Got the audio, now what?

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progmr

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Hello:

I recently recorded my church band (8 singers, piano, guitar, acoustic guitar, windsynth, drums/congas) during a large assembly in a gym. I used a stereo condensor pair located 50' away 14' high, into a Alesis mixer out to a laptop using Power Tracks. I now have a .SEQ file that I need to clean up.

Can anyone suggest what steps I should take? It seems anything I've done seems to undo something else (e.g. hiss removal undoes eq settings, etc) The recording is pretty good in my opinion but there is some hiss I'd like to remove and the individual instruments are not "distinct" enough. I am willing to spend some $$ to add any plug ins I don't have.

Is there an application that isolate the individual parts into tracks?

Thanks to any that respond. I know it is a wide open question but I don't want to waste my time through trial and error if there are some golden rules and steps I can follow. I'll can post a short MP3 on a website to give an example of what I'm up against if it will help.

Thanks again!
 
progmr said:
Is there an application that isolate the individual parts into tracks?
Click to expand...
Nope. If you recorded in stereo, thats all you have.
 
You can't un-mix a stereo recording. It's like trying to get the eggs back out of a cake. The only golden rules are do it right the first time.
 
Compression and EQ are your main weapons. Don't worry too much about the hiss, it happens.
 
I have a lot of songs on my computer with a bunch of hiss in them, a little distracting but the songs are good. And personally, I couldn't care less about the hiss.

Fixing a specific instrument in a stereo WAV file will be impossible without effecting everything else in the mix, so it needs to be subtle. And your expectations need to be realistic. You can't edit a single stereo WAV file like you can if you had everything as separate tracks, but you can make improvements. But you need to take into consideration every other instrument in the song.

Personally, I'd probably just leave it alone unless it was an important project, and then I'd send it to a pro mastering engineer.

But you can try some subtle EQ/multi-band compression to see what you can do.
 
just for the record...there are programs that have taken a mono wave with two people talking simultaneously and separated them so they are coherent.

there was a lot of phase-y sounding noise, but its pretty experimental stuff. check back on this thread 50 years from now and you might be in a bit of luck.
 
Thanks everyone. I'll look to doing some EQ and compression tweaking and hope for the best.
 
The first thing to note is to not set up a stereo pair 50 feet from the source :eek: That's kind of far even for an orchestra. Maybe a giant pipe organ . . . or a large concert with all the sound pumping through the mains . . . but that's probably why the recording isn't very distinct. If you had a closer mic placement (like 10-15 feet), you might have enough stereo separation between instruments to do some mid-side processing (or even left-right differences), that can help get at individual instruments in a mix. But at 50 feet, your stereo image is probably entirely reflections.

Anyway, a noise reduction plug can reduce the hiss, just don't go crazy or it will sound funny. You might be able to tighten up the bass with a multiband compressor. I would probably avoid compression otherwise, it will raise the level of the hiss, and probably the ambient noise/echo as well, making the track even less intelligible. So just clean up with EQ as best you can, you might be able to find a midrange frequency to cut the mud, and something in the high range to boost to add clarity.
 
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