100% serious question for the audio nerds and engineers on here, especially you @opsopcopolis
Is there a way to mess with the mix on UM boards and reduce jakes volume or take him out all together? I know I’m a self described jake hater sometimes but this isn’t coming from hate, mostly curiosity.
There’s many jams where I feel like I’m straining to hear the cool things Joel and bayliss are doing but I can barely hear them when Jake is so loud.
There’s some newer tech that might allow to pull out a specific instrument (within reason), but I haven’t messed with any of it. In terms of Jake/BB balance, the easiest thing is just take out your left headphone. Chris doesn’t mix them hard L/R, so it won’t completely remove him, but it’ll help you focus more on BB.
@opsopcopolis While we’re bugging you about this sort of thing… there’s a recording on archive of the last show I saw Jeff Austin play. It has separate tracks with L and R board feeds, as well as an AUD track. Nobody has put it together (either as a studio SBD or matrix) as far as I’m aware. Seems easy enough to do that in Audacity, but not sure how far left or right you balance the L/R board feeds. I’ve played with it a bit and everything sounds reasonable. Sounds like it varies from person to person how it’s done, but I’m curious if there is a typical/common way to approach it.
Are you saying it’s a SBD source and an audience source separate and want to combine/matrix them?
Depending on how it’s recorded (send links) you would need to time correct one of the sources in order for it to line up correctly due to the time cards on each recording device
Yeah. Here’s a link if you’re curious. https://archive.org/details/jab2019-04-19/ZOOM0004_SBDR.WAV
I’m mostly just interested in mixing the L/R SBD feeds so that it’s a nice stereo mix instead of separate mono tracks. Don’t really care that much about including the AUD portion of it.
Main question is how far left do you put the left track, and how far right do you put the right track? 100% to each side, or less?
Interesting. Never seen anyone just upload multiple sources on one link before.
Looks like it’s just a zoom recorder plugged into the board with the internal mics so probably no timing to change. Line them up on audacity would be the easiest and pan however much you want. I’m not near my computer to listen but the SBD source may be mono (same L/R) so it might not matter
If the sound guy sent out a stereo feed then it would work to pan them on audicity. Does that make sense?
Yeah. I guess my question is if it is stereo, how far off center do you pan them? 100%? Or do you put some overlap in there?
caveat: not an industry professional…
…but maybe start with hard left and hard right and then give it a listen? if it sounds weird, you could bring one or both back toward center until it sounds good to you, but i believe the suggestion is all the way in both directions. headphones will probably help a lot.
I’ll try it again. I played with it a couple months ago but I had a hard time telling what sounded better. I have a pretty bad ear for these kinds of things. Ended up going down a rabbit hole trying to figure it out what common convention would be and never found the answer. Then I forgot about it until now.
Like Nathan said, if it’s straight LR from the board, the “correct” panning is 100% left and right. Whether that’s where you want them to sit in the final matrix is a different discussion. If I have an actually stereo board feed (pretty rare) I sometimes like to narrow the stereo field to allow the AUD source to be heard on its own in the outskirts of the image. I think it helps lend some ambiance without having to have the AUD really high up in the mix. Does that make sense?
I’m happy to just do a matrix tonight or tomorrow for you. I have a pretty consistent workflow for them so it shouldn’t take too long.
i did a quick and dirty import into audacity, panned hard and it sounds ok to me. actually sounds real nice. thanks for the rec!
For those that are curious about trying to isolate instruments in a song, this is probably your best bet: https://makenweb.com/spleeter2.php
Pretty sure this software was an open source project developed to isolate vocal tracks but it’s been reworked to semi-adequately work on a whole track. As of a few months ago the only way to do this was to use Python code and it was a huge pain in the ass, but recently someone made a GUI version that’s a breeze to work in. I linked the GUI installer…fair warning your computer will say it’s a virus.
I just tested it on some UM mp3s and it won’t separate the individual guitar parts, and Joel’s parts are largely included in the guitar track because the frequencies are too close together, but it’s surprisingly good at isolating drums, vocals, and usually bass parts. It won’t get you all the way towards being able to mix the instruments separately but it’s better than nothing.
Tracks that seems to work best in the program have cleaner piano and deep bass. Here’s an example I just made of Wormbog: https://youtu.be/3WSSgvdi4j8
Very generous of you. I don’t mind doing it myself for a personal copy of a stereo SBD, but if you feel motivated to make a matrix and upload it to archive, I’m sure there would be a lot more folks than just me that would appreciate that mix being out there.
Yeah, that’s the sort of thing I was talking about. It does a surprisingly decent job with instruments that are very different in freq range or timbre (coup) but I wouldn’t imaging it would work well with two electric guitars/keys that all sit pretty close in both freq and panning.
@chicagostylehotdog I’ll take a look at it tomorrow if I remember. Such a bizarre way to upload a show. Usually I’d feel weird messing with/reposting somebody else’s tape, but the guy specifically says that he wants somebody else to track it for him… 
So you nerds are telling me there is a separate AUD track included on these sbd mixes?
There’s an audience source for each set as well as a L soundboard and R soundboard for each set. Although the L and R soundboard are likely the exact same thing
if they are, one side is a lot lower in terms of signal/gain. why is that?
