Hello ladies and gentlemen

I ask your forgiveness in advance, and I hope you will have patience with me for what will probably sound like stupid, ignorant questions to 99% of you.

I have no experience whatsoever with remixing or remastering, but I'd like to ask your advice on how best to get started on a learning journey within this discipline. What specifically makes me desire to learn this discipline is the following:

I have always had a great interest in music throughout my life, and I find myself desiring to make a contribution to this great art, by pouring my time and efforts into promoting my favorite band. I intend to do this by cleaning up some of their old live bootleg recordings from the early 1980's. This particular band disbanded in 1985, and on a global scale they are completely unknown. However, according to my personal taste, they're the best band out there, and musical geniuses of a very rare caliber. I'd like to show how great they are by polishing some of their old unreleased live recordings, so that the sound quality is more up to par with modern expectations. This is a pure passion project for me, and I have no interest whatsoever in making anything commercial. Here's the problem though:

These bootlegs are only available on YouTube. I think they're mostly rips from old cassette tapes or radio shows. The recordings are quite hissy sounding, and though the mixing generally sounds very good to my lay ears, there's a lot of noise on the recordings.

How would a complete newbie go about trying to clean up these recordings, without heavily investing in expensive equipment, or taking the most difficult route? I'm not against investing in equipment, but as a beginner, the most expensive tools would probably be completely lost on me. I have a little bit of experience with working in Ableton and RipX (trial only). I'm not necessarily interested in messing with the original mixing of the sound, at least not on a first basis. My initial mission is merely to 'clean up' the audio to remove unwanted noise.

I hope you can help me, and I appreciate any reply you may be able to give me. If what I describe sounds like a hopeless quest, I would love for you to be real with me. I don't want to spend my time chasing ghosts.

 

Could you provide a link to either the Youtube urls of the recording/s or some other kind of sample? The quality of the original material will be a big factor in the results you might end up with, and maybe someone can give you a bit of an overview of how they would approach it.

 

Hello clone. Of course, you are absolutely right. Thank you for your suggestion. I can provide you with several links of what I'm referring to. I'll do a few here:

1. KLICHE LIVE 1980 - Musik Cafeen Copenhagen ( audio only ) - YouTube
2. Kliche live Christiania 30 Sept 1983 - Del 1 - YouTube
3. Kliche live Christiania 30 Sept 1983 - Del 2 - YouTube
4. Kliche live Christiania 30 Sept 1983 - Del 3 - YouTube
5. Kliche live Christiania 30 Sept 1983 - Del 4 - YouTube
6. Kliche live Christiania 30 Sept 1983 - Del 5 - YouTube
7. Kliché - Masselinjen live i Idrætsparken 1985 - YouTube
8. Kliché - Havets Blå - Live i Idrætsparken 1985 - YouTube
9. Kliché - Okay Okay Boys - Live i Idrætsparken 1985 - YouTube


No. 1 already sounds pretty good to me, except for the low volume and the noise. I believe this is from an old radio show, as it has disc-jockey narration at certain points, introducing the band briefly.

No. 2-6 are rips from an old bootleg cassette tape. They are all from the same show, just divided into 5 parts. "Del" means "part" in Danish.

No. 7-9, I believe, are videos from an old charity concert for Africa, broadcast on TV, and these generally sound much better than no. 1 and no. 2-6.

I know musical preferences are personal, but to me, this is the greatest band in the world. That's why I'd like to do this project, to preserve their legacy. Their career as a band was very brief, but what they released during those few years were two flawless and creatively explosive albums. Their live performances were great as well.

 

Don't be confused by the language, by the way. Their lyrics are all in Danish.

 

I listened to a little bit of them. Their sound as a band reminds me of Television with a little Talking Heads and New York dolls style music. I can hear why you would like to repair them.

The first link you included may be a little too far gone to repair and restore. Some of the guys on here are wizards at this stuff, but I think that might be what is required. It will be difficult to do and could scare off a beginner.

The later recordings from 1983 on are better recordings to try working with them. You will need to use some very good, Restoration-specific software. iZotope RX, Steinberg Spectralayers Pro, Sonnox Restoration, Wave Arts Master Restoration, Accusonus ERA 6, and Acon Digital Restoration Suite are some examples of the tools someone will need. If your goal is to learn, you have some good files to do it with. You will be able to improve them, but they will never be even close to "perfect".

I'm sure you will get further information in later replies

 

Thank you for your very thoughtful reply, clone. Don't worry, I don't expect to be able to clean these up to anything even remotely resembling a fresh, modern live recording. But if I can improve the audio quality even just a little bit, I would be happy, and would have learned a lot in the process. I will look into the many different suggestions you made, and also wait and see what others might chime in with.

P.S.: The bands you mentioned were indeed an inspiration to them. They were inspired by artists and bands like Roxy Music, Devo, Kraftwerk, David Bowie, Brian Eno, and other New Wave bands (like the ones you mentioned). But to me, they have a sound all their own, which I absolutely can't get enough of. I also quite enjoy the lyrical content, which reflects the cold war period that this band existed during. They quite effectively use clever sarcasm and satire/witticisms against the prevailing ideologies coming out of China and other communist regimes at the time, as well as the worst of western consumerism and militarism. Topics that are more relevant than ever today, but they did it with humor, and not scorn. But of course, you'd have to understand Danish to spot these things. Lyrics aside, the beautiful melodies and rhythms are what draw me in.

In 2006, a commission appointed by the Danish government were given the task to single out culturally significant works of art. They included Kliché's first studio album (Supertanker, 1980) on a list meant to reflect the most important musical compositions in Danish history and culture. Their second and last studio album is just as good IMO.

 

Last edited: Sep 16, 2023

Chiming in to emphasize @clone suggestion on Izotope RX. I use it for restoring audio and it does a pretty good job. Here's an Izotope video of them attempting to restore dialogue:

If you want to do a good job it's gonna take a lot of fine-tuning and work, restoration will also be subjective as you are changing the source material significantly, so take that into account.

 

A quick sample I did from the first link you sent. I went too hard on the reduction and didn't dial the de-noise that well so there are some artifacts and lost a bit of punch but just wanted to demonstrate that you can attenuate the hiss to a level that's not drowning

https://vocaroo.com/14675DQSZnJn

 

@Sune Petersen I think the first thing to consider, is how to get the audio into a Wave Editor or DAW. Do you have access to the original recordings, or the .wav or .flac files which were used to create the audio files that were uploaded to Youtube?

A YouTube Audio Downloader might be the first thing needed to get the files if you do not. Otherwise, you will need to use an application like Audio Hijack to record them during real-time playback on YouTube. Audio Hijack is for Mac, but there are PC ones someone may suggest for you. You can use loopback in Audacity,as an example: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorial_recording_computer_playback_on_windows.html

 

Diamond Cut Forensics Audio Lab is another powerful option.
Actually I remember a demo taken from an ancient radio audio that was barely intelligible, cleaned so much that I hardly believed was the same sample.

 

The first step you need to take is to source the original recordings from the uploaders as the audio could have been damaged by the encoding for YouTube and the quality of the hardware used to digitise the recordings could be substandard. That's rule no. 1, always start with the original source.

Audio restoration and remastering is a very tricky business and requires a lot of engineering experience to achieve good results. I worked for a record company that specialised in this area for around ten years (awful work, like being a toilet cleaner for audio) and have "restored" hundreds of recordings.

It would appear that you're not an engineer so this is a huge mountain you're wishing to climb, barefoot. I hate to be brutally honest and a passion-killer here but when amateurs attempt something like this the results are quite often worse than the original. Also, considering the age of this material I am assuming that you aren't a youngster so your hearing will most certainly have deteriorated. Old engineers can get away with it because of experience but coming into it fresh in your 40s, 50s, 60s; that's asking questions that probably can't be answered.

If, as you say, you are so passionate about this music and willing to invest in it, by far the best recommendation I can make is to reach out to an experienced engineer and negotiate a price. It would probably work out cheaper than investing in hardware/software and all the time involved in learning how to use it.

 

If you are about to grab from YouTube, that's a really poor choice. But it is a choice still.
Follow these steps (wideband noise reduction not included):
- The best results you will get if you download the native audio files (older files in m4a/mp4, newer in webm) or in FLAC/WAV. The alternate option is to record the stream in WAV format. For grabbing, the best is YTDL.
- to convert webm to WAV use foobar 2000
- if you need to downsample from 48.000 to 44.000 Hz use Voxengo r8brain
- to get rid of flutter and wow use Celemony Capstan (these options in iZotope RX are very inferior compared to Celemony Capstan), sometimes in two or more passes, always start from 'Fast' option.
- use iZotope RX for azimuth correction of stereo files, dehumming and debuzzing (you can also check DC offset reduction option)
- if files are clipped use Thimeo Stereo Tool Declipper module (sometimes works better on reversed file)
- use Thimeo Stereo Tool repair tools to dequantize, fill spectral holes, kill the pre-ringing
- to restore missing harmonics use Thimeo Stereo Tool (Absolute Highs module),
- to restore transients use Voxengo Transgainer;
- to reduce compression use Thimeo Stereo Tool Natural Dynamics module
- to equalize files use AYAIC Ceilings of Sound Hyper EQ
- to reduce eventual resonances use SONIBLE SmartEQ3 (mostly unnecessary)
- to give bass some harmonic punch (mostly unnecessary) use Leapwing RootOne
- to check for negative correlation issues, use Voxengo Correlometer, and if it is significant you can use Raising Jake SideMinder 2 (but use ear check, sometimes it narrows the stereo image too much)
- for final touch on stereo use Audiority Side filter and Thimeo Stereo Tool Azimuth module (ear check the results, it may not always work well).
- set loudness with TBProAudio FinalLoud3
- use dithering if you reduce the bit-depth in your final file (I recommend Steinberg UVHR 22).

[Edit]
- If you use webm format, do not convert it to OPUS first, but decode webm directly to WAV
- If you use webm or OPUS format do not use Thimeo Stereo Tool "Spectral Hole FIller', but use ApulSoft apUnmask instead.
- if you find the tape speed is wrong use IrcamLAB TS 2 to correct it.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Sep 20, 2023

Beautiful, there's enough jargon in that response to send the op running to the mountains, barefoot and naked.

Some nice suggestions for the more experienced though..

 

The rules for newbies and pros are the same. Life is life.

 

Oh man, that sounds really banged up. Nice music though. If you can still find it, the Accusonus ERA bundle is by far the most beginner friendly option. It's not going to work wonders though, sadly. Here's one of the songs from the first link through Accusonus EQ, Accusonus Denoise and Melda AutoDynamicEQ as an example. I think I'd try isolating the vocals and treating them separately next.

https://vocaroo.com/16FAmwQ76yPh

 

Pro level advice from pratyahara. I can't believe people are casually skipping over that post.

 

I remastered one file from the list as an example of what you can expect:
https://pixeldrain.com/u/XjqqfCco
Source webm file included, but as it is -9.97 dB lower, you should gain match it in order to compare it to remastered file.
You can play webm file in foobar2000.
[I corrected the speed to 98.282% of the original one.]

 

Last edited by a moderator: Sep 20, 2023

First of all, thank you all for your responses. Unfortunately, I've had quite a busy work week, so I haven't been able to check back on this thread until now. I'll read all your replies thoroughly and try to act accordingly. Thank you all so much for your contributions, and your willingness to help.

 

na NA NA nana

 

Adobe Audition hasn't been mentioned. It's not considered much, as it's a companion to Adobe's other tools in Creative Cloud, but it's got a ton of restoration tech, and I often get better results easier with AA than with the standard version of iZotope RX. And it's an all-in-one, oldschool audio editor, like Audacity for those who don't hate their eyes, and with more and better stuff inside.

THIS. It's probably the #1 easiest way to improve the audio, get the originals uncompressed. Will make everything that comes after so much easier.

The OP just wants to clean up noise, at least at first:

But I'd agree, partnering with a pro might get you much more. If you want to learn these things first, go ahead and mess about. If you don't have other stuff you'd like to digitise, and you do have a bunch of cash, go straight to the pro.

Don't assume disrespect! There's still space for simpler advice.