Hey everyone ! I've searched the forum before posting but haven't found many topics. I'm working on a project where I have quite a lot of (my own) vocal takes. In the last year I've recorded various takes on my phone , mainly to not forget the ideas. Then I got a small studio set-up and TRIED to re-take those vocals. Quite surprisingly, I can't replicate those initial phone recordings, haha. I mean THOSE sound way better in regards to their "delivery" and atmosphere. I decided it would be better to use those original ideas instead of re-recording them in the studio and have them sound seemingly better but duller overall, from my pov. I would like to ask you if you've used such takes in your projects and what you did to improve them.
In the past, I used to clean my phone recordings in Adobe Audition with their noise-removal filter, with somewhat satisfactory results. This current project, however, is an important one and I wouldn't stick to Audition. My main concern is that the phone vocals in question would hurt the final mix overall. If you'd be so kind as to guide me... Any tips and tricks are enthusiastically welcome !

 

Try RX8 and Soothe both work great to clean raw audio.

 

A simple first approach could be Audacity with noise print and then try saturation to brighten up the vocs.

 

Thanks, guys ! I will be using your advice !

Would you please expand on what you mean by "brighten up the vocals" ?

 

Sure, no prob. Make them sound brighter by adding harmonics with saturation.

 

I've always wondered how Liam Howlett extract and clean up those old dirty vinyl samples then make them sounds 3x times better.
Then I forget about it.
For example drums. Is he was adding a harmonics and additional low layer with kick and bass?
Or maybe multiband compression or something else?

 

embrace the vibe , dont try to make it clean

 

God bless you and your creations !!! <3 Thaaaank you so much for pointing this to me ! To my defense, I've been away from production in the last years but even so, turns out I have been living under a rock , not knowing about this MAGNIFICENT , genius iZotope RX ! It is simply amaaaazing, incredible piece of software ! All the rest fade to oblivion ! Thank you, wavyj !

 

Here is a good tutorial by Seed To Stage that can help you, I suppose : "Remove Background Noise With Audacity"

 

this may be cool for you to check out. This guy Robin Rimbaud uses scanner recordings which sound like phone recordings and makes music with them under the name Scanner

He's got a whole aesthetic philosophy about pirating conversations- interesting guy. French.



This is the CD I have - it has phone audio on it that he tapped

https://www.discogs.com/Scanner-Lauwarm-Instrumentals/master/56915


http://scannerdot.com/

 

Last edited: Mar 12, 2021

Yes, you can use your phone recordings. To improve them, try cleaning them up with software like iZotope RX, use EQ and compression, and add reverb to match the original atmosphere.