| Tech Notes: |
TRANSFER/EDITING NOTES:
In recent years, fans of The Doors have been able to choose from a wide variety of live recordings released officially of performances that have either never seen the light of day or have been available previously in varying quality and length in bootleg form. The 1968 Stockholm performances at the Konserthuset venue are familiar territory for a lot of Doors fans and bootleg collectors in particular as there have been numerous incarnations of the early and late shows circulated over the years, albeit in bootleg form. Arguably, the best of these were only circulated within the past year or so. Having multiple versions of the same performances to pick from means there is more choice but it can also make it difficult to determine which version is superior and is deemed the clear upgrade source from the other recordings available. This is especially so when the recordings in question have specific redeeming qualities and shortcomings.
Of the multiple versions of the "Stockholm Tapes", the three versions in contention for the top spot include a preFM reel transfer of both the early and late shows, a soundboard recording (possibly also preFM sourced) taken from a triple LP vinyl bootleg set titled "The Complete Stockholm '68 Tapes" and another preFM source supposedly taken from a master tape clone of the late show.
Of three of these sources, I made the decision to use the preFM reel transfer as the source of this remaster. Even though there are problems with this source as well, I felt the overall sound of the recording was better than both the 3LP bootleg transfer, which just sounded more flat and less dynamic to me and the preFM master clone of the late show which sounded pretty good but contained a variety of digital artifacts and a mass of garbled high end frequencies as the result of destructive noise reduction used on the source recording.
The reason I chose to remaster this recording is because I felt there were some problems with the source material that could be corrected, the first of which was pitch, which was adjusted using Cool Edit Pro. The recording ran fast but not evenly throughout so I ended up dropping the pitch of each track anywhere from 10 to 50 cents. Even though it is generally not a good idea to use multiple programs to edit the same audio, I used Cool Edit Pro for pitch correction as I feel more comfortable with its pitch correction feature as opposed to the one in Adobe Audition, in which the bulk of the remastering was done.
The second step in remastering this recording was the simplest process involved. For some reason the channels were reversed having the organ of Manzarek in the right channel and the guitar of Kreiger in the left channel. Therefore, the channels were reversed.
The next step taken was to remove the more obvious clicks, tics and other anomalies present on the recording, most likely incurred from tape noise on the reels or machinery used during the original recording or tape transfer. This was done, click by click, using Adobe Audition's heal feature. Some noises still remain but they are not as prevalent as the were on the source.
Finally, in order to make the final product sound better to my ears, I used equalization to adjust the frequency range to obtain a more balanced, dynamic sound. The early show did not need much in the way of EQ adjustments and thus the difference in the overall tonal quality of this recording compared to the source material is more subtle. The late show on the other hand, needed a lot of adjustment. I don't know if the late show was actually from a different source, if the sound and recording settings were that much different when it was actually recorded or if it was intentionally altered for some reason but the high end was really cranked on this recording. I ended up making some drastic cuts to the higher frequencies ranging from about 10Khz to 16Khz. This wasn't just a bit of tape noise either! This recording was bright to the point of being harsh sounding like nails on a chalkboard! The contrast in tonal balance between the first and second show is dramatic. I made an attempt to make both early and late shows sound as clear as possible and as close to each other as possible without negating the positive elements of both recordings. Another interesting factor in this recording is the difference in sound between the last track on the late show, "The End" and the rest of the performance. For some reason, "The End" and so much of the introduction, banter and audience noise leading up to this track, was less processed and noisy than the rest of the show! Again, adjustments were made accordingly as I attempted to match "The End" with the rest of the songs performed and recorded.
Track 8 of the early show and track 11 of the late show were added to the end of the previous track, "Light My Fire" in order to match the artwork and have one track per song as opposed to having a seperate track for just announcements, tuning and whatnot.
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