Thread: How Do I Make Live Recordings Sound Like Studio?

Hell Your Barry Gibb you should already know these things....LOL

lol i wish. but serriously someone help me if you can?

Originally Posted by BarryGibb

First off sorry if this is in the wrong place?

Now im just wondering is there anyway to make live recordings sound like studio recordings ... it dosn't have to be perfect just cleaned up if you know what i mean?

thanks for any response in advance.

You can check @: http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/cat/AUDIO_RESTORATION/

You will have to select your operating system, as I haven't a clue what it is. Well, I know it operates, but is it a Gates or a Job? This century or last century, that type of thing.

One that caught my ear is EasyTools, only because it is a sweet suite.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net
Well recieved and free audio production software, Audacity, has a few "noise" removal tools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_restoration
A broad primer on audio restoration with links to high quality, cost based, restoration software.

I did some "clean up" on stuff I found on 1/4 inch tape and cassettes of bands from many years ago. One thing I can say from personal experience: Lower your expectations.

When you lower your expectations you may find that you can get comfortable with your results easily. Thats a good thing.

Alternative is, you keep thinking "this crappy software just isn't doing the job" and you get locked into thinking to yourself that you can get more out of the audio restoration then is mechanically possible.

They say take it easy and have fun with it. I say ditto.

So much of it depends on how it was recorded in the first place. If you've got good isolation for each track, you should be able to clean things up, gate and mute as needed, etc. etc. If it's all close-mic'd, you've got a good shot at clean, crisp tracks without a lot of ambience - unless you WANT ambience, of course.

I have done a number of recent live recordings on fairly large stages, with lots of mics on anything that made sound. One was a muliti-mic/instrumental & vocals folk festival recording, and the other one was a 90 piece orchestra with two soloists in the front, and dual choirs in the back (120 adults, 100 children's choir). Both recordings were surprisingly dry in both cases, largely due to the deadness of the area they were performing in (although the halls themselves were large and fairly ambient out past the proscenium arch area.)

When tracking shows like these, I actually put two mics out in front on the audience/hall to capture ambience and applause, etc. that gets lost with all the close mic'ing. Even so, I often have to dial in a little room sim to get it sounding live.

Again, if you close mic and capture it all onto separate tracks, you should do OK when it comes time back at the studio to mix it all.

There are many variables. The venue is likely not a small acoustically treated space. Like J said, separation/bleed is a big deal.

Musicianship is usually my biggest barrier. Studio tracks have samples, loops, lots of layers of sounds to get big meat drum sounds sometimes. The instruments, backline, etc must be top notch.

There is an endless list. All you can do is capture what it there.

When you mix, you will not be able to hyper compress like modern pop/rock studio albums are compressed. our noise floor is huge and you will have the bleed through from other sources that will conflict with any overdubbed/corrected parts.

Originally Posted by BarryGibb

Now im just wondering is there anyway to make live recordings sound like studio recordings.

To "help" answer your question... lemme ask one... Why would you want to do that? Live recording is not the same as a studio recording...

it dosn't have to be perfect just cleaned up if you know what i mean?

Not sure if I completely understand what you are looking to clean up... Live recordings are going to have the bleed and ambiance of the venue... period. You'll have crowd noise, and interaction. That's what makes it "live"! You kill all that and it's just another studio track, which I've found is just about impossible to do.

Funny, most people at some point want a studio recording to sound live...

Can you be a bit more specific in what you're trying to clean up? (drums, gat, bass, crowd, vox, etc...)

MadMax is right on.

Most people like live shows because they DO have dynamics sans normalization and too much limiting.