Malted/Media: Post-Concert Production

Post-Concert Production

A raw recording is like raw vegetables -- exciting and tasty, but still crude. It needs post-concert production work.

Chances are you won't need to know anything about this process. We remove extraneous coughs and candy wrappers, reduce constant room hum or air conditioning noise, and even replace the occasional clinker of a note with a good one from somewhere else. We drop all the waiting and tuning, and start each track at the first note. We space movements or songs or musical pieces with the right amount of room ambience, and fade out the applause.

What you get is what you remember -- the music.

But it's likely that you'll want more than a simple concert document. Perhaps two concerts have to be melded into one. Maybe you've chosen our location recording option instead of a live concert, and we have to sit down together to work all those dozens of takes into a smooth result.

Whatever you choose, we can do it in our studio. So read on to find out more about our hardware and software, or move on to our CD production information or straight to our package fees.

Available: Classes, seminars, and lessons in the techniques of post-concert production. Please contact us.

About Our Equipment

With the hot multitracker Sonar 2.0 as the heart of our post-concert production, we can give you exactly the concert result you had hoped for. Using Cool Edit, AudioMulch, Ozone, Vinyl, and a host of other sound tools, production is clean, fast, and visual -- whether you're waiting for us or sitting with us during mixdown!

We presently run all Windows-based systems with DirectX 9, using Athlon processors on Iwill KK266 boards and Celeron processors on Abit BX boards. We run a WinGate 5 network.

Our sound cards are Egosys WaveTerminal 2496s with Dr. D universal signal converters, and various utility cards. The outboard mixers are Mackie 1202 and Behringer 1604 with Alex Reverb and custom hardware.

We record in the field on Sony M1 and D8 DAT recorders and two Sony MZ-R37 minidisc recorders using Studio Projects C4, Oktava 012, Cascade M20, Coresound binaural, AKG AT-822, Nakamichi CM100, Radio Shack PZM microphones, and a variety of special-purpose mics. (In studio, we always record to hard disk using Sonar.) Our studio monitors are Roland RSM-90s with hand-built subwoofers, powered by two Samson 120 power amps. We still have a pair of Proteus MPS Orchestral synths and a Proteus FX, if you need them.

Music/Sound Creation and Production Software

We use the latest versions of all software.

MakeMusic! (Coda) Finale Scoring Software. The top-of-the-line scoring package with features for every kind of music. We have used Finale for 11 years, and we continue to recommend it highly. Talk to us and we'll tell you why! Attention! The latest versions of MakeMusic products are now on our BANNED list of challenge/response viruses. Please read the PACE FAQ and my essay about this issue.

Twelve Tone Systems (Cakewalk) Sonar Multitracker. The successor to Cakewalk Pro Audio, this is our choice among the three top multitracker packages. Again, we've spent more than a decade with Sonar and its ancestors.

Adobe Audition Recording Package. The simplest and most intuitive audio editing software, we have used it since it was shareware in the early 1990s.

iZotope Ozone Mastering Software. With its detailed visual interface, this new product helps us make a vast number of adjustments to a final mix in just a few steps. Attention! The latest versions of iZotope products are now on our BANNED list of challenge/response viruses. Please read the PACE FAQ and my essay about this issue.

RGC Audio sfz+ Software Synth. Software synthesizers abound, but this one imports SoundFont samples to make work fast and reliable. We can choose just the cello we want in seconds.

Diamond Cut DC5 Audio Restoration Software. We have just begun using this excellent package to supplement our work in Sonar and Adobe Audition.

AnalogX plugins for vocoders, gate, phase, etc. These freeware plugins are excellent for all levels of work, and we recommend them. Our favorite DX/VST instruments are Enigmatron, Mysteron, Triangle II, Rainbow 2.

iZotope Vinyl Effects Generator. This is a quirky bit of retro freeware that we like -- it adds clicks, pops, noise, hum, etc., to otherwise clean digital recordings to make them sound like older records. Attention! The latest versions of iZotope products are now on our BANNED list of challenge/response viruses. Please read the PACE FAQ and my essay about this issue.

iZotope Spectron Effects Generator. A spectral engine that splits audio into thousands of frequency bands, applying effects independently to each band, and resynthesizing the audio. Attention! The latest versions of iZotope products are now on our BANNED list of challenge/response viruses. Please read the PACE FAQ and my essay about this issue.

AudioMulch Sound Generation Toolset. This is an advanced modular processor used to generate and modify live sounds and sound files. It's more a composition tool, and we love it.

AndyWare Analog Box Synthesizer. Similar to AudioMulch, but very well suited for quick processing with excellent visual control using an effective, uncluttered interface. It's great to use as a realtime mixer, too.

Brute Force MIDImage Image-to-MIDI Converter. This unusual product is very good for generating sounds we might not have thought of. It's strictly a composer's tool.

Seeing With Sound The Voice Image-to-Audio Converter. Like MIDImage, but with a twist -- the sonification of visual as an assist to the visually impaired, it is an excellent composing tool as well.

MuSoft Builders a Musical Generator Object-to-Sound Converter. Again, similar to MIDImage and The Voice. It's our third choice, but we still need it because nobody covers all the visual-to-sound ground yet.

Visualization Software Spectrogram Visualization System. This helps us analyze the condition of material to be restored. The ears and the eyes work together to discover what needs repair.

Rasmus Ekman Coagula "industrial strength color-note organ". We just started using this. More reports later.

We also use Aleatoric Composer, Audacity, Buzz Machine, Cecilia, Kjaerhus, MASS Synth, Quasi-Fractal Composer, SMS Tools, Svelte, Tangent, Virtual Sampler, and Will Play Anything.

We have available All in the Score, Awave, Csound, Finale Notepad, Lime, PD, Prie, ProTools LE, SimSynth, SMoRPhi, Soundforum Synth, The Playa, and Twizla.

Conversion and Utilities

Real Networks Real Producer 8.5
The LAME Project LAME for wav-to-MP3 conversion with a licensed Fraunhofer MP3 codec and Audio Melody LameBatch front end.
RA2WAV for RealAudio-to-wav conversion.
SoundBytes MMWave for MP3-to-wav conversion.
Coding Technologies MP3Pro for testing the new format.
Exact Audio Copy for ripping CDs.
Goldenhawk CDRWin for CD burning, along with B.H.A. B's Recorder Gold.
We also use CDR Identifier, VVMic B-Format Decoder, WaveZip.

Players

Windows Media version 6.4 and 7.0
Real players 1, 2, 3, 5, G2, 8 and RealOne
Winamp 2.5
Thompson MP3Pro 1.0
DivX 2.0
We do not use any version of QuickTime, but encourage Microsoft to include these codecs in the Windows Media Player, at which time we will incorporate them in our work.