Cleaned Rafi Songs, I would like to share Options

[kistin]

Hello,

In this topic, I'll just try to share my work with all brothers/sisters in this forum.

My work consists of obtaining as clean old Hindi songs as possible, because I have a project of presenting the best of them to Ambassador of India, his excellency, in my country, Turkey.

I have worked on this project about one year. Now, I have approximately 40-50 songs cleaned in my archive.

Two days ago, I downloaded a Rafi song elsewhere in this forum and working on it about 6 hours I obtained a cleaned version and I want to share it with all.

The song is Aaj Socha Hai Khayaalon Mein

I would be happy if you criticize it

Regards

[Teddybear]

Hello Kistin,
I have been following the threads you've started on ' cleaned songs '. First of all, good luck with your project and we all will help you with supplying the songs when the time & opportunity permit.
However, having spent 15 odd years as a recording engineer I just have to comment on your project and the kind of music you are handling. There is nothing wrong in ' cleaning ' up the songs the way you want. But in my view, when you try to enhance the sound, the songs should sound better than the original if at all. However, for one, Its practically impossible to remove the distortion that is inherent in the original master tapes ( or the very first recording they made ) of 95% of the old music from India without hurting the actual music quality itself. Two, most of the old recordings are done with a primitive equipment ( again, no offense to anybody but that's a fact ) so the songs cannot sound any better than what they were. Plus, with the kind of rudimentary software you are using, any discernible ear can tell that the process only compromised the original sound quality to a greater degree. Consider this as a constructive criticism, but I honestly do not think those songs you put out on HF sound any better than the original and they certainly do not sound ' cleaned '. All I can hear are the same distortion with a whole lot of ' envelop ' around it making it sound flat, as if the musicians are singing from a closet. My humble suggestion to you, dearest friend, is that instead of spending hours on ' cleaning ' the songs by merely applying the software tools, you should listen to the music first using a pair of headphones,
compare the channel balance and distribute the better sound of the two, to the other one. You'll be surprised how much better a sound you can achieve by merely selecting a better channel of the two in an original mono recording and applying it for both left and right channels. Trust me, I have been there before and some of the songs are better off left the way they are, because they are only going to sound worse if you mess with them.
Of course, if its a transfer from LP record, you should be able to pick most of the
pops and clips out of the sound spectrum using software like Cool Edit or Adobe Audition. Once again, I used the term, ' most ' because its impossible to take all those anomalies out even from an LP transfer. Ask any audio engineer and I bet he'll agree. But, why mess with an LP sound when it actually makes you feel warm and fuzzy?
Yours sincerely,
Sham