Suggestions for chain for live rock show board feed.

[odaroff]

Would appreciate any suggestions on building an effect chain in Audacity (equalization etc) for this recording. Board feed was hot on vocals, and guitars etc are harder to hear.

Thanks in advance!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SzbJgDveDA

[steve]

What's your opinion of the recording? What do you think it needs?

[odaroff]

Personally I think it's very weak in the midrange - Guitars etc sax etc. Also, didn't notice until today when I put on headphones that there is some low level noise that you can especially hear at the begining that obviously I woud like to isolate and remove.

Basically I want it to sound like it's supposed too a Bruce Springstien song


Thanks!

[steve]

I presume that this was recorded direct from the main out on the mixing desk?

The downside of recording direct from the desk is that the mix has been set to sound right in the venue, but in the venue you also have sound from the back line and acoustically from the drums. The guitars are very low in the mix, but if the guitarists had the sound cranked up on the back line, then they would have sounded louder live at the venue. Similarly the piano is overly loud in the mix, but again if there was little or no piano sound from the stage, then that may have been necessary to produce a balanced sound at the venue.

The pan positions are also rather extreme, with the piano being heavily biased to the left and the vocals to the right. Again this may have sounded fine at the venue, but sounds a bit strange on the recording. It is more usual to have the main vocal dead centre and instruments panned a little to the sides.

There is also some clipping occuring during the loud bits. This may have been only on the recording, or only occured during the conversion to YouTube video, but I suspect that things may just have been pushed a little too hard on the desk.

Much of the sound problem is due to the mix, but you can't do much about that once it has been mixed down to stereo.

There is also noticeable "compression damage" due to the encoding to YouTube video. I presume you also have access to the original recording prior to it being uploaded to YouTube, and that should sound a bit more clear.

Getting a really good recording from a live performance is very difficult because that is not the sound guys main priority - getting a good live sound is the priority.
The way that professional live recordings are made is to have another sound man that makes a multi-channel pre-fader recording of each of the individual channels. The only thing they are concerned with is getting a good level from each input which can be mixed down later in the studio. Assuming that you don't have the facilities to do that, a compromise that can produce good results is to record from the desk and also record the live sound from a pair of microphones. The two recordings can be then mixed later.

I think it is a very worthwhile exercise to listen back to live gig recordings, but it is a little frustrating that apart from playing with the balance and the Eq there is not much you can do to improve it after the event.