| Identifier | 8970538 |
| Created At | Tue May 23 2023 23:54:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) |
| Media Type | cdr |
| Media Count | 1 |
| Sound Rating | b+ |
| Note | HW06 The Recording
Initially I was offered a 2nd generation tape of this show, from someone who had traded it direct from the taper. After a post on the net, we managed to track down the guy who originally taped this concert. Unfortunately, he is not on the net, or email, and has not graduated from analogue to the digital age yet. Thus I was unable to get a copy direct from his source tape. But this is what I found out: The show was recorded on a Telefunken reel to reel machine, using BASF 13" reels and a Grundig microphone. Now here's the sad part: to save tapes, the taper would transfer his original recordings at home to a big 4-spur reel, using his Grundig machine. Then he would reuse his master tapes for another show. (In the 70s he recorded over 300 shows - what a treasure there must be in his collection!). Thus the master copy of this recording no longer exists. At best there is the 1st gen reel that he still has. But it is rendered inaccessable as he is unable to copy it to anthing but an analogue medium. So the 2nd gen tapes he makes are the best that we have (for the time being... :-). There are 3 versions of this show that I know of: i) A poor CDR boot, which is the one I believe is in wide circulation. This transcription comes from a low gen tape, maybe 3rd or 4th gen, and is pitched quite fast, so it is a half tone sharp at least. It is quite muffled, and a roll off filter seems to have been applied to the treble to minimise the distractions of hiss. ii) The 2nd gen tape I have. This tape sounds quite clear, although it misses the German introduction, and has some very nasty high frequency distortion during the first few minutes (Gabriel's intro). Plus it is not as bright in the treble as... iii) A CDR, probably from a 2nd gen tape, but it sounds so sharp and clear in the treble that I wonder whether it may come from a reel to reel source. Compared with the other versions it is glorious, dynamic and detailed. However it has one annoying problem; cross talk. Throughout the recording there is a print through of another track of music, it is soft, but noticable in the quieter sections. The Audio Restoration I have chosen to work primarily with the 2nd gen CDR version, splicing in quieter sections from the 2nd gen tape where cross talk was noticable. These are often sections where Phil is not drumming, so there is no loss of his cymbal work. The difference between the two sources in terms of general clarity and hiss is quite minimal, so the splices are quite unnoticable. The CDR version was pitched slightly fast, so I had to digitally re-pitch it, and then edit in those quieter sections. Once that was completed, I removed the rather prominant 50Hz hum throughout the recording, and cleaned up the bass rumble as well. The bass is quite light on this recording, and very difficult to balance. It sounds quite variable throughout the recording. The songs Twilight Alehouse and Musical Box are not very bassy, but Watcher, Get em Out and Hogweed, when Mike returns to bass guitar, are strong again. So getting the right balance was a bit open to guesswork. The recording also had a 'boxy' peak in the lower midrange, which I've attenuated. Other than those, the frequency equalisation is natural. This recording has a beautifully detailed and clear top end, and I decided not to denoise it. The hiss levels are relatively quiet, but to clean them up would have meant losing a host of fine musical details, particularly in Phil's cymbal work. There is such a nice grain and texture to the treble, that I decided it had to stay the way it was. I feel the hiss is soft enough that it is not really a distraction anyway. Volume levels are very realistic, by virtue of the fact that the recording was made without auto record levels. So all the dynamics of the original performance are captured beautifully - notice the power of Twilight Alehouse and Musical Box. There were a few moments when the volume levels were manually changed during the recording, most noticably the first sequence of Musical Box, and I have restored the volume levels where this has occured. The recording is mono, and I have added some early reflections to open up the stereo image a little. Considering the amount of echo on the raw recording though, any extra reverb would have been overkill, so it has not been added. |
| Trades Allowed |
Performance
| Genesis 1973-01-15 Stadthalle, Heidelberg, Germany | |
|---|---|
| Set 1 | Watcher of The Skies
Twilight Alehouse Drum solo Get 'Em Out By Friday The Musical Box Return of The Giant Hogweed |
| Set 2 | |
| Set 3 | |
| Comment | |