any tips for cleaning up mic tapings of live shows?

[AnalogUniverse]

I listen to a lot of jam music, and it's common among jamband fans to trade copies of shows. (see http://bt.etree.org) These are usually captured by an audience member with a set of mics. Sometimes the quality is very nice, sometimes the reverb from the room is overwhelming and mud is plentiful. Aside from obvious eq, any ideas to clean this stuff up a bit?

[AnalogUniverse]

...bump?

[muziqfreek]

in reality its not gonna be that easy - once the sonic imprint of a room is on a recording, like distortion you can't get rid of it. That said the SPL Transient Designer, the Sony Oxford Transient Modulator or the Waves TransX or Restoration plugins could go some way toward taming the room sound, but its always gonna be a trade off... sound quality will be changed... and if you're processing an mp3 of the show then there's not a lot of quality to start with!!! Give it a go... download the demo's of the Sony & Waves stuff and see what you can achieve!!!

[fross]

Cardoid or Super-Cardoids as close to the sound source as possible. It's the only way to prevent unwanted reflections and reverb.

[muziqfreek]

Originally Posted by fross

Cardoid or Super-Cardoids as close to the sound source as possible. It's the only way to prevent unwanted reflections and reverb.

...yeah i forgot that one...... capture it better in the first place!!!

[Jay Kahrs]

I spent a few years as the house guy and PM at a club doing jam bands 4-5 nights a week and man, those taper guys are all over the place in terms of mics. I saw everything from a pair of 58's taped together on some cheap ass stand to Scheops or maybe Sennheiser shotguns way way up on a lighting tripod.

As for the original question, It's just like mastering. Try some EQ and play around with the width a bit. I'd say that roughly 70% of the tapers don't have any idea on how to place mics for stereo recording and there could be some phase issues.

[MIKEHARRIS]

Dolby used to make the 430...effective at removing location noise...but usually used on individual componenets not the full mix. Cedar makes the DNS1000...but these high-end processors are a bit expensive for the hobbyist..tho some have no budget for their passion

[AnalogUniverse]

hey guys, thanx for the suggestions

"capture it better in the first place" doesn't really work if i'm not doing the capturing

like i said, some of these guys really know what their doing, and that stuff most of the time doesn't even need eq. but, some of it is pretty horrid... i've even seen mic's duct taped to trees, recording into who knows what.

those plug-ins sound like the best bet at the moment, i'll give them a go. and i'll try playing with the width as well. thankfully most of this stuff is FLAC and i don't have the problem of mp3 to deal with as well.