One of the most enjoyable aspects of using Scope is using it to breathe new life into old tracks. Clearcut Studios restoration specialist Suzie Ryder tells us about how she solves the challenges involved when clients come to her for her expertise in restoration, remix and re-mastering.
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We get all sorts of audio material coming in here from old four track Portastudios, 1/2 inch eight track, Grundig and Nakamichi to name a few. Most of the time spent on this type of material is on de-noising, for which we use an old Wavelabs derivative. But more recently I've been getting some projects recorded in nineties audio sequencers such as Digital Orchestrator Pro. Typically systems in those days were rather light on in terms of CPU and Storage, so the musicians involved tended to record in lower bit rates and sample rates. Quite often we have the flexibility to re-track some of the drums or bass in MIDI, but when it comes to trickier parts such as vocals or lead instruments, where the performances were so good but those musicians not available anymore, we rely on technology such as Scope to really bring those down-sampled tracks to life. EQ and compression at the track level is fairly straightforward using the Scope STM2496, but where we really get some mileage is from the mastering type plug-ins like 'OptiMaster' applied to the stereo output. In some cases, the lead vocals were recorded with inferior reverb so the trick here is to use a combination of gates and audio editing to tone down the lo-fi reverb so that we can add a bit more Scope reverb without it becoming overpowering or muddied. |
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Here's a track called 'Together Forever' recorded in 1998 with vocals and lead guitar recorded at 16-bit 22khz, enhanced with the addition of a cruisy Modular Synth pad we tweaked up. Apparently 'Mack' was sitting in a piano bar after a break up, drowning his sorrows in a beer and wrote the lyrics down on a couple of soggy bar mats.
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Lead Guitar: Glenn Howard - Lead Vocals: Greg Barolo |
'Together Forever' by Mack Lancaster. |
Scope Plugins: Modular Synth, OptiMaster, STM2448, SC-RMX 160 Reverb |