REMASTERED RECORDINGS
It's an obsession but it's pleasin'
Thinking a lot about less and less
(and forgetting the love we bring)
Remastering Philosophy:
The PC has Sound Forge 4.5 installed which has an amazing array of devices enabling removal of pops/clicks, noise attenuation, conversion of 48k DAT recordings to 44.1k CD-R standard, millisecond corrections of splices or cuts, re-equalisation, adjustment of tempo etc etc.....
My philosophy is (a) not to screw with the originals unless I really feel the need; (b) apply the minimum treatment to get a satisfying and incontrovertibly better result. Monitoring is done through a Linn stereo system and speakers.
I don’t intend to try to ‘improve’ cassettes but, time permitting, I’m more than happy to try to develop sonic solutions to flawed digital DAT or CD recordings. Tell me the problem.
The recordings listed below have been remastered with Sound Forge to correct cuts, digi-pops, noise, pitch/tempo errors or other anomalies, as described. If you want to know more detail on a show, just email. A few terms:
Reconstructed means that very short gaps in the music have been filled by inserting corresponding adjacent short sections which fit the musical context, maintain sound quality and keep perfect time. They do not cut any music – they add a close approximation to what actually happened. You’ll be hard-pressed to detect them.
Repaired means that an anomaly has been replaced from another source.
Closed Gap: situation where music sounds continuously but actually conceals a cut.
Limiting and Normalisation: as a general rule both these processing techniques are best avoided. Limiting caps the maximum sound level and, if applied severely, destroys the dynamics of a piece. Since the Dead's sense of dynamics was particularly fine, hard limiting is bad news. I only use a limiter to trim fractionally if there are points in the WAV file that risk clipping at 0 dB. (Of course, limiting may properly be used in an original source digital recording to inhibit clipping.)
Normalisation is a different technique which identifies the loudest part of a wave file and then adjusts everything else to that standard. This is a useful studio technique - eg to keep the volume of separately recorded songs at a comparable level. It comes in two forms: 'peak level' normalisation which preserves the dynamics without compression; and 'RMS' (root mean square) normalisation which is based on normalising 'loudness'. This will apply compression, acting as a limiter at high volumes and reducing dynamic variation at lower volumes; and it will magnify any background hiss, particularly in quiet passages.
Limiting and RMS normalisation therefore apply compression. Wave files that have suffered compression can be easily identified: the louder sections will all show the same constant level of decibels, so that chunks of the unmagnified wave form look like a solid block. Paradoxically, compressed files can appear to sound 'better' because they are both louder and more constant in volume; and they overcome the problem of straining to hear quiet passages one minute and then blasting out the neighbours the next. But any post-production compression, limiting or RMS normalisation is not true to the original music and recording; and none of these processes can be undone. Don't do it ! And while peak level normalisation is not destructive, it needs to be applied across at least a complete disc in one single WAV file - and preferably a whole concert - to preserve the relative dynamics between songs. Best practice is to avoid it.
List of Recordings: - (" * " = work in progress)
69.02.27 (4/00 & 2/01)
 | Disc 1: Schoolgirl - skip (in fact a quick repeat) at 1.32 repaired; small clicks lifted at 7.48 & 8.05. But some skips remain (0.24) and, less perceptibly, at 1.37, 1.52, 2.03. Small drop-out at 4.56. Cryptical reprise - 1 sec gap at 0.29 seamlessly patched from SMR. Cosmic Charlie encore moved from end of d1 to rightful place at end of d2 |
| Disc 2: repeat start to Mountains, 0.984 sec gap and 0.091 sec glitch gap in DS>St Stephen removed. Intro and Outtro tidied. Re-tracked. The long cut in The Eleven remains. |
69.02.28 (4/01)
This excellent 16 track version was seeded by Charlie Miller. The reels have a number of cuts, now patched:
| Lovelight approx 37 secs at the end of Garcia's long solo and entering Pigpen's reprise of Verse 1 (09.01 - 09.38); patch from DAT of the widely circulated the 'bootleg' CD |
| Dark Star approx 29 secs before and entering the 2nd verse (17.50 - 18.19); patch from source used by Charlie Miller, but the patch timing is now correct |
| Pre-Alligator "Crocodile" stage/audience chat is added using Seth Kaplan's patch; |
| Alligator approx 40 secs (11.15 - 56) patch from DAT of the widely circulated 'bootleg' CD. The master tape accelerates for a few seconds before the cut, and the bootleg was out of tune with the master. So I've modified the pitch for about 6 seconds prior to the cut and during the patch, so that the pitch stays approximately constant. |
Both bootleg patches have been re-equalised and stereo-shifted to obtain better tonal consistency.
69.03.01 (2/00)
| Hiss attenuated in Set 1. |
69.03.28 (6/01)
This is an attempt to make the best of two different sets of CDRs, one with a cut towards the end of The Eleven, the other with a cut in the Eleven > Death Don't transition. Both claim MC>C>DAT>CDR lineage, with an additional '?' after the cassette gen for the Cryptical > Other One sequence. It was difficult to decide which to use as the master, but I've used the former which, while less bright in tone, was unsaturated at volume. It now has a 57.5 sec patch in The Eleven and a bit of equalisation to brighten it. I've also patched in the 'electronic gnats' dead air between Schoolgirl and Dark Star, and upped the volume of Cryptical > Other One to match the rest of the show. Maybe worth adding that each of the original sets of CDRs seem to have different origins within them - each has some changes of mix which suggest both were composites, or that someone on the board was doing it with the controls!
70.02.11 (2/00)
| Big pops and a bowlful of freshly milked Rice Krispies removed, especially in Dire Wolf and High Time. |
71.04.26* Major cut in first verses of Wharf Rat can be repaired from SkullFuck
71.04.27 (6/00)
| Bad splice in Uncle John's > Lovelight transition repaired |
71.04.29 (5/00)
| 225 minute 4-disc source reduced to 191 minutes on 3 discs - 'dead air' removed; announcements, Weirisms and audience atmospherix preserved. |
71.08.06 (7/00)
| DAT conversion from 48kHz to 44.1kHz. |
| I've also re-equalised the sound, slightly boosting bass and mid frequencies and mildly attenuating the treble, to obtain both a fuller and less aurally piercing mix. I'm not usually a great fan of AUD recordings, but this one has amazing presence. |
71.11.07 (2/01)
| Trying to make the best of two less than perfect sources. The main source CDR is reasonably clear and may have benefitted from some noise reduction, but it had various songs missing and assorted drop outs. It also ran slow and had the channels inverted; the secondary source had the full show but much muddier tone |
| Pitch/tempo corrected (+2%) and channels swapped throughout. |
| Cumberland, El Paso and beginning of Big Railroad patched onto Disc 1 & Uncle John's Band onto Disc 3 |
| Short drop outs in Deal, Brokedown, and NFA>GDTRFB filled |
| Drop outs remain in Playing (d3 09.17) NFA>GDTRFB transition (d3 27.28) |
72.04.08 (9/00)
| Cumberland extracted from Europe 72, pitch flattened by one-third of a semitone to concert pitch (- 2% speed), and patched between Next Time and B.E. Women. |
| Discs 1 & 2 re-balanced with drums centred; B.E. Women volume reduced to match rest of set. |
| Disc 3 remastered from the pre-FM uncompressed Sonic Solutions version that includes the first notes of Dark Star (there are an astonishing number of different versions of Disc 3 in circulation). DS > Sugar Magnolia transition splice recut to perfection, and validated against an AUD cassette! |
| Notwithstanding the excellent 16 track reel source, there were a significant number of glitches and noises in all 3 discs. They've all been pretty painstakingly removed or scrubbed. |
| Cover by Alan Thompson for this version as treed out first on Eurotraders, Sept 2000 |
| For some fuller notes on the remastering, click here |
72.04.11 (3/01)
What do you do with an excellent concert that circulates digitally on muddy CD only and for which cassette copies, while superficially brighter, carry a lot of noise and distortion? Frustrating. I suspect the CD's lack of edge is the result of an uninspired noise reduction job. I've simply tried to brighten it up by re-equalisation. I've also rebalanced the tracks (the right track was relatively overweight) and attenuated a few glitches. It ain't great, but it's definitely better. From the master disc, the beginning of Big Boss Man is missing, and the start of Good Lovin' is an AUD patch; and there are some crackles, particularly in Brown-Eyed Women and Truckin', and a number of drop-outs and wobbles throughout the concert.
72.04.16 (10/00)
| Various glitches removed; some dead air edited out |
72.04.26 (3/00)
| Hiss attenuated from already compressed DAT |
72.05.03 (4/00)
| Disc 3. Cleaner DAT (especially for first 10.52 secs) of Trucking>>Wharf Rat substituted for Side 3 of CD. Some crackle on bass right channel (39.37 – 39.48) attenuated. When doing all this I found that the DAT contained a series of closed 2 second gaps (ie 2 secs of music missing) in Truckin’>OOne (16.26), OOne>McGee, McGee>OOne, and OOne>Wharf Rat transitions – so all that’s corrected too. Who does these things?! (I think the DAT had been through some noise reduction – Weir’s Terawak California speech shows the traces. But the music listening quality was better than the CD copy, especially for the first 10.52 secs where the CD suffered a lot of background hiss.) |
72.05.04 (2/00)
| Disc 2: Mr Charlie tempo corrected to concert pitch (sharpened 23 cents or 1.38% tempo). (Mr Charlie has been cross-faded in from another source on the master.) (1/01) |
| Disc 3: Sugar Mag (Europe 72) volume attenuated to better match the surrounding DS and SMBH. |
| Disc 4: GDTRFB: 0.197 sec (!) cut repaired from cassette and 1.6 second cut repaired/ reconstructed. Major cut in NFA remains (anyone got an uncut copy?). |
72.05.07 (10/00)
| Dark Star: First three notes patched in from poor denoised and re-equalised cassette (but you wouldn't know it if you hadn't been told!) More substantially, intermittent but frequent broadband buzzes of various types and occasional pops throughout Dark Star have been removed or attenuated individually, channel by channel. Before treatment it sounded like there was glass resonating on your speakers - or in your brain if wearing cans. Irritating! The treatment is not perfect, but it makes listening a whole lot better. The instrumental sound is excellent, very clean and well separated. And it is a beautiful version. The buzzes are understood to derive from the master reel. |
| Other One: 30 secs inserted from Betty Board (BBDMR>DAT>CDR) at 51.55 total time. Announcements (Weir's pre Sugar Magnolia "forgotten how to play St Stephen") rap also patched in from the Betty. |
| Disc 2: removal of occasional glitches and noises |
I had wondered whether to use the Betty as the master source from when it enters in TOO (some 33 mins after the beginning of Dark Star), but comparative listening shows the non-Betty is the better and clearer sound - drums are crisper, instruments brighter - whereas the Betty has some bass saturation and is slightly muddier in the middle. (Very appropriate for Bickershaw, ha ha.) And, Keith fan though I am, his higher presence in the Betty mix doesn't outweigh the underlying difference in quality. David Hollister provided the source discs and confirmed that they were the best in circulation.
Finally, as a reminder of the atmospherix of the event, I've added a few other moments of the concert from the poor quality SBD cassette, denoised (though you'd hardly believe it), as a brief filler. In particular 'Happy Birthday Billy' and Weir explaining that, to keep warm, they are playing under 30 knots of jet breath from hot air heaters and getting dizzy with the smell of kerosene..... For some additional notes on this remaster which was first treed out first on Eurotraders (Oct 2000), click here
72.05.11 (11/00)
| Two sources stitched together. Discs 1 & 2 (Beginning >>> Next Time) are thought to be from a bootleg source - a good but slightly under par sound. (Morning Dew, however, sounds like the same source as Discs 3 & 4.) The bootleg was 3 discs, with a disc flip in Dark Star, plus a few brief drop-outs. |
| Discs 3 and 4 are taken from 'Thomas Storch - 2 Dark Stars', the source of which is given as "digitally de-noised - via KPFA FM". Notwithstanding compression, the sound is several notches better than the bootleg, and the discs are arranged so that DS is not cut. The unavoidable flip in the DS>>>UJB 88 minute sequence occurs at the beginning of Truckin', and is now less abrupt than the Storch master. |
| OMSN is missing from both sources. |
72.05.16 (10/00)
| Tempo corrected to concert pitch (source ran two-thirds of a semitone sharp - about 4% too fast). (A minor detail but there was some slight variation in pitch across Disc 2. the corrrection is therefore approximate.) |
| Channels converted so that Garcia plays from left channel |
| Weir's end of Set 1 rap patched in from 'Dead Deluxe' bootleg. |
| 0.3 sec gap in Sugar Mag>NFA transition removed. |
| Diginoise bursts at end of OMSN guitar solo repaired from cassette (5 secs). |
Some hiss is noticeable especially in Set 2 and particularly in SMBH, but denoising would almost certainly effect the nice brightness of tone - so I've left well alone. Lineage info says 'sbd>mreel>DAT>cdr'. Visible compression in the file suggests it is a post FM copy. There may be a cassette gen - but perhaps more likely a reel running at 3.75 or 7.5 ips. Whatever..... it's way better than the transistor radio on which I heard it live and the resulting tape. Still, that kept the spirit smiling until Europe 72 came out! For some additional notes on this remaster which was first treed out on Eurotraders (Oct 2000), click here
72.05.25 (5/00)
| Cut in Dark Star at 46.08 (total time) and 19 second repeated section either side of that cut have been seamlessly mended. |
| And a few minor pops and crackles removed. |
72.05.26* Work in progress to correct various minor anomalies and the Morning Dew cut in the otherwise excellent Cumberland-inclusive copy.
73.02.09 (1/00)
| Mastered from 48kHz DAT |
73.02.21 (10/00)
| Remastered onto 2 CDs (80 + 74). Dead air shortened; overall volume boosted. |
73.04.02 Pitch flattened by 42% of a semi-tone to concert pitch (tempo -2.5%). (1/01)
73.12.08 Numerous clicks and glitches removed from all 3 discs. Silences inserted between sets and between Candyman and OMSN encore (which is unavoidably on the 1st disc - it won't fit onto the 80 min Disc 3), plus other bits of minor tidying. Retracked. (1/01)
74.05.14 My source master had piercing treble - unlistenable at high volume. EQ redone to reduce treble frequencies - and it remains a bright recording. (10/00)
74.06.23 (8/00)
| Row Jimmy cut faded out |
| Let it Grow: 18.75 secs of B quality denoised re-equalised AUD inserted into closed gap. |
| US Blues: 19.85 secs secs of B quality denoised re-equalised AUD inserted into closed gap. (Since the missing section is on the master reel, a gap also exists on the So Many Roads copy.) |
| Let it Rock: 0.484 sec right channel drop out repaired from SBD cassette (GDH) |
| Black Peter glitch corrected; Casey Jones - many pops removed/attenuated; some dead air cut from disc 1; retracked. |
74.07.31 (6/00)
From the appearance of the WAVs, my original probably has more than one source, and the right channel was consistently quieter than the left. They've been rebalanced, and I've corrected some other volume differences between the tracks coming from the 'second' source - El Paso, Ramble On and Greatest. Also, El Paso and Ramble On were between Ship of Fools and WRS on the original discs, rather than at the beginning of the 3rd set. They're now back where Deadbase and the Compendium say they belong.
74.09.18 (5/01)
| Mixed sources here. The GDH pre FM source covers UJB >>> Scarlet and The Race Is On and TLMD from Set 1, and He's Gone >>> Johnny B Goode from Set 2. With the exception of Seastones and the US Blues encore which are missing, the rest of the show is from SBD MR > PCM > >DAT >CD lineage of fairly good quality. My contribution is to correct the speed of these SBD sectors which ran significantly fast on my source discs. In Set 1, Mexicali >>> Deal and Playing have been flattened 45 cents, while in Set 2 Loose Lucy >>> China Doll needed flattening 80 cents (4.6%). |
74.09.20 (5/01)
This is a less than brilliant soundboard - harsh tone, jangly at volume. It also runs slightly slow but not to the point of meriting correction. I've made the following modifications to the source discs:
| Disc 1: First notes of Cumberland patched from another CDR source and drop-out at about 2.20 repaired. Channels inverted so that Garcia's guitar is stereo left |
| Disc 2: Brokedown Palace was already patched into my original disc from another (cassette?) source. It's a fine version, but a bit hissy and the channels were inverted. So I attenuated some of the hiss and put the stereo back in line. |
| Disc 3: My original discs had a fade/cut in overlapped material in NFA. That's now seamless, and the missing last half of OMSN and the whole US Blues encore have been patched in from cassette (8.52 mins in total) |
74.09.21 (5/01)
| Beginning of Seastones patched from cassette (3.42 mins). There's a slight cut in the Seastones > Playing transition that was smoothed by Hanno Bunjes. |
74.10.17 (12/00)
| Jack Straw moved to correct position between FOTD and Loser |
| Missing guitar solo and acapella chorus in Rider patched from SBD cassette (1 min 19 seconds) |
74.10.18 (1/01)
| Disc 2 re-mastered from 2 CDR sources, avoiding all flips (eg Dark Star>Morning Dew). Primary source was non-compressed, but missing first 3.17 minutes of Seastones and with a disc flip at the start of Morning Dew. |
| Seastones now starts from the beginning (noisy first 1.17 mins treated with noise reduction) |
| 6.932 sec closed gap in Dark Star that was on both sources has been repaired from good quality cassette - the closed gap occurred about 42.35 mins after the real beginning of Seastones |
| Some clicks in Sugaree and the beginning of WRS removed. |
76.07.18 (9/00)
| 3 sources (all supplied by Jens Tillsner) used to put together the complete show. |
| Set 1 and first 2 songs of Set 2 are untouched SBD>MR>FM>PCM>DAT>CDR. |
| The base of the remainder of the show is SBD>MR>PCM>DAT, repaired and improved from a bootleg CD (copied from GDH?) - in particular the missing note at then end of Let it Grow, the section from the tape splice at 03.53 in TOO to the beginning of the St Stephen>NFA jam, and The Wheel >> Stella Blue. |
| Burned on to 80+74+74 to keep the 1st set together. |
The discs nevertheless still have some faults - eg. glitch at 3.07 of Minglewood (d1t8), and drop outs or flips in the St Stephen>NFA jam. Owing to master reel flips, it looks like a lot of people have had to fiddle with this concert in the past and, great as it is (Lazy Lightning>Supplication>Let it Grow !), it ain't yet just exactly perfect from an audio point of view.
77.05.05 (7/00)
| Converted from 48 kHz DAT to 44.1kHz, and edited down to 2 CDRs - 1st set on CDR 80, 2nd on CDR 74. |
| Volume anomaly in first minute of DAT Johnny B Goode corrected. Small cut in St Stephen>Sugar Mag transition repaired from Betty cassette. Betty master reel cut in Sugar Mag remains. |
78.12.31 (1/01)
| The MR>DAT>CDR that makes up most of this recording has exceptional clarity, separation etc. However it was also much too bright in tone for sustained listening pleasure. Too clean, too trebly....... like a wooden statue varnished in gloss. So I've re-equalised it, removing 1.3, 2.3, 3.8 and 5.9 dB at 2, 4, 8 and 16 k Hz respectively. |
| The FM reel section - Sugar Mag > Scarlet > Fire - was on my source disk but was missing Weir's "Thank you Uncle Bobo" rap after Fire. I've spliced this in from the old CD bootleg copy (speed corrected, denoised and EQ'ed) - yes, the bootleg sounded worse! |
| Assorted pops, glitches, drop-outs removed or attenuated where possible on all four discs. |
| There remain a few anomalies, in particular: the beginning of Heart of Me (d1t10) is missing; a cut in NFA (16.26-16.35)(d3t2); closed gaps in Good Lovin' at 0.05 and 4.30 (d4t6), Casey Jones at 0.46 (d4t7), and JB Goode at 2.25 (d4t8). There are drop-outs in It's All Over Now (d1t8) and Drums (d3t1), and some brief uneradicable diginoises in FOTD (d1t7) and Playing (d2t5). (The tape splice at 1.04 in Playing is on the source discs.) |
94.05.15 (10/99)
| Mastered from 48kHz DAT. A satisfying AUD recording and fine concert. |
98.05.30 (5/99)
| Deadicace ‘Sans Souci’. Mastered to CDR from 2 track DAT SBD recordings. Cover/song list. |