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hello, i have a stereo recording from a 8mm cam, and have lots of the room reverb.

how can i remove some or all the reverb from a stereo track.

its a rock band recording. ( drums, bass, guitar, keys and vocals)

thanks a lot

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natural Mon, 10/30/2006 - 08:24

I think you're going to be out of luck on this one.
But there are 2 things you can try.
1- pan the stereo track to mono, this might cancel out some verb.
2- leaving the track in mono, invert the polarity on one of the channels. (AKA- phase flip) This might take out more verb, but more than likely it will remove more of the band and leave the verb. But it's worth the try. You can adjust the level of one of the tracks slightly to get the most cancellation.
hope this helps

RemyRAD Mon, 10/30/2006 - 09:21

When faced with this problem in the past due to the automatic volume controls on most camcorders, you are left with having to manipulate with hardware or software. What you must do in software is select a compressor program that offers a graphical representation of the compression curve. You will then establish within what range of DB the bulk of the sound that you want to preserve. Then you will take the graphic example and place a point just below the bulk of the sound energy. They will create another point near the bottom left point. You will then drag that secondary bottom point to the right, which will cause downward expansion to occur below the higher point you have set where you believe the softest passage of sound is still audible. This downward expansion curve created within a software compressor can greatly reduce the amount of reverb sludge that rushes up from the automatic volume control in the camcorder. During this process, you may likely increase the dynamic range beyond where it will sound good. At that time you will create a separate limiter in software to control the peaks. You may find that just the few DB reduction will keep some of the reverb more under control?

Or you could use something like a used DBX 117/118/119 linear dynamic range expander, which I used successfully many years ago. Again, with that unit, it will increase the upper dynamic range requiring a limiter to reduce any overloads the linear expander can create while at the same time lowering the decay time of the reverb.

Your results may vary so check with your physician before downwardly expanding.
Ms. Remy Ann David

JoeH Mon, 10/30/2006 - 13:07

I agree with Remy and Natural; worth a try.

I do, however, think you're mostly SOL. Sorry, but I don't want to lie to you and tell you it's possible. Camcorder mics set to auto-level are notoriously bad, and although you'll get SOME improvement with some fiddling, it will only go so far.

Interestly, I'm selling a DBX 118 on Craigslist in Phila. NOT trying to shill here, nor do I think it'll really solve the problem; just noting the coincidence.

anonymous Mon, 10/30/2006 - 20:19

I saw a plug-in somewhere that claimed to de-reverb with good results. For obvious reasons, it won't be perfect and pristine, but sometimes "good enough" is good enough, right? Let's see here...

Yes, it was a thread in another forum. I can't recall this forum's policies on such linking... Remy?

In any event, it would be purely academic, because having a look at the thread (quickly, mind), I'm pretty sure that it was just a proof of concept for an as-of-yet unreleased plug-in/application. Users submitted their files and the developer ran them through on his end. No downloadable demo and not available for purchase, from what I see.

Greg