improving low-quality live recordings
Back at Clallam Bay Comicon, I did “USSR” for the first time, as a karaoke track. When I got back, I posted a video of the live USSR performance on Tumblr, taken off of audience camera.
And that was fun, but the sound quality was pretty bad, because it was just the on-camera microphone. Plus, the camera did things like make automatic-recording-level adjustments throughout, which means the backing track is pulsing all over the place.
I’m going to be cleaning up some other, similar live recordings for some other people this weekend, so I’ve had a go at this audio, just to warm up and see what I can do with it. That’s meant a lot of level-control automation, heavy use of a multiband compressor (and a high-pass filter to get rid of most of an occasional rumble from… somewhere…), a bit of reverb to smooth out some of the sample rate issues, and a lot of EQ work.
I’m going to massage it a bit more, I think? But I’m reasonably happy with what I’ve managed so far (mp3 link). The amount of surprise audio-level changes is down a lot, I’ve brought back the low end and some of the high end, there’s even a hint of kick to the bassline now - though I wonder if I’ve over-built that at the moment. It mostly sounds okay but I’m not sure it’s so great on anything that does a lot of bass boost, like some gaming headphones.
Anyway, what do you think? I’ll re-upload the live video with the improved/massaged audio if enough other people think it’s better enough.
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