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Old 2019-03-05, 06:01 AM
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TheMysticMuse TheMysticMuse is offline
 
Join Date: Sep 2017
Location: Sweden
Question Where to start with remastering/cleaning audio? (Need help)

Hey guys,

Is there anyone here or has any knowledge of cleaning up/remastering live recordings? Where the heck do I start? I wish there was a book called "How to remaster your live recordings for dummies!"...

As many of you may know I'm a serious Van Morrison collector, so I've listened to many different shows comparing the original masters to the remasters done by JTT, 4-EyedFreak, Acetboy etc. And some of these reworks are just brilliant, didn't know you could "restore" audio like that.

So what software is needed? I have the money so I can buy good products if that's what I need. Are there any good book/guide/PDFs to buy or read online that I can find somewhere? Would also want to know what all the terms that are used in mastering mean, like; gain, EQ, normalization, left-right channel normalization, RMS levels etc, and how these terms will alter the audio if you start messing around with these terms.

Just to show an example, I uploaded a Van Morrison acetboy rework today which sounds way much better than the original master. Here is what he did:

"This is a mono recording. On the original share the left channel is always louder than the right. The left channel is seriously compressed alsao. So I used the right channel to reconstruct this.
The original share is running too slow. After fixing that and trimming a little applause here and there this now fits on one CD. The show is now continousa, no gaps of any kind.

For an audience recording inside the huge Auditorium Theatre this sounds pretty darn good. The taper must have been on the floor somewhere. The vocals come through quite well. As do the instruments most of the time. When the music is soft and the crowd is quiet it's very nice.

Original share had a RMS level of -13.7dB
this now runs at -15.5dB"


What kind of knowledge is needed to do what he has done? Basically I need some advice where to start, some basic explanation of the terms that are used in mastering, the most typical faults that live recordings have and how to "fix" these.

Thanks for taking your time reading this wall of text. Hope everyone is having a great day!

Regards,
Christian from Sweden

PS. Since I'm a Swedish speaking viking my English sucks, sry about that.
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