Note: the video should appear above, if not, click here
UPDATE (May 2023):
I gave this another go in May 2023. Wanted to give it another go as I wasn’t super happy with the first attempt. It was good, but I saw things I could try and improve upon. Mainly with the mix and the levels. I panned the audience out to the far left and right of the mix, and Bruce was moved to about half on both left and right. In addition I fixed some of the levels, bringing them down slightly. It sounds better and isn’t as loud as before (something I only noticed on better headphones).
Also, I was able to remove much of the noise/static from the AUD. It wasn’t too bad, but definitely noticable in spots. Normally I don’t bother with any sort of noise reduction, as I can never get it right without making it sound awful. This time, I found a filter that removed only the noise and kept everything else mostly intact. So it sounds much better than the original.
In addition, I fixed quite a few sync issues that were left. Nothing too bad, just slightly off here and there that would take the form of a slight “echo”. Not perfect, but close enough (I’m tired of staring at spectrograms so its good enough).
Below are the original notes, left as is.
Info/Backstory (October 2022)
Matrix (MTX): Mixing togther two audio recordings (usually some form of Soundboard/IEM recording, and an Audience recording) of the same event into a final product.
I’ve made a few attempts at “matrixing” two recordings together. All unfinished/unpublished, for various reasons. But, usually it comes down to “eh, it doesn’t sound that good”. For a good matrix, you need 2 recordings that already sound at least decent on their own, and when mixed together right it should sound better than either component. Or at least sound good enough to have a reason to exist.
The previous attempt I made was with Charlotte 1985-01-15, which has both a fair quality (if a little flat) soundboard, and an okay enough audience tape. But the two tapes had so many speed differences that it simply took far too long to line up. And the final product just sounded “okay” (plus the soundboard had other issues like noise issues that I couldn’t fix without absolutely destroying the quality of the tape.)
I did a few others, usually just single songs (Darkness from the Vets Benefit 1981, as well as one or 2 songs from the Christic benefit in 1990). The first one only had a decent SBD of that song. And the other used officially released archive audio, which would stop me from posting it just about anywhere at all.
I still wanted to attempt a full MTX, as I like the sound of them (takes the clarity of an SBD/IEM, and adds back the ambience of an AUD tape.) But, I had a few qualifiers for shows I’d consider working on. 1. Each part had to sound good enough on its own, 2. The mix had to be relatively straight forward, nothing too convoluted.
Luckily, I remembered the Doubletake Benefit concerts from February 2003 (Specifically the first night). Which had a good sounding IEM feed, and a great AUD tape that was quality and also up close (small venue also helps).
I thought this would be relatively easy to mix together (Given that each source was quality, and also to my knowledge both recordings have a fully digital lineage, which would mostly eliminate speed variations),
Boy was I wrong. While in the beginning they lined up for the most part (only needing some shifting here and there). Later songs had a whole host of sync issues. Souls of the Departed is missing almost the first minute of the IEM (on either available source), Waitin’ On A Sunny Day is an absolute mess that I still couldn’t quite get exactly right (luckily its only a second or 2 after the song is over that is still kinda screwy.) Its also missing about 10 seconds on the AUD tape.
In many cases, there would be several sources of each component, and the missing portion can be patched in from another source. But that isn’t the case here. There is a single IEM recording, and to my knowledge, a single AUD recording. So, occasionally there are gaps in one or the other which shouldn’t be too noticable.
Also This Hard Land and the entirety of the Q&A is AUD only. But I’m including it because it is unique and has some interesting material in it (including snippets of Back in Your Arms, Across the Border, and Into the Fire). As mentioned, I moved This Hard Land to the end of Disc 2 to “complete” the concert portion of the show.