Audience recording

CDR

2

lineage: OTS, Second To Last Row In SEC 202, DEAD Center. Seats 19 & 20. Neumann KM-140s (ORTF) On 5ft Stand >Canare Star Quads >Lunatec V2 (30 db Gain) >XLR >Tascam DR100mkII (24bit/48khz); Post Production: iZotope RX4 advanced & Har-Bal 3.0 (balanced channels and increased the amplitude. Removed stray noises including the loudest claps. Reduced wind noise when needed. Harmonic Balancing and compression); WAV >Audacity (Track Splits, Down Sample / Dither To 16bit/44.1khz) >FLAC (Level 8) + Tags Via xACT 2.37. Recorded, Tracked, & Tagged By OldNeumanntapr. Post Production: Flying -M-

Flying M notes:
Recording came out nice and the wind wasn't too bad and only in a few places does it nudge its way into your consciousness. After a good gust a clunk would follow so thinking it may have been a loose cable? Went away after a while. Took those clunks out and attenuated the wind noise (below 100Hz if bad-usually only below 50Hz). Even though the microphones were set up away from people this still had some of those pesky loud claps I can't take and spend so much time removing. As always all of this is done as spot repairs and entire files are not subjected to these filters. iZotope RX is a fantastic program for scrubbing undesirable noises out of a recording. Add to that my OCD and too much spare time on my hands you get a much cleaner recording. Har-Bal's compression tool helped to restore the punch which was reduced by wind and distance from source. Also balanced the frequency spectrum allowing softer detail to be exposed. Then a final review with iZotope removing additional noises resulting from the compression process of increasing the amplitude of softer content including weird noises.

-M-

OldNeumanntapr Notes-
Vina Robles Amphitheatre is a beautiful facility on the outskirts of Paso Robles amongst the vineyards. It’s like a small scale Shoreline Amphitheatre, without the canopy and with a much smaller lawn area. It’s about one third the size of Shoreline. It’s been 17 years since the last time that I’ve recorded Gov’t Mule, in Santa Barbara. 15 years ago I met Warren Haynes back stage at the Allman Brothers Band concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. Warren can still play like a man possessed. Most of the songs that the band played tonight were new to me. They did a cover of Dylan’s ‘It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry’ for one of the encores that was pretty good, though I still like Jerry’s version better. The Mule played for a little over two and a half hours, while opener Blackberry Smoke played for one hour. I’m afraid that my recording of the opening set will be heavily marred by wind noise. I was hesitant when I got to the amphitheatre this afternoon, as I know how their security can be clueless about tapers. Thankfully there was no hassle getting in. They didn’t even look in my bag, which surprised me, and they were more concerned with my microphone stand. The band had designated the center part of the last three rows of Section 202 as the official taping area, and it was cordoned off with yellow tape. The only stipulation was that tapers could only raise their stands about five feet because it would affect site lines from the row of private boxes directly behind. I was the first taper inside, and I picked two seats DEAD center in the second to the last row, directly in front of the soundboard area. There were only three other tapers tonight, one with DPAs, one with a triple set of older Sennheisers (without windscreens). I can only imagine how his recording will sound with all the wind gusts at sundown. And one guy from Long Beach who was running six mics on a large cross bar on his stand. The crowd was very well behaved tonight and consisted of mostly older folks. The floor area, SEC 100, was fairly crowded all night, but toward the later part of the Mule set the 202 section was not even a third full, and there was NO one in the center seats in front of me almost all the way to the front of the section. At set break I ran into my brother in law Brent and my friend Karl who were guests in one of the private boxes that belonged to someone that I went to high school with. The sound was really good tonight. Very clear and clean with no distortion or coloration. I ran the Lunatec V2 preamp at 30 db of gain and could have probably bumped it up to 35 db, as I had just a hint of red on the display. Damon, one of the other tapers, told me that the tapers section the night before in San Diego was way in the back and the sound there was terrible. He said that tonight’s show as much better sound wise. Thanks SO MUCH to Flying M for his amazing post production !!!

Neumann KM-140s

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