IEM/Audience matrix

CDR

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DVD 337; lineage: “Flying Into Hawaii” The ultimate version. Blend of sources: Chrisedge, Bakerstuff, Bono IEM. Gear: Protools/ Audition. Mixing: Bob S. Includes Pearl Jam opening set.

First off this work is dedicated to the tapers and their generosity in making this happen.
The mission for this was to make a recording that sounds like you are in the middle of the sweet spot of the stadium.
Processes as follows:
Bakerstuff was used as the primary source as it had very direct sound. Unfortunately it suffered from 2 people that were constantly screaming. A full master was done within protocols using primarily a 7 band parametric and light multband to add definition to the vocals and bass, and finally a subsonic filter to get the low stuff that was just adding mud to the sound. From that, the track was duplicated and applied a high pass filter at 600hz for use as a bottom end filler for Chris’ version.
Chris’ version was used for ambience, as the taping position was further back. First step is to run in a harmonic balancer and match the sound of Bakers’ version from 600hz through 3k for the filler track during Bakers screamers. Duplicating the track, and narrowing the stereo image to 80% took some of the distance sound out of it to use as the ambience track.
The IEM obviously is used for vocals. The first step with it was to filter the click track, but because of the style of click it could not be completely removed. Then using eq and aural exciter to fill it out a give it a more natural sound. The big problem with this source was the receiver used to pull it in would loose the frequency every now and again causing static, so this could not be used at all times.
The last third of the show the wind came up and affected both audience sources at times. I filtered it as best as possible, but since it was so wide across the low and mid frequencies total removal resulted in a very thin sound, so in these areas I used a high pass to at least get the big rumble reduced.
On to the mixing. Bakers source was set to –6db, Chris’ to –12db and the IEM to –4db as base settings. I crossed the two duplicate tracks as fills for each of the main tracks to remove the screamers.
This process took 6 months of on and off work, and unfortunately was not fully completed, as the engineering staff at work decided to upgrade the software and it somehow corrupted the file. Due to the complexity of the mix it was impossible to rebuild it and keep going (there are well over 1000 automations).Fortunately I had done a mixdown just to see how things were going. All that was left was the little tweaks, so it’s not that devastating.
The final mastering was done on Audition2 using a five band parametric for pre, muliband compressor to really level things out. I set the multiband very mildly to mainly use it as a soft limiter to keep the sound from getting out of hand. The final phase was a 1/3 octave for final smoothing.
Cheering between encores is pulled up.

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