Re: 2 audio clips for your esteemed perusal

Does the Rockbox firmware let you record to .wav instead of .mp3? That would "Rock," so to speak. I think I remember hearing about it sometime back, but never got around to playing with it. Or maybe it hadn't been written for my ifp-799 at the time.

Does it do 24-bit .wav or just 16-bit? I don't know if a 320 kbps .mp3 has less fidelity than a 16-bit .wav. If you know the answer to that one, please by all means hit me.

Don't think it could come close to a 24-bit .wav though.

I'd sure like to hear the H2 at 24-bits (>44.1 K) using line-in to bypass the preamps, that Sony mic, and a battery box. Might be a whole 'nuther world versus the crappy built-in H2 mics (and preamps). Even the H2's plug-in power driving the Sony mic might yield some good results versus the crappy H2 internal mics.

I'd love to give the H2 a whack with the giant-squid omnis or unis on an upcoming gig, but there'll probably be too much audience racket at my next few gigs to get anything useful for research and comparison purposes. Plus, I hate trying to record when I'm gigging. I prefer to record someone else so that I can focus on the recording process.



"JonD" <delaney.jon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:a3f6fd3b-fc8a-4df4-a9c7-8994b47eed2e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Dec 20, 1:50 am, "Chickenhead"
<kuNOrtSPAMshapTHANK...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Jon:

Just listened to Moonlight. One of my all time fave tunes. Loved your
playing on it!

Sounds pretty good for a one mic deal.

I always have a little trouble with compression/limiting on brushwork, as it
tends to take out some of the subtlety and make it sound harsh. I'm
thinking that to get really excellent recordings from one mic or one stereo
mic, you need a super good room and very careful placement. I've never been
that happy with what I can do with that situation, since the mic's distance
can make things sound thin and distant, but compression and limiting can
introduce artifacts. My personal preference for this mix (Moonlight) would
be some adjustment and lessening of the compression to bring back some of
the dynamics of the brushwork and de-harsh the snare a little.

It's a little crispy in the high end, and something's causing a little phase
shifting on the double-bass -- It could be simply room sound or reverb being
intensified by compression, limiting, and/our loudness maximizing. It's
possible too that using both the limiting/compression in Ozone along with
Loudness Maximizer and other similar compression plug-in could be additively
increasing the compression artifacts.

Still I think the mixing/mastering sounds very good given the limitations of
one mic recording. What mic, device(s), settings, and signal chain, did you
use on the original tracking?

I'd love to hear the original, maybe normalized, before you did the
mastering, just for comparison purposes.

Again, your playing, actually everyone's playing, sounds wonderful. I have
nothing but praise for the performance and musicianship. My comments are
only directed towards the audio, and only for the purpose of providing the
feedback you asked for; I was specifically listening for things I'd want to
change in the audio in order to provide you with some useful feedback
instead of just unadulterated praise.

I've been slowly learning the hard way to use d less processing on my mixes
and masters -- With all the great tools available, it's very difficult not
to use them. I have terrible tendencies to overuse processing, especially
limiting and compression plug-ins. Also, my ear gets immune to it very
quickly and likes the amplitude increase, so I don't realize how much better
it sounds without it.

I also use a similar EQ cloning deal with the EQ for mastering: I use
Voxengo's Curve EQ and somewhat conform the master EQ curve to other
recordings. I have a few curves that I've saved that tend to work very
well. For example, I've got a curve I lifted from Sade's "Smooth Operator"
that tends to get at least partially applied to a lot of my stuff.

"JonD" <delaney....@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:603b2e3f-8d6c-48a1-b4ef-e0d89d79858e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> Hi,

> I was using these one mic stereo recordings I made back in March at a
> casual session to work on my mastering chops in Reaper, and throught I
> might post a couple. It was a pretty relaxed session, just playing a
> few tunes.

> Playing wise, it's not too awful. The things I really worry over
> listening back to these things are my time, and clarity of phrasing
> (sentence structure, I guess). At the time I was working on
> deliberately pulling the time around a bit - push and pull - and I
> think that sort of shows on Moonlight in Vermont. I like some of the
> phrasing on that too. I'd never played it at that tempo before.

> Not quite sure why I'm putting the rhythm changes up...it's flawed for
> sure but sort of fun, and short. I like hearing myself think a few
> times about playing that Metheny 5th's lick before it actually comes
> out in full. I think it's funny, but maybe it's not your kind of
> joke...

> Audio wise, I used Izotope Ozone with Reaper. There's some eq
> (graphically matched to "I hear a Rhapsody" from Jim Hall Live - cool
> feature!), compression/expansion on the low freq, reverb, stereo
> enhancement in the upper bands, and loudness maximizer. Took about 15
> mins.

> Still not so good with the audio processing game, but I'm starting to
> understand which things do what. Also not helping is the fact that I
> converted it from mp3 to edit, and then back again to upload...not
> ideal perhaps... Comments on playing or audio processing most
> welcome.

> Anyway, hope someone enjoys the tunes - and happy holidays to
> everyone!
>http://tinyurl.com/moonlightinvermont
>http://tinyurl.com/anthropology1

> Jon

Hey Kurt,

Thanks heaps for the detailed reply. I didn't have much time to
think about mic placement at the time, so yeah, it is an attempt to
make the best out of a less than ideal situation (also, both files
have been converted to mp3, then back to edit, and then again to
mp3). It was recorded to wav file on my Iriver 340 (with Rockbx
firmware installed) through a little battery powered sony mic. The
Iriver is great for casual recording, as it's the only mp3 player I've
seen that'll do 44100Hz uncompressed wav files from an external mic
(with rockbox installed). An hour takes up a gigabyte or more (I
think), but there's plenty of room. Anyway, here's the original (I
cut it down a little to save space). Let me know what you think.
http://tinyurl.com/moonlightinvermont2

Thanks also to everone who listened and commented. I do appreciate
it.

Jon

.

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