Suggestions in "EVERYBODY'S CLAPPING" situation...

[lordbelial]

Hi,

This Sunday I'm gonna be taping (in stealth) Loreena McKennitt.

In this kind of shows, people uses to stay ULTRA quiet during the perfomance of the song, but as soon as the singer finishes, they EXPLODE into a mass of crazy people clapping as if they never did in his whole life...

So, I'm gonna run DPA4061 > Reactive Sound Boost Box > Iriver and I'm afraid of being overclipped when this clap situation begins, but I don't want to be under normal gain levels because the show is "semi-acoustic".

Any suggestion?

[bconnolly]

My feelings on situations like this is to just to roll with clipping in the audience.  I've been in the exact same position (even when open-taping) and I figure I really don't care if the cheers are clipping.  I just want the music to sound good.

[CQBert]

There is not much you can do.... the audience is the audience...

In post - if you have the time and/or desire you can smooth out those very high peaks but it takes a long time.  I can say I have done it once, maybe twice in the last 5+ years. 

In the end I think that you focus on the music and just let the audience noise exist.

CQBert

[shaggy]

In the last few orchestral stealths I recorded, I moved my finger to the gain knob on my SBM and turned it down.  I dunno about the reactive boot box but the sbm's gain is such that there is this area around the knob that is exposed on the top and bottom only (the rest is recessed).  I place my finger tip at one edge of the opening to mark the original position and move it back a few notches without moving my finger off the knob, then when the audience is done doing its thing, I move my finger exactly where it was before right up to that edge.  Works like a charm, subdues the audience noise and I can run levels hot for quieter music.  With your boost box, you are gonna have to figure out how to do this without look down at your box if you are stealthing....maybe even put one of those little stick-on rubber feet at one side of the dial to mark a reference point on the boost box if you don't have this convienent edge reference like the SBM.

[OOK]

set the levels to the music and then fade the edges of each song between songs. not ideal but better than nothing.

[dgodwin]

One other suggestions is get as close to the music source as you can. 

[guysonic]

set the levels to the music and then fade the edges of each song between songs. not ideal but better than nothing.

I agree with this tact setting levels best for music and then edit down distorted applause because of the 16 bit limitation.  If recording deck allowed 24 bit depth, then little or no loss of audio detail recorded at lower level. 

In other words, to record clean WAY-over-the-top loud audience response to quiet performance, greater bit depth recording is indicated.   

Personally I miss the rotary knob level adjust.  Recorded 100's of hours of live audience acoustic jazz.  Found it's almost easy to  feel-adjust back to the 'music' setting after manually fading down the loud applause.  Watched the VU once to know amount of working knob rotation distance, and eventually got so good using cassette WM-D6C deck the out/in fade was mostly inaudible.  Having all those solos really gave me a lot of practice opportunity to fine tune the technique.   

Now it seems only a few larger, power hungry digital decks come with rotating knobs, everything else has up-down buttons you have to keep a careful eye on.  Obviously this works against enjoying the music and looking down to adjust something on a regular basis will attract unwelcome attention.

[lordbelial]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I've finally trusted the clipping light on the Reactive Boost Box, so I've setup the levels for the music and have lowered them if the drums were clipping (maybe two or three times). Thanks god the girl sitting on my left was not so noisy.

I'll post samples asap.

Regards,

[lordbelial]

Thats life in live acoustic music recording.

Any suggestion?
Set your levels to it.

I'll "cure your clap" for a small fee

He he, thanks for the offering but I'm doing fine with post-processing with Audition or Wavelab.
Just trying to figure out how to "skip" this needle of using some compression tool like L2 or L3 ultramaximizer...

[1westkc3]

If the mics are in a hat, just turn your head upwards and the clapping will be a bit attenuated (also gives your neck a bit of a break). 

[ilduclo]

USE "envelope amplify" in Cool Edit on the clapping, go from 100% at each end to try about 30% at the applause, back up to 100% at the beginning of the next track, looks like a very streched out capital U. Steep as fuck on the sides, spline the curve down to the 30% flat line on the bottom at 30%.

[ilduclo]

don't know, I don't have and haven't used wavelab. In cool Edit, it's under the Edit Amplify Envelope drop down, the configuration I use is not a preset, but once you get one you like you can save it.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

Cool edit is so much slower than wavelab that I just can't bring myself to use it unless I absolutely need a specific feature..  I'm sure it is more of an issue with 24/96 files due to size.

[Brian Skalinder]

Can it [volume envelope] be done easily in wl?

In the Montage view, double-click the center line that divides the L (top) and R (bottom) channels to create envelope points and simply drag them around to achieve the curve desired.  The envelope applies to both channels, so I assume (but have not confirmed) if you want to apply different envelopes to separate channels, you'll need to split the stereo WAV into two mono files.

FWIW, I find applying compression easier, faster, and still sounds good in most circumstances. I've only occasionally used volume envelopes as I've found it's a -lot- more effort (I'm pretty picky about getting the envelope just right so the fades in/out sound very natural).  Maybe I'd find it easier if I used the feature more often.   

And I won't suggest (again) that you give Samplitude SE a try. 

[ilduclo]

looks eggazatically like what I was saying in Cool Edit. I don't have a problem with the speed of CE, maybe because I have an older version and run it on a pretty speedy stripped down PC......