| Tech Note | * First 57 seconds spliced from Betty Reel (Gans)
@ At about 6:50 two seconds spliced from Betty Reel (Orf)
$ Piano distortion starting at 5:05 is on original reel
(somewhat cleaned up by Orf)
& Stage Announcements can be eliminated to fit disc 3 on a 74 min CD-R
General Comments:
In all the circulating copies of this show I've heard, including
this one, small analog pops were scattered throughout. I believe
they originated at the soundboard or from one of the band member's
instruments. I edited out about 100 of these (hopefully all of them)
with the Sound Forge pencil tool. Click removal software was not smart
enough to find and fix these particular pops.
I noticed as I was listening to this show that it sounded kind of
flat/sour/sluggish. When I finally sat down to give it a thorough
listen, I noticed that there was a definite speed change where Betty
source entered the new source 57 seconds into Playin'. I determined by
using a handheld tuner and the spectrum analyzer of Sound Forge that
the Betty reel was in tune and that the new source was slow (primarily
tuning the show to where the band is tuning after Sugaree; I made Phil's
A3 tune to exactly 220 Hz). Happily, by "tuning" (speeding up) the new
source, everything sounds "right" and the transition from the Betty
source into this source in Playin' no longer had that audible speed
slowdown. I did a pitch shift of +19 cents on all of the show (except
the first 57 seconds of Playin') which effectively "played the original
reel a little faster". Shntool was used to fix the track boundaries
which were now off due to the pitch shift (all the wav files were
shorter).
I was able to make the piano overmodulation distortion starting about
five minutes into Sugar Magnolia slightly more palatable by pulling out
the high frequency components of the distortion using the Sound Forge
Click Removal algorithm and some hand editing. It still sounds bad, but
distortion of this nature is nearly impossible to fix.
Finally, some comments about how this show sounds different from the
Betty source. This reel was originated from the folks who were filming
the Sunshine Daydream movie. The movie source sounds "clearer"; there
is a better defined high end which leads to a less "veiled" sound than
the Betty source. Vocals and high-hat sound clearer and higher in the
mix. Bass is mixed lower; the low bass is especially thin on the movie
source, while the mid-bass is fine. The Betty source, to my ears, sounds
more "veiled" than the new source, and more bassy. The movie source
has more tape hiss than the Betty source, but it's hiss only from the
original reel. My guess is the Betty reels used some form of noise
reduction (Dolby A?) while the movie source did not. In my opinion, this
is the best sounding version of this show currently circulating.
Enjoy, and feel free to send comments my way. Thanks again to David Gans
and Adam Jerugim for making this possible.
Leigh Orf <orf@mailbag.com>
http://orf.cx
written March 10, 2001
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