Q. for the master mixers: Live Band Recording - post editing EQ

fastonebaz

I always video our gigs and have an external stereo mic that captures the sound and it does a reasonable job of picking everything up.  It does lose some top end sparkle and with the auto gain reduction there's a little bit of volume pulse in parts where one instrument doesn't play.  Plus its not always easy to find a place in the pub to mount a camera with external mic that won't get bashed, blocked, stolen, whilst being optimally positioned for a balanced sound.  But the goal is to capture to essence of the gig not pristine audio

Back home I edit the audio in cubase and experiment with various EQs, compression, maximizer, limiter, filter plugin's but never quite get a sparkle onto the sound.  I think I'm just rubbish at mixing & mastering.  I'm not expecting a polished recording, and agree its difficult to polish a turd, but I must be able to apply a little sprinkle of something onto it to brighten/even it out a little.

I wondered if anyone else regularly does this and has a tried and trusted set of processes they use they I could benefit from hearing about. 

I appreciate this is such a massively wide open topic but since rock bands recorded on a single stereo mic in a pub gig probably all sound roughly similar in terms of quality of audio captured, there might just be a chance I won't get flamed for asking

Couple of audio samples here from the raw audio:
1) Example of dynamics 
2) Example of full pelt and guitar solo 

cheers

Roland

We film some of our gigs, but match the pictures to a multi channel recording taken from our digital desk. 

fastonebaz

Roland said:

We film some of our gigs, but match the pictures to a multi channel recording taken from our digital desk. 

Yeah that would be better but I can't do that currently.  

spark240

Seems like the vocal is suffering most....tricky task...have you tried some Multi band dynamic EQ ?

Go to around 22.00 onwards, it showssyou how to identify a Bandwidth and then adjust it up / down

fastonebaz

Thanks.  I tried the following which seemed to help

Only reduce eq, not add any
Multi band compressor
Limiter 
Tiny bit of ambient reverb

And a combo of that seemed to polish it up ok. 

spark240

Or....just post a link here and let us have a go !

fastonebaz

I think you can download the SoundCloud clips I posted above if you fancy a crack at those snippets.  Thanks

Stuckfast

Is the camera able to record audio in a lossless format like WAV? The trouble with MP3 is that it falls to bits as soon as you try to add further processing to it.

fastonebaz

The camera might do wav I will check.  This recording was just a 1080p50fps 48khz  out of which i ripped audio to mp3.

Adji

Does everything go through a desk at the gigs mate or just the vocals?

If so, you can probably take a simple stereo feed from the desk. Not ideal but it'll be clearer than the room mic / camera.

fastonebaz

Adji said:

Does everything go through a desk at the gigs mate or just the vocals?

If so, you can probably take a simple stereo feed from the desk. Not ideal but it'll be clearer than the room mic / camera.

Main vocals,  2 x backing vocals and my guitar goes through the pa.

funkyfraz

If you enjoy doing this then it might be worth getting some sort of multitracker. Less than 200 quid would get you a zoom r16 second hand, and I bet you'd have enough bits and bobs lying about to connect everything up.

I just so happen to be selling one.... 

Legionreturns

funkyfraz said:

If you enjoy doing this then it might be worth getting some sort of multitracker. Less than 200 quid would get you a zoom r16 second hand, and I bet you'd have enough bits and bobs lying about to connect everything up.

I just so happen to be selling one.... 

I second this. I got one for £150 and it's already the single most important bit of kit in my rig!



Here's one of kids performing using it...

Listen to Gateway Group - Zombie by You Bring The Band #np on #SoundCloud

octatonic

Based on that audio you are going to struggle because of the relative levels of the cymbals/hats and vocals and the lack of available headroom.

You need to be able to boost (roughly) 2k and 5k, but you simply don't have the headroom available enough to make a difference before it starts clipping- a few places in the recording already clip so it will make those bits worse too.

You could try a multi band compressor around those frequencies- to bring them up without going over 0dbfs.
Or you need to cut everything else.
Even still you are going to end up over accentuating the cymbals and hats.

Better to close mic the individual instruments and multitrack but if that isn't the option then try what I have written above.

fastonebaz

Update:

I played around as much as my limited skills let me and in the end settled on a combo of:

10 band EQ
Multiband compression
Reverb
Limiter

Clearly there's nothing much I can do to add more sparkle to the vocals without bringing the guitar and cymbals even louder, however, this this seem to make it have a little more ambiance than the original audio.



Thanks all

fastonebaz

I used to own a zoom 1608 multitrack recorder, I bought it from new years ago, it was amazing piece of kit and I recorded some great things on it.  I sold it eventually in favour of using a PC DAW.

But my goal here is not "how to capture a quality live recording", but simply to learn some better mastering techniques for adding a bit of sparkle to an existing live recording.  Thanks

spark240

fastonebaz said:

I used to own a zoom 1608 multitrack recorder, I bought it from new years ago, it was amazing piece of kit and I recorded some great things on it.  I sold it eventually in favour of using a PC DAW.

But my goal here is not "how to capture a quality live recording", but simply to learn some better mastering techniques for adding a bit of sparkle to an existing live recording.  Thanks

Unfortunately it’s really tricky and you will need to break out and tweak the different EQ bands I reckon, ...

midiglitch

I've done a bit of recording with a single mic like that of live gigs and rehearsals, and two things I would suggest are:
1. Positioning is key.  Often this is a practical matter, but if the mix sounds unbalanced, cluttered or woolly at the location of the mic then you're already limited in what can be achieved, no matter how much processing you have available.
2. Turn off any compression, auto levelling etc at the mic.  Record with plenty of headroom and you can do any of that stuff down the line, but it's hard to undo once it's been recorded that way.

i normally then just use a bit of gentle eq to massage things, especially in the low end which is rarely where it should be.  Then some gentle compression (no more than 2:1 and pay attention to how punchy things are with the attack time, and listen for any pumping when tweaking the release time.)  If more drastic measures are called for (e.g. The vocal is too prominent) then multi-band compression can help make the best of a bad lot.

fastonebaz

Thanks @midiglitch ; yes positioning is usually practical especially with a camcorder.  Good tips I'll try that thanks