Taped my first show last night, and I want it to sound as good as possible!
I've backed up the raw, completely untouched wavs in two places on my PC and on a DVD, and I've got my hands on Sony Soundforge.
That's about the extent of my knowledge.
I'm happy with the recording levels - the meters on my R09 hovered around 20 (give or take a bit) throughout, but I believe I need to normalise - at this point, i'm a bit lost though.
Any help? (Would it be useful for me to post a sample, and a pic of the waveform?)
Also, how would I go about trying to minimise the disruption caused by having to hop out of my seat at fairly regular intervals for people going to the bar and whatnot? I kept the mics pointing in the right direction as consistently as possible, but I couldn't avoid the occasional 'Excuse me, mate' and 'cheers, mate'...
Practice, practice, practice. There is no real crash course on post work. It is all subjective on what you want out of your recording and what sounds good to you. Play around and see what you like. Read the manual. If you want to normalize, search for the subject on that in your manual.
FWIW, 2 channel ambient, not much post to do on that. Normalize, resample, dither as needed. Maybe some eq'ing if that is your cup of tea. Your greatest difference on getting your recording to sound better, when ambient recording, is to improve your source (your master recording). Meaning, location, location, location, followed by your tools (mics>pre>ad).
No quick way of making something good, without knowing exactly what it is you think is good or not and how to achieve that process. Poor recordings are salvageable, if you know what needs salvaging. Your best bet is research on the subject and lots of practice.
Sorry, this is probably not the answer you where hoping for but it is my advice or rather $.02.
-Jon