losing that "live" sound...a mix question?

[Willie Myers]

h'lo, all

Often in the past, I've had a 2-trk. mix and been asked to make it sound more "live"...add a little verb, mess with delays, etc. and eventually it would feel *kind* of like it was recorded in a club or on stage.

Now, I've got the opposite problem. This 2-trk., a student recital, was beautifully performed, but not well miked - - well, not for a jazz quintet. they used orch. miking techniques - a/b suspended. the result is very roomy, distant.

so I'm wondering if you all can suggest;
a. what technique/s would you use to try and "fix" this mix and,
b. what tools (plugs or hardware) would you use?
For DSP plugs, I've got a bunch of Digi stuff and a hand full of others, for hardware, a TC Electronics Finalizer Express.
All help appreciated

bill myers, composer

[frenchman]

looks like mission impossible... but...

Things you can try though (no result guaranteed!):

1) Often, rooms have precise resonant frequencies: finding those frequencies and "drying" the main ones each with a narrow notch filter (EQIII can do the job) can help. But you have to tune them precisely (this may take at least six to eight bands of parametric eq).

How many bands and how much attenuation is up to what your ears tell you about the point of diminishing returns !

2) once you have dealt with the main resonant modes, adding a kind of soft smiley EQ curve to the whole thing *might* add presence, as rooms tend to overload mids a lot.

In detail you could add a little bump or shelf where the bass fundamentals are, and eventually take some of the dirty low mids out.

You may also compensate with a cutoff lows with a 12 or 18db/oct high pass below 40 Hz to do away with room rumble

In the highs, try to spot where the high mids "splash" a lot and attenuate a little of this and compensate by adding some "shiny" highs (from 8k onwards) as these get less reverberated so you might recover some presence there

3) now we get into the *really* horrible stuff (hi fidelity fans please look away ;-) )
use an expander with a soft curve to dry up some of the low level stuff (ie the room reverberation) recompress things with a hard knee but high threshold to tame some of the resulting surging peaks and eventually (the icing on the cake) some level maximizer used moderatly if you really need level.

Try several combination on several tracks and compare, sometimes luck can do half the work !

Have fun !

[Andre Knecht]

Multi-band expansion is your best bet.

IHTH.

[Michael James]

If none of the above suggestions do the trick, try decreasing the sustain with an SPL Transient Designer. Just make sure that what you gain in "vibe" is worth the loss of fidelity.

[PTUser NYC]

I agree that multiband expansion is the most likely option to work. You might also try doing M/S processing. Assuming that most of the ambience is in the side channel, you might expand it more than the mids before recombining.