January 23, 1970
This recording is a restoration of this concert from an audience recording along with elements of the radio broadcast mix of the show. This master leans heavily on the audience recording. The sound here is of an audience recording at all times including in the VIP section. Many parts of course are only the audience recording.
CD 1:
1. Daybreak pt. 1
2. Work
3. Tea Time
4. Afternoon
5. Doing It!
6. Sleep
7. Nightmare
8. A Saucerful Of Secrets
9. audience
CD 2:
1. Astronomy Domine
2. Green Is The Colour
3. Careful With That Axe, Eugene
4. The Violent Sequence
5. Main Theme (from 'More')
6. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
7. The Amazing Pudding
CD 3 - The VIP Section:
1. The Violent Sequence
2. The Amazing Pudding
The goal was to restore this show as completely as possible from what remains and leave no reason to listen to the raw recordings for any missing content (which was always a difficult exercise with these sources in raw form). We have the complete show (minus a few missing moments) from the audience with a substantial level of dynamics and detail preserved but clearly distant. We have the 1995 re-broadcast of two songs that tease you with surprising sound quality and nuance but which are also wildly altered dynamically, contain no ambience, and are littered with echo effect artifacts at times. The original broadcast, between the original broadcast quality and the subsequent recording and copying of it is all but destroyed. The high frequencies have been truncated to the point where there are almost no cymbals left in the mix. However, even with this level of destruction, some elements of the sound were so strong in the signal (like vocals, due to them coming from the stage microphones and running directly down the wire) that they still remain. There are elements of the sound preserved this way that were too distant and weak to capture by the audience recorder. With the quietest parts preserved by the broadcast mix I was able to bring some of the poorest preserved moments of the audience recording of the show up to the quality level of some of the better preserved moments.
The mono audience recording was transferred with a stereo cassette deck. The left channel capture is superior to the right. Only the left channel was used as the right adds nothing but increased noise and causes phase issues.
All speed correction work was done with the Serato Pitch 'n Time plugin.
I removed a substantial amount of tape hiss with the iZotope RX2 denoiser plugin. For historical recordings such as this, my goal with noise reduction is to do no harm to the remaining content as opposed to achieving commercial standards for noise reduction. As such, a lot of tape hiss remains in this recording. The level of noise reduction varies with the content with what I could get away with.
Well over 100 mic noises and chair creaks were removed with the iZotope spectral repair plugin. There are a number of tape dropouts (and dropout like artifacts from transfer issues with the old tape - the tape would snag and drift across the play head) that were repaired as well as possible with a combination of using content from the right channel, using nearby content to reconstruct (a couple milliseconds for this kind of thing or less), or severe level boost along with severe noise reduction to balance it with the surrounding content. Where seamless repair was not possible, flaws were kept as opposed to replacing original content with large edits with only fidelity in mind. No alterations to the original performance were made for any reason.
The high frequency attenuation due to the recording quality was corrected as much as possible without increasing the overall level of hiss in the recording. I avoided EQ artifacts with parallel processing by cutting all but the range I wanted to boost with the Waves linear phase EQ and folding this copy back into the original. The recording was extremely saturated at 175Hz and weak at 4.5kHz. I used the UA Precision Multiband to dynamically correct this.
The poorer original broadcast material mostly only offered vocal help. The two songs included in the 1995 re-broadcast were only used sparingly in The Main Feature to strengthen the weak moments of the audience capture without eclipsing the rest of the show with superior fidelity. The awkward delay artifacts (especially in the drum transients) were removed with the iZotope spectral repair plugin as well as possible. The radio whistle artifacts in source 2 were removed with iZotope as well. I synced the remains of the broadcast mix to the audience recording using the Serato Pitch 'n Time plugin. Sync points ranged from 5 to 15 second sections as needed for the variations between analog sources. Useful elements of the broadcast mix were isolated to support the audience recording without adding any noise or artifacts. Restoration and isolation with volume automation and UA Precision Mastering EQ. Noise reduction was used to remove some tape hiss. All 3 sources of the broadcast mix were transferred to a stereo cassette deck in their lineage. The left channel capture is superior to the right for all 3. Only the left channel was used as the right adds nothing but increased noise and causes phase issues. The source 2 broadcast mix transfer was upsampled to 96k.
The missing section in the audience recording of ASOS was complete in the broadcast mix. Elements of the sound that are not present in the broadcast mix were reconstructed under it from nearby parts of the audience recording to restore a more consistent fidelity. The missing section in the audience recording of TAP and the missing opening notes from GITC and MTFM are absent from the broadcast mix (they were in a parts that were edited out of all broadcasts). The arrangements were restored by recycling nearby parts. While not technically authentic, it is far less distracting and closer to authentic sounding than the sound cutting in and out arbitrarily. I recycled less than a second of the keyboard opening of AD for the same reason. The last 5 seconds of TAP are only the 1995 re-broadcast.
********** Welcome to the VIP section **********
The two songs included in the 1995 re-broadcast allowed for a higher level of restoration. These two songs are duplicated, mastered to the highest quality possible, so you get "VIP seating" for these two tracks and a taste of what could be if someone were to discover the master of the broadcast mix.
********** VIP mastering notes **********
The high hat during the choir section of TAP (almost inaudible in the audience recording) has been recreated from nearby content for the choir section missing from the broadcast mix. The missing main theme section from the 1995 re-broadcast mix before the drum solo has been reinforced by the slight amount possible from the original broadcast as well as reconstructed under that from nearby parts of the 1995 re-broadcast to restore a more consistent fidelity. This to preserve the original performance as opposed to repeating the entire section from a different part of the arrangement. The drum solo was edited shorter in the original broadcast and edited out entirely in the re-broadcast. There was just a little low mid content in a few of the tom hits in the part of the drum solo broadcast on AM that was useful. This helped ever so slightly but the drum solo is still noticeably further away.
Jimfisheye, August 2013
NO ARTWORK!
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https://mega.co.nz/#!2UACwJIS!Fc9qNh2NcXMKjn3S2DbpiPPpG7CGjTu9ItxEAck5E9M
https://mega.co.nz/#!eF4mXSaL!g1k1IRNDyy5qK05u7rmfNUfCapxUWJsSTVPKKAob4Sk
https://mega.co.nz/#!KEg3wLzQ!WUJ7Pv4ZmXQZYvZ2_S0_VR3RaYtjG1A7MUxuNz3DP_I
https://mega.co.nz/#!uFJzzSoA!gaWwHQ63U-EGKneqNT3gVIlwclarZT6mluE7ITWpqis
https://mega.co.nz/#!aQhEQJoC!s9pNXo0bGDLNKPfqEFQw-SG1fbuzWEzYGoc9DA-Sgkc
https://mega.co.nz/#!HIAjCJYA!4hqtyTQX74zXhuD8POowwimSnesunGybeMovWIjkeek