I recently finished a "live" cd for a client that was done totally in the studio. It was pretty tricky but I think in the end we got it sounding pretty close. Most people listen and think it was an actual concert.
I did several things to make it sound "live." We recorded all of his vocals for the cd with the same mic and same positioning. I let there be a tad more proximity effect since you get that a lot in concerts with people eating shure 58's. We did a good bit of planning before we started recording also. After doing the final vox, I sequenced all the tracks out in a ProTools session in the order and everything they would be in.
Next, we got the mixes pretty close, then began collecting samples of crowd noise. He was doing mainly Elvis music, so I took a lot from Live Elvis CD's. I also got some good stuff from a Streisand concert and some others. I tried to mainly stick with one concert for the main audience noise so it sounded like the same place.
With the basic audience in place, I got him to go in and voiceover his comments for the "concert" between the songs. He really fed off having some audience there. Then there was a ton of sequencing to do as far as getting songs to start at the precise time, etc.
In mixing, I basically added several reverbs and delays and mixed to taste until I found a sound that convinced me that we were in an arena. The most laborious thing was editing/mixing the audience tracks. There were several overlapping tracks and a lot of automation to bring them up and down as needed. I even dropped in some of the sampled screams and laughter in the right spots.
I added a touch of the verb to the audience tracks to help them match up with the studio parts, but adding too much made them too distant.
It ended up working out real well. It was a ton of work but it was fun.
