Doing a cleanup on the girlysound recordings

[harkrider]

If someone is planning on doing a clean-up of Girly Sound I'd like to see it done by someone who knows what they are doing and who is using quality monitors and a good editing program.

Doing it right is certainly the goal.  Maybe someone who knows could take the time to just type up what exactly is entailed.  If you can describe the process and the components, then that would move things forward. 

Do those new cuts of Hello Sailor sound better or worse to you?

[avj]

I imagine that someone just has to do it.  If it isn't good enough, then hopefully someone will improve on it.

This is a great point. It would be an extremely time-prohibitive process to ask for feedback at every step. I'm just waiting for a bit to see if the source material presents itself here in a non-lossy format, and the above files were the result of an afternoon's worth of simple testing.

I'd like to think I know what I'm doing, and my intention was to get some early preliminary feedback before chugging forth on something that will only appease me. I don't believe using "quality monitors" and a "good editing program" will have much to do with the sound of the finished product in this case. For me, this is a project that leaves little or no room for subjectivity -- the goal is to remove noise from some extremely low-tech recordings without killing the vibe and emotion. When finished, I plan on listening to the songs on as many different configurations as possible and making them available to everyone for feedback. These are recordings we all know and love and if the end result is anything less than pleasing to the community, I'd consider it a failure.

If the non-lossy source files become available soon, I'll get going on those; otherwise, the 192 kbps MP3s will suffice.

[harkrider]

I agree.  It's better to be evolutionary than remain paralyzed by lofty standards.  Just "doing it" is a great thing.  I personally think the new Hello Sailor tracks are better than what we had before.  I'm surprised that nobody has commented on their quality.  I'm trying to obtain the non-lossy files, but, like I said before, the people who have them don't logon all that frequently. 

[avj]

I agree.  It's better to be evolutionary than remain paralyzed by lofty standards.  Just "doing it" is a great thing.  I personally think the new Hello Sailor tracks are better than what we had before.  I'm surprised that nobody has commented on their quality.  I'm trying to obtain the non-lossy files, but, like I said before, the people who have them don't logon all that frequently. 

Thanks. I expect to have even better results after spending a little more time on this.

No rush on the non-lossy files. I figure I'll hang out and wait a few weeks and see if anyone comes around to offer them up -- if not, no harm in waiting a few weeks.

[JeremyEngle]

Wow, "Hello Sailor" sounds really great! Personally I prefer a little high end, for reasons already stated by others. Keep working! Try other songs! Try "Thrax"!

[coolchick275]

The cleaned up "Hello Sailor" sounds wonderful!  Someone needs to do all of them.  I like the Girly Sound songs, but I don't listen to them very often because I the quality is not so great and it annoys me (I'm easily annoyed).

[TrampolineFrSpace]

I probably should have commented that I like the cleaned up versions as well.  Pretty much agree with Harkrider.

Keep chugging.

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Edit 1/22/2008:  Removed color that does NOT get displayed correctly underneath ALL themes.

[avj]

Well, I wanted to pop in and give an update on the progress. There's nothing is worse than when someone comes out of nowhere with an idea, talks it up, then disappears into the ether.

I decided to just forge ahead with the 192 kbps MP3 files since that's all we've got now. Should the source material make itself available there would be minimal effort required to use those in place of the MP3 files, but at this point I question how much difference it would really make to 99% of us.

As of right now, I've got a sort of "first draft" of both Yo Yo Buddy Yup Yup Word To Ya Muthuh and Girls, Girls, Girls finished, and tomorrow I begin my third day of listening to them in their entirety on a variety of sources -- including two types of headphones at work, car stereo, hi-fi at home, and a boombox -- to ensure there's been nothing lost in the process.

As I stated earlier, I've made no edits to the composition of the tapes; all gaps are intact and the lengths remain the same.

I won't be so bold as to say things like "THEY ARE AMAZING!!!" or "IT'S LIKE YOU'RE HEARING THEM AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME!!!" or other such hyperbole, but I can say it's very nice to be able to turn the volume up and not be bothered or distracted by the hissing. I hope all will be pleased by the end result.

Stay tuned!

[TrampolineFrSpace]

Eagerly awaiting your results.

[Gevaudan]

I meant to do this weeks ago, but haven't had a chance until now.
Here's a clip of Hello Sailor:  Used the 192 bitrate mp3 file, tried only to isolate the noise and remove it without altering anything else.  Didn't tinker with the EQ or anything like that.  Just wanted to give it a try to see what the result would be.

Upon saving, I only compressed it to a 320 bitrate mp3 to avoid any major loss in sound.

Feel free to compare it to the others.

http://savefile.com/files/429097

[TrampolineFrSpace]

I need to listen using my better headphones.

For the first set, alg-02 seems to beat eq version.  It seems to have a lot less ambient noise in the background.  You even get to hear a bit of echo or room feel to it.  I went back and looked at previous comments and I had initially gone with -eq version as well.

The Gevaudan version appears to be a little louder in average sound, but my first impression is that it still seems to have some noise to it.

It's interesting.  If you want to hear the words better, Gevaudan's version seems better.  However, the loneliness seems to "come through" more intensely with alg-02.  I'm guessing that this is due to the lesser amount of ambient noise.

Again, just first impression.

Update:  I plan to listen to all three on headphones.

[Gevaudan]

Yeah, there is noise left in it.  I haven't had a chance to really get into it as much as I want to.
I tried the process (some small differences) with Clean, and I can hear a major difference between it and the original.  If we were working from lossless files, we'd all have much better results.

Here's Clean (full track):  http://savefile.com/files/429163

[TrampolineFrSpace]

OK, I went with my Sony headphones that my daughter gave me.  I used the section "your pussy is showing"--just happened to be the portion that I queued all three up to.

Gevaudan, the music seems to punch through better in your version than the other two versions.  I thought that it was volume levels, but the music just seems to punch through much better in your version that avj's version.

The version with less noise (alg-02) does seem to give it more of a lonely feel to it, but it seems to be chopping off part of the music and that's not as good.

I'm finding that -eq seems better than -alg-02 on the better headphones, but your new version is really even better still.

I just snagged the second track, which is a cleaned up version of "Clean" (aka Never Said).   The funny thing is that I got confused by the title.  You "cleaned" the song Clean.  Funny.

I like that copy of the recording.  Good job!

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Edit 1/22/2008:  Removed colors, which will NOT display correctly against OTHER themes.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

I'm still interested in more songs by either avj or Gevaudan.  Both sets will be interesting.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

Any news guys?