Suggestions for treating this audio?

[brassplyer]

Looking for suggestions as to how to treat a particular audio file, 44.1 mono. Want to bring out the clarity and tame some harsh peakiness and boominess, yet maintain the basic dynamic character of the audio - i.e. don't want it sounding ultra compressed.

Here's a .wav file with 3 sample sections that demonstrate the issues. Guitar and male vocal, guitar and female vocal, then both together. The guitar is a bit peaky, the male vocal has some issues with both low freq's and kind of a harsh graininess in his vocal delivery. There are some harsh spikes in the female voice, even outright distortion in a few places.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/11/1809238//Raw_Sample.wav

What I have to work with is SoundForge 8, also have a 3 band compressor plugin. So far, having a difficult time getting rid of all peakiness and harshness.

All input will be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[andicustherobot]

Hmmmmm, this one's a hard one. You really can't get rid of some of those harsh notes without getting a re-mixed version of the track (possibly even retracking the vocal if the peak was in the mic or pre). I think the distorted note she sings is somewhere around the 1k range, you might try playing with EQ and compression. Definitely come down on some of those lows in the EQ, maybe even boost a little of the highs but remember when messing with mastering EQ, less is more, and broad bandwidth sounds more natural.

But otherwise I don't think there's a whole lot that you can really do at this point other than some basic EQ and compression, maybe throw in a touch of reverb to give it a bigger sound since it's mono.

Goodluck sir!