Help me troubleshoot this mystery.........

[SprintBob]

Please take a listen to my performance of Maasaki Kishibe's Shooting Star below and listen to the change at about 1:01-1:02.



When I recorded it, I had about a 1-1.5 second playing hesitation so I immediately started that point of the song over as I continued to play. After I completed the recording I came back and cut out the hesitation but when I play it back, you hear the subtle change right at the edit point where I spliced the tracks back together. The change seems to be the overall tone becomes slightly louder, more low end, perhaps a bit fuller, and it seems like a tonal balance shift slightly to the left.

I use Reaper as my DAW and the mixing and master levels don't seem to be any different pre and post edit point. The only post recording EFX is the Neoverb reverb plugin and the settings there don't change. Phase and panning remain the same also. I used an HPF on the mic preamp set at approximately 100 hz.

Recording chain on this was a spaced pair of Neumann KM184's through a Sebatron Mic Preamp to a Motu interface to the DAW. The mics were setup for mono with one panned 100% left and one panned 100% right. This is my first posted recording using the Sebatron mic preamp and Motu interface and I'm really pleased with the result. This recording seems rounder and smoother (less strident) than my best previous efforts using just a Focusrite Scarlett plus there seems to be less background noise.

Thanks for any ideas and any constructive feedback on the playing and recording.

[jim1960]

If what you're referring to happens a little past the 1:00 mark, it sounds like perhaps the panning shifted.

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by jim1960

If what you're referring to happens a little past the 1:00 mark, it sounds like perhaps the panning shifted.

Panning and phasing are exactly the same pre and post edit point in both tracks. That was one of my first thoughts.

After I cut the hesitation out on each track, I simply dragged the right section to join the left section of each track and other than the tonal change, they seemed to merge seamlessly. Should I have merged the two together another way?

BTW, I think the Sebatron Axis is a winner Jim. Thanks for the recommendation.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by SprintBob

Panning and phasing are exactly the same pre and post edit point in both tracks. That was one of my first thoughts.

After I cut the hesitation out on each track, I simply dragged the right section to join the left section of each track and other than the tonal change, they seemed to merge seamlessly. Should I have merged the two together another way?

I don't know anything about how Reaper works but is there any chance you had the 100% pans reversed (i.e. Mic 1 going right instead of left, and Mic 2 going left instead of right) in one clip and when you dragged it over, it retained those pans? At a glance the pans would look the same but each mic would suddenly pan to the other side mid-song.

If you pan everything to the middle, do you still hear a change at that point?

If not, as a possible solution, I'd pan it all to the middle, consolidate the tracks, reprint them, then pan the new tracks.

Originally Posted by SprintBob

BTW, I think the Sebatron Axis is a winner Jim. Thanks for the recommendation.

I was confident it would be. It's an excellent and versatile preamp.

[TBman]

Nice playing Bob. I'm not sure what happened there, sorry.

I do all of my editing of a sound file in Izotope's Rx 7 standard BEFORE any mastering. It has a zoom feature that really helps me zero in stuff I want to remove. I will do splicing if required, click removal, noise reduction, left/right gain evening, etc.

Because Rx 7 is destructive I will save versions of the sound file prior to each major edit. After I have a good clean sound file I will then import it into Reaper for "mastering/mixing" or whatever its called.

[KevWind]

Honestly Bob I think you are over critiquing it IMO the edit is fine and any tonal or volume anomaly I think falls within the parameter of the ebb and flow of dynamic performance changes. But if it really bothers you, IMO the simplest solution would be to simply do a slight , between say a .3 db,,, to 1 db,,, volume automation change on the section after the edit point.
Don't know how Reaper handles it but I am guessing it's either via a volume automation lane Or if it is like Pro Tools you can select a section and make a clip/region level change, right in the the waveform view of the tracks themselves and the same thing for panning automation also .

[rick-slo]

You might have turned your body in the redo part.

[AcousticDreams]

Unfortunately my knowledge base is extremely low so I can offer no opinion as to the problem you are having.

But I did want to chime in and tell you how beautiful the recording tone you are getting. I very impressed with the recording quality, the tone of your guitar, and your playing. Quite lovely and the sound is very upfront and even. Almost as if you had some compression on it. Question: Do you think that evenness is attributed to your playing? or to the Sebatron Tube rounding?

Once again proving the the KM184's are a lot better than people give them credit for. And If it is that Sebatron that is giving that gentle smoothing & forwardness, color me super impressed.

[nightchef]

The panning definitely sounds very different at that point — it’s really obvious on headphones. Up to that point it sounds more or less mono, i.e., the stereo field is very subtle, with most of the energy in the middle. Kind of like the way X/Y stereo often sounds when it’s recording a single source like this.

After the edit, it sounds very much like a spaced pair; the separation is so pronounced that it almost sounds like very, very tight double-tracking.

Question: did you record each mic to its own mono track, and then mix to stereo? Or did you record them to a single stereo track?

[M19]

My guess is that restarting in mid-song you inadvertently (boo boo stress) played just a touch more intensely. It is really barely noticeable. I don't think my old ears would have noticed it if you hadn't given the time point.

[nightchef]

Originally Posted by Knives&Guitars

But I did want to chime in and tell you how beautiful the recording tone you are getting. I very impressed with the recording quality, the tone of your guitar, and your playing. Quite lovely and the sound is very upfront and even. Almost as if you had some compression on it. Question: Do you think that evenness is attributed to your playing? or to the Sebatron Tube rounding?

Agreed, it’s a really sweet sound. Clear but warm and smooth.

SprintBob, one thought: are you 100% sure you pulled both the new tracks back exactly the same amount when you shifted them? Introducing a slight delay between the tracks would certainly accentuate stereo separation. (Simpler version of same question: did you select them both and shift them together, or did you shift them one at a time? If it’s the latter, I bet that’s the issue.)

[rick-slo]

From you description of the circumstances I am pretty sure you did not change any settings in the equipment on the immediate redo.

[jim1960]

Just gave it a second listen but this time through my studio system rather than through a laptop. From the time of the edit, it sounds phasey.. almost as if it was run through a flanger pedal. Not sure what caused that though.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by jim1960

Just gave it a second listen but this time through my studio system rather than through a laptop. From the time of the edit, it sounds phasey.. almost as if it was run through a flanger pedal. Not sure what caused that though.

Very close to clipping but not the issue here. Again I think you may have turned your body a bit throwing off the waveforms reaching the mikes with the effect of more lower frequencies coming through and some difference in phase correlation.
When setting up I often do body turns of some degrees one way or the other purposely when using space pair mikes. Listening to the effect of doing that I pick a final body orientation to record with.

[ChuckS]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

You might have turned your body in the redo part.

I was wondering about this also. Also, when you restarted you may have played with a bit more volume, especially at the beginning of the restart.

With your spaced pair, what was the distance between the mics and what was the distance from the mics to the guitar?