Some people like to normalize audio files that are too quiet, and this may seem like a good idea if you are cleaning up an old recording. The order in which you begin to process your audio is important. In the former case you will end up doing a lot of zooming in to sample level and drawing out clipped samples in the latter you will be doing something more akin to mastering, processing a whole file and treating the master output of Cubase. There’s a difference here between something like removing clipping from a guitar take and re-processing an older track to add sparkle. You can worry about fitting the processed audio back into a project later on, but your initial concern should be with identifying exactly why it sounds bad in the first place and how you can go about remedying it. The first thing to note about any audio restoration task is that you will almost certainly want to work with the source material in isolation, at least to begin with. Once you hit on a good sound, it’s a good idea to save the plug-in chain as a Track Preset, since these can be instantly applied to other files requiring similar treatment, and minor tweaks can be made quickly and easily. For plosives and sibilance, de-essers or compressors with very precise frequency settings are ideal tools, while more generic compression and limiting can help to pull out elements of older recordings that you didn’t know were there. The most effective of these is usually EQ, as this can help to sweeten and re-balance sounds, to draw out the frequencies you want emphasised and tame the ones you want backed off. There’s not really a magic-bullet solution, since every track will require a different treatment, but there are tools found in Cubase and other DAWs that can really help. These too can benefit from some degree of processing to liven them up, to sort out boomy bottom ends, lifeless treble or myriad other deficiencies. Maybe you got your mic positioning wrong, or maybe you’ve inherited a bit of a messy project from someone else and have been tasked with fixing it.Īnother thing that people do a lot of these days is digitising older recordings, perhaps tracks that you produced years ago on lower-end equipment, when your production skills were still in their infancy and perhaps your budget didn’t stretch all that far. It’s not uncommon to have to work with takes that are muffled or contain peaks, plosives or too much room ambience. The good news, however, is that DAWs such as Cubase make it far easier to restore, clean-up and fix recordings than it used to be. If anything, digital is probably less forgiving than analogue when it comes to issues such as peaks and distortion. It’s just as easy to get a bad recording with top-end digital gear as with an old tape four-track – if you make mistakes. Like all forms of recording, however, digital is only as good as what you feed it.
0 kommentar(er)
