remove prerecorded reverb?

P

paresh

Member
don't laugh (or maybe there really is a way to do this???) I'm cleaning up some old CD's for a friend & one has way too much verb - is there anything I can do? Thanks.
 
Haven't tried the Izotope one but I've had several of the freebies recommended and none of them worked--indeed, the artefacts they added to the audio were worse than the reverb.
 
That's what I would have thought. But there's always another smarty pants building a new and better program. Be cool if it worked.
 
I'm sure with copying it on another track and messing with the phase, it could be lessened. Its pretty much the same thing they do with getting rid of vocals, so you just have the music bed.

Ain't gonna be 100% but you could diminish it.

Take a look on youtube for videos "removing vocals"
 
Based upon the old adage "you can't polish a turd" my knee jerk reaction was that of Jimmy's. That said after seeing there are a few pricey plugins out there that tout themselves as capable of such sorcery I googled "reverb removal" and found THIS THREAD on the topic over at Gearslutz. Several post on several tools and the results within.

My Take away....You can't polish a turd.

Some of the posters seemed pretty knowledgeable and did have "some" success at removing verb or room ambiance but there will be a loss in overall quality of sound of the original tune and "artifacts" appear quickly. In order to acheive that less than perfect end result requires quite a bit of time experimenting with and learning how to tweak the software. Maybe worth the price of admission if you are trying to fix a very valuable or amazing song but realistically in most cases that is not the case. That said, why waste precious time on such a "pissing in the wind" exercise. If you have the original dry tracks ...hell yeah.......... a mixed down old track (sans the original tracks) laying around for 10,20,30 years....I'm not going there.
 
Wow lots of ideas. I don't want to spend anything - it's up to my client if he wants to spring for it, as I have no other use for it beyond this project - i'm not a professional.
 
My comment was based on the fact that the OP wanted to 'clean up' old CD's. Using an expensive tool to attempt this on a full stereo mix is likely futile. The results are more than probably going to be worse than the reverb that was annoying from what he has.

If he had individual tracks and one or more of them had too much reverb, then maybe software could help that and the artifacts of such software could be buried in the mix.

But yeah, that is 'polishing turds'... Not something I would recommend so I said 'no way' because it isn't going to be worth the time...

Yes, there is software that claims to do such, but not something worth trying/buying IMO. Sorry if my simple comment was taken as 'dismissive incorrectness'. More don't bother was what I meant.

It is tough to fix broken when you don't have the parts.
 
paresh said:
Wow lots of ideas. I don't want to spend anything - it's up to my client if he wants to spring for it, as I have no other use for it beyond this project - i'm not a professional.
Click to expand...


The SPL De-Verb through Plugin Alliance that I linked to above, has a 14 day free trial...full featured, full use.

That's about as cheap as it gets. :)

So how do you have a "client"...but you're not a professional?
I mean...if you do audio work at any level for $$$, you need tools, and sometimes you need a tool that you only use once in a blue moon, but that's how it is.
A car mechanic doesn't use every tool in his box every day. Some are only used very rarely...but he needs to have the tools for when he needs to use them. ;)

Tell you what...send your client to me, and I'll de-verb his CDs...and you don't have to buy anything. :thumbs up:
I bought the SPL De-Verb awhile ago...haven't used it on anything, but seemed like a good tool to have on hand...this could be a great opportunity to use it. :D
 
TAE said:
Based upon the old adage "you can't polish a turd" my knee jerk reaction was that of Jimmy's. That said after seeing there are a few pricey plugins out there that tout themselves as capable of such sorcery I googled "reverb removal" and found THIS THREAD on the topic over at Gearslutz. Several post on several tools and the results within.

My Take away....You can't polish a turd.

Some of the posters seemed pretty knowledgeable and did have "some" success at removing verb or room ambiance but there will be a loss in overall quality of sound of the original tune and "artifacts" appear quickly. In order to acheive that less than perfect end result requires quite a bit of time experimenting with and learning how to tweak the software. Maybe worth the price of admission if you are trying to fix a very valuable or amazing song but realistically in most cases that is not the case. That said, why waste precious time on such a "pissing in the wind" exercise. If you have the original dry tracks ...hell yeah.......... a mixed down old track (sans the original tracks) laying around for 10,20,30 years....I'm not going there.
Click to expand...

It's worth noting that most of the people on that Gearslutz thread are more interested in removing room tone/echo than electronic reverb deliberately applied. That's also been what I was up to when I said I'd tried some software and found the artefacts worse than the room tone.

I'm sitting here trying to decide if deliberately mixed in reverb (probably stereo) will be easier or harder to remove. I can come up with arguments both ways.

In either case, I go along with the "turd polishing" analogy. Trying to eliminate things already in the recording/mix is a bit like trying to take the eggs out of an already-baked cake. You might get some of the egg but will likely damage the cake in the process.
 
It's all good :) I do very occasional audio work for a friend & he pays me a few dollars...that's not being a professional.
 
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