From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V4 #287 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Wednesday, October 27 1999 Volume 04 : Number 287 Today's Subjects: ----------------- RE: Alloy: bats in London [OT] ["Lem Bingley" ] Re: Alloy: bats in London [OT] [Lee Jackson ] Re: Alloy: bats in London ["Trevor James Blagg" ] Alloy: bats(soons) in Austin [OT] ["Stephen M. Tilson" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 09:00:06 +0100 From: "Lem Bingley" Subject: RE: Alloy: bats in London [OT] There are most definitely bats in London. There's a boating pond near where I live where you can see hoards of the little winged things catching insects at dusk. I have no idea where they roost during the day, but there's no shortage of them at night. The pond is about 8 miles from the centre of London. I can't imagine that the bat population will drop from hordes to none at all in 8 miles. I would think places like Hyde Park would make perfectly good homes for bats. Lem Get your free E-mail at http://www.zdnet.co.uk/mail/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 07:15:57 -0500 From: Lee Jackson Subject: Re: Alloy: bats in London [OT] On Tue, 26 Oct 1999 09:00:06 +0100, you wrote: >There are most definitely bats in London. There's a boating pond near where I live where you can see hoards of the little winged things catching insects at dusk. I have no idea where they roost during the day, but there's no shortage of them at night. You want bats? Go to Austin. Good lord, are there bats there! The rebuild of the Congress Avenue bridge over Town Lake resulted in a lot of slots running parallel under the bridge from shore to shore. Turns out these were just the right size for the Mexican Free-Tailed Bat to thrive in, so they moved in and set up housekeeping. Austin is now home to the largest urban colony of bats on earth. They're not only under the bridge, though. They're beneath the west side decks of Memorial Stadium on the University of Texas campus. At least, they used to be back when I marched in Longhorn Band from 1981-83. During football season, we rehearsed on the field of Memorial Stadium three evenings a week. It was really eerie watching the bats leave as the sun set. Millions of them would stream out from beneath the north and south ends of the upper deck, forming a long and dark trail in the sky as they went off for the night. I had a hard time believing that there were more under the bridge than there were under the stadium! // Lee Jackson // LHB 1981-83 (Bassoon/Flags) // Voting Member, NARAS, 1997-present ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 16:32:24 +0100 From: "Trevor James Blagg" Subject: Re: Alloy: bats in London Dear Robin, A few weeks after moving in to our new house in Bulkington I was kindly greeted by a small bat type creature whilst brushing my teeth! I hastily grabbed it in a small towel and threw it out the window. It was gone midnight so I didn't bother telling Tine. In fact she'd probably freak out if she ever saw one! This maybe the penalty for livin' out in the sticks. Trevor... - ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 5:33 AM Subject: Alloy: bats in London > > I have a quick question. Some friends just returned from London & on their > last night there, some sort of creature must have gotten in through the open > window of their hotel room that day (the windows were opened during the day > by the cleaning staff, and then closed again at night) My friends were > awakened by a rustling in the drapes & turned on the lights, and they saw > some little thing peering around the valance. My friend said it 'definitely > had shoulders' and her husband remembers its mouse-like face. They were sure > it was a bat... but when they told the hotel manager the next day, he said > there were no bats in London! > > I'm pretty sure there must be bats there. The Hotel guy said London was too > polluted to have bats! This sounds kind of ridiculous to me... considering > that human beings have to enter bat-caves wearing rebreathers, while the bats > are happily breathing and mating away above them. Was this guy just trying to > play down the situation? > > Robin T > ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 18:37:52 EDT From: RThurF@aol.com Subject: Re: Alloy: bats in London [COMPLETELY OT] Thanks for all the bat information, to all who've written! I've forwarded it to my friend who will appreciate having the mystery resolved. Lee writes: :: Go to Austin. Good lord, are there bats there! The rebuild of the Congress Avenue bridge over Town Lake resulted in a lot of slots running parallel under the bridge from shore to shore. Turns out these were just the right size for the Mexican Free-Tailed Bat to thrive in, so they moved in and set up housekeeping. Austin is now home to the largest urban colony of bats on earth. :: I saw a documentary about the Congress Avenue Bridge not long ago! Huge clouds of bats coming out every evening at dusk. The filmmakers explained how much this is benefiting those interested in studying bats, and that they control the insect population very nicely all over Austin. I love bats! :) But I'm sure a lot of other people don't..! Robin T ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 22:59:57 GMT From: "Ian Gifford" Subject: Alloy: Monya De's Bootlegs Monya De (and all others interested) The key to a good recording is 3-fold, a good source (or nice spot in the room) a good microphone (full frequency range that maybe cuts some of the Low lows) and a good pre-amp. The pre amp will allow you to make sure that you are getting the optimum signal to noise ratio. It allows you to meter your input and adjust the levels so that nothing peaks out too much (meaning overloading the tape or disc & creating distortion) and so that you are focusing on the sound you really want and not just the wash of sound that is bouncing around the room. I have used both tape recorders with pre-amps and without (like your little hand held thang). I find that the walkman style recorders will focus mostly on the near sounds. They don't really boost the signal much. As far as cleaning up the tape goes, you can soften the pops and bangs but not eliminate them. they have become part of the music now. you can boost the volume as well but you will also be boosting all of the extraneous noise contained on the recording. So, before you put all that effort (and maybe cash) into cleaning it up, you will want to determine just how much salvageable music you captured. Good luck and have fun. Ian Ian Gifford Singer/Songwriter, Radio show host. Sundays 12am till 2am (est) http://www.chrw.fm.net mailto:igifford@hotmail.com "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song" Louis Armstrong, 1901-1971 ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 19:02:19 -0400 From: "Stephen M. Tilson" Subject: Alloy: bats(soons) in Austin [OT] Lee Jackson incautiously reminds us: > // Lee Jackson > // LHB 1981-83 (Bassoon/Flags) > // Voting Member, NARAS, 1997-present Question: What is the difference between a trampoline and a bassoon? Answer: You take you shoes off before jumping on a trampoline . . . Sorry, just read that somewhere. /\/\iles ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 19:37:12 -0400 From: "Stephen M. Tilson" Subject: Alloy: bootlegs Monya asks: > I made a concert bootleg last night, but want to clean up the > tape (the recorder was just a shabby little handheld one) miles > how did you clean up my cruel tape? is there a way to cut out the > fuzz from me moving around and turn up the volume? Yes. However, I'm afraid if I answered your questions fully that about 1/4 of the way into my explanation your eyes would glaze over and roll up as all the blood left your brain. Iow, and in all honesty, it's rather involved. For example, cleaning up the 52 second duration of Cruel took about 4 or 5 hours of intense work. First I imported the original recording into my computer as a monaural wave file. I then very very carefully edited out the pops and thuds that resulted from you starting and stopping the recorder (literally, cut them out of the file), and the pops from bumping the microphone or desk or whatever the microphone was mounted in. There were about 25 edits that ranged from 10 to 40 milliseconds in length and the total time loss was just about 1/2 second. That left me with just your voice and the background noise. That file was then re-recorded to an outboard digital tape deck and re-imported to the computer as a stereo wave file. Once I had the stereo file I then opened it in a program that is typically used for forensic analysis and cleaning up noisy recordings - like old 78 RPM records. You feed this program a sample of just the *noise* portion of the recording and then it subtracts those waveforms from the entire file. Although this sounds elegant, the results are less than perfect and in fact you lose part of the signal you're trying to preserve (your voice, in this instance) in the process. If you take the de-noising process too far you will begin to introduce artifacts into the recording. In the case of Cruel I balanced those artifacts with the overall effect for a bit of a compromise solution. Nevertheless, hearing the original file and the processed file side by side is an eye opening experience! What a difference. Eliminating bumps and pops from a stereo recording gets a bit more complicated, if not nearly impossible, due to phase differences in the two channels. I was lucky in that your recording didn't require stereo treatment for that phase of the recovery process. If you can live with those inadvertent events (pops, thuds) then you might try playing around with a de-noiser program such as the one I used for Cruel. It is called DC-Art32 and is produced by Diamond Cut Audio Restoration Tools. Visit their website at The demo version only works on files of 30 seconds or less. To do your song I broke it into two 25-second pieces and then reassembled the results. Since I don't plan on making this kind of processing a habit I turfed the demo. > how do you prevent bad bootlegs in the first place? By starting with good recording gear. These days that means a portable DAT (Digital Audio Tape recorder) with serious microphones. Figure on spending about a thousand dollars. I'm not kidding. The microphones I use for (stealth) live recording run about $300 for the pair. If stealth isn't an issue, as in your situation, it might be cheaper. The basic fact is that good audio gear is expensive, though. There is no substitute for good microphones. Good mics and analog tape is better than crummy mics and digital tape - so start with the microphones if you're serious about this. Basic pointers for good live recording: Position your microphones to emulate the position of your ears, and place them such that they won't be hit or bumped. You can attach them to a baseball cap or glasses if they're small enough. Next, ensure that your recording (input) level is as high as possible without overloading the tape ("turn a dial till the needle's in the white"). This is very important because once you've overloaded the tape it cannot be repaired. You can, however, make a weak signal louder after the recording is made - so default to a conservative input setting. If you're "wearing" the microphones then remember to keep yourself pointed toward the stage and avoid standing (or sitting) near fellow audients who must needs scream and whistle and TALK throughout the performance. (I wonder why those people, the talkers, even bother going to live performances?) Alright, alright. I see most of you have fallen asleep or gone catatonic on me, so I'll stop here . . . , /\/\iles PS Monya? If you like you may send me your tape and I'll see if I can fix it up for you. ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V4 #287 ***************************