snare & kick clipping

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John
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RE: snare & kick clipping 2008/10/24 20:43:57 (permalink)
The time spent is your punishment for not being thorough during tracking stage.

ROTFL


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John
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RE: snare & kick clipping 2008/10/24 21:14:46 (permalink)
I've moved this post to the page more likely to be seen... I spent to much time preparing it to have it instantly relegated to the "old" page: :-)

I have prepared these illustrations to answer Jonbouy's question about how fixing a peak effects the transient.

Maybe we just have a different idea of what the important part of the transient is... and that's fine... but here's an illustration of my idea:

Here's an exported 24/44 .wav file of 4 bar drum loop I made with Session Drummer 2. I purposely set the velocity on one snare hit so that it would hit an over. This track is a mix of Kick, Snare, and Hi Hat. The over is the snare... but there are harmonics from the simultaneous Hi-Hat hit laying in the wave as well. I would normally have a dedicated snare track (which makes the edit even easier), but this might simulate some bleed from the Hi Hat (which makes the edit a bit more tricky).



Here's the front of that hit. I've selected 4 *primary* cycles to work on:



I want to preserve the character of this portion so let's just bring everything in the selection down 1.4dBFS:



Here's the result of that operation, it's very clear where the clipped material is:



Here's a zoom in to show the 4 actual clipped peaks. The longest clips is apprx 25 samples long. That's 0.000566893424036 seconds (a.k.a. 0.57ms):



And here they are after I used a hand drawing tool to edit the clip portions into facsimiles of what I suspect the wave form should have looked like:



A zoom out and a test play reveals the edits are indiscernible:




2 things:

1) I wouldn't have much optimism about using this technique to fix something with rich harmonic content.

2) If the track was a discrete snare hit the edits would have been shorter and easier.

So, in my opinion the transient, both the rise and fall, has been preserved as faithfully as possible.

I haven't had to do this sort of work in the since March 2007 (I wonder why I remember that so well???? Great Jazz trio, live audience, drummer playing wickedly soulful brushes but with a stick in his lap for quick rifle cracks), but here's what I'd like to emphasize... when I'm confronted with this sort of scenario I get to work and don't think for a moment how long it's going to take. This is just part of the job and I wouldn't trust this sort of repair to any automated process that I'm aware of. I don't know why I'm up for hard work like this but it would just offend my sensibilities to seek out an easy out solution that treated the sound with less respect.

Now I want to emphasize... if there is any practical way to record a retake while maintaining the vibe et al. I would, without a doubt, use that option rather than perform the edits I have just described.

I'm just discussing this specific process so that the OP (or anyone else interested) gets a more complete overview of the options available.

I don't know if any of this applies to the OP's situation but that's what I've been speaking of.

very best regards,
mike





#32
John
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RE: snare & kick clipping 2008/10/24 21:21:07 (permalink)
I've moved this post to the page more likely to be seen... I spent to much time preparing it to have it instantly relegated to the "old" page: :-)

Sorry that was my doing. I did that once a very long time ago. It worked but it was only one clipped point as I recall. In my case it didn't matter much about the shape how do you decide the shape? By looking at the other hits? If so why not cut it and paste in a copy of a good hit? Also what program is that Adobe Audition? I have SF 8.

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John
#33
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RE: snare & kick clipping 2008/10/24 21:45:45 (permalink)
Hi John, I didn't think there was any fault involved... it's just the way the number of posts worked out :-)

Yes, that's Audition v2... I'm more comfortable in Audition but I think Sound Forge has a superior drawing tool.

In my opinion this method preserves more of the original character than simply cutting and pasting the other channel in. In this case I did mimic the other channel. It's a repair so it's not a 100% perfect system. But the result is seamless AND I know that as much as possible of the "magic smoke" in the original track is preserved. If it was just a discrete snare the over can be as short as 5 samples... that's really short.

This discussion reminds me of a gig I did many years ago. There was a trumpet player visiting town with his combo. He always invites the regional cats to play. On this one particular night the boys brought a real local old timer to the gig. The fellow was a shriveled bent-over elder statesmen... he could barely walk to the stage... even with a helping hand. But this gentleman had played drums for both Nat and Cannonball Adderly during the Adderly's hey day.

So this man sits in at the kit and OMG I have never in my life heard such dynamics on any musical instrument. He played the softest brushes as well as the loudest snare you can possibly imagine... I mean this guy would just bury a hard rocking Whiskey AgoGo metal hero (Not talking about you Dave... just the heavy M genre) he could get so much snap out of the snare. It seemed dangerous... or at least dangerously exciting.

Now mind you this was the very same kit that had been used all night by several other younger "cats" who are very well respected but on that night they didn't have what this guy had.

There is no electronic circuit (or stack of circuits) that I can imagine could tame that signal without compromise. (FWIW I can think of strategies to get a good recording, but I'd need advance notice)

Sometimes you just have to fly the *plane* in for a landing and patch er up later.

Can you imagine requesting overdubs? Maybe later that week? I wouldn't dare. :-)

best regards,
mike


post edited by mike_mccue - 2008/10/24 22:06:38


#34
John
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RE: snare & kick clipping 2008/10/24 21:54:51 (permalink)
Mike if I ever need a lawyer I'll call on you. You have a way of putting things that just sound right.

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John
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RE: snare & kick clipping 2008/10/24 22:05:02 (permalink)
Thank you John,
I consider that a great compliment, especially coming from someone so thoughtful as yourself.

best regards,
mike


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