upload or to fit on CD is OK in my book.  however, i do think part of this hobby is archiving as well as it is educational.  i think part of the whole point of a txt file with source/location/etc is that if someone likes the recording so much they can go out with the same equipment and knowledge and make a similar tape.  just like we should with any EQ/amplification/track splits/gear description/mic config/etc, we should state what exactly we did in the text file so the listener that does care about such things has an accurate "idea" of what happened that night.

for the record, i keep the whole master file and FLAC sets uncut, then to burn to CD it depends on the artist and show.  if the whole show fits on a disc ill just leave it but if its enough of an issue i remove unnecessary tracks.  when tracking, if its just a minute or two of silence/tuning i just leave it at the end of the track.  like someone stated above, thats what the skip button is for.  however, if the artist has a "story" segment that takes up significant time or really long tuning, i just make that a separate track that way i (and the downloader) can decide what to do with it after the fact.  its really all subjective, but thats what i do.

[rjp]

For me, it's very much a judgment call as to how much (if any) editing I do. I usually record classical, and won't hesitate to cut out tuning, overly long pauses between movements, or orchestra/chorus rearrangements. I generally crossfade rather than fading out and in.

[splumer]

I cut anything that doesn't have sound coming from the stage. If there is considerable between song banter or even noodling I'll leave it on the end of the previous track. You can always skip to the next track if you don't want to hear it. Crowd noise, silence, long drawn out tuning and other stuff gets cut.

I don't know if I made myself clear in my original post. I do the above when I cut anything out. I never cut out any talk from the stage, or most noodling/tuning. But if the band is just going to stand there talking to each other off-mic, while the crowd gets fairly quiet, I'll cut it out. DMB's official releases cut all that out, and it makes for a much more listenable recording. Based on the discussion here, I think I'll keep on doing what I've been doing, but just judge it a little more carefully. For the record, I always make sure my cuts are seamless.

[morst]

A few times, I've been able to cut out a crowd chatter track to make it fit on a single cd, but I'll distribute the whole thing, and put a note in the text file to "remove track 21 to fit on 1 CD"

I track crowd chatter or stage banter separately when it exceeds 1 minute. When I play back in my jukebox software, I tag all the crowd and banter tracks as "Books and spoken word" so they don't show up in my music shuffle.