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Author Topic: One of your favorite recordings that has a nagging error that bugs you...  (Read 2401 times)

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Sphinxvc

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Re: One of your favorite recordings that has a nagging error that bugs you...
« Reply #10 on: January 26, 2013, 01:27:43 AM »

There's a Cat Power album, The Covers Record I think, that's got an "nagging" artifact.
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Hroðulf

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http://decibully.listeningpartyrecords.com/album/decibully-2

Can someone please take a listen? The music is great imho, but there's something that bugs the hell out of me. First time I heard it I immediately unplugged my headphones as I thought that my amp was malfunctioning. The drum track on most of these songs contains some peculiar distortion that I have heard once in my life- when I had mis-biased the output stage on my amp.

A malfunctioning preamp or a mixing deck?
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If it keeps on ringin', levee's goin' to break..

AstralStorm

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One simple way to remove sibilance is to select the sibilance only and EQ it out. The bad thing is that it affects the entire sound. However, if the sibilance is brief, the effect is not noticeable. You can always try to gate it too.

Izotope RX and many, many others make themselves out to be better than they actually are. You can always try Cedar as well but you really need to know how much and where to apply to the fix, otherwise you get nasty artifacts.

You can also do the "select the sibilance" thing semi-automated - combine a noise gate (or a similar way of finding hard attacks) with a bandpass to find where it is, then reject wideband passages (compare level in sibilance band with levels on the others), equalize only elsewhere.
I haven't found a fully automated effect doing that - when I did fix a thing or two like this, I used a Cool Edit macro. (it was called that before being bought by Adobe and renamed Audition) Probably could be done via scripting in Audacity too.

Sounds somewhat similar to a pop filter on everything - most instruments aren't affected.

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The distortion in this Decibully album is harmonic distortion in large amounts in all orders. Sounds like someone is overdriving microphones. Recording made with cheap mikes placed way too close to the instruments, vocalist also chews his one.

Alternatively, a very overdriven tube console.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2013, 12:31:16 AM by AstralStorm »
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jerg

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You know you all have one.

For me, it's Grandpa's Violin from .hack//sign Liminality. An absolutely beautiful, simple, emotional song. It's played exceptionally well, but.. on almost any down bow, the violinist lets his/her bow get away from him/her near the tip and it bounces quite noticeably. Surprisingly obnoxious and something I would not expect to hear from someone with the skills shown in the rest of the playing. Poor bow choice, or poor control, or both. In my job I help people every day select bows and this is one of the main criteria, as in the very first thing that will be looked at to eliminate a potential bow from being purchased. Unfortunately, most of the covers on youtube are quite terrible, but one from a child actually manages to capture most of the spirit of the original without the bow hopping. So unfortunate that the original has such a glaring error. As someone who does this for a living it's almost enough to cause me to not listen to it.

Original:



There are so many of them, but the easiest one to hear I think is at the transition from 0:16 to 0:17. Another one easy to hear about the last half of 1:42 (that particular second).

Best cover I could find:



Maybe it was an intentional effect? The song IS called "grandpa's violin", maybe the violinist was trying to capture the frailness of an old man playing the tune. Doesn't bug me at all, in fact I kinda dig it.

Anyway my biggest "great recording with nagging error" is the static near the end of "Stairway to Heaven".
« Last Edit: April 08, 2013, 04:18:45 AM by jerg »
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Maxvla

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It isn't intentional, once you learn how to bow properly it's actually near impossible to do on purpose. She's a professional violinist so I would hope she would have a properly mated bow by now. Usually that gets sorted when you buy your first bow that isn't for a beginner.
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